Receive update on American Rescue Plan Child, Youth & Families priority category and provide Board direction. (No general fund impact) (Jakowski/Lewis/Bryan) (Est. Time: 15 min)

Receive update on American Rescue Plan Child, Youth & Families priority category and provide Board direction. 

American Rescue Plan Background - Child, Youth, and Families 
On November 23, 2021, staff updated the Board regarding the five American Rescue Plan (ARP) priority category workgroups, including the Child, Youth, and Families (CYF) workgroup. Since that meeting, Staff has met with the workgroup and the Board liaisons to discuss several items under the subcategories approved by the Board in November 2021. The Child, Youth, and Family workgroup was allotted $5.5 million dollars of ARP funding and further allocated those funds as follows:

Childcare - $2.2 million (40% of CYF ARP Funds),
YCOE Roadmap - $200,000 (3.6% of CYF ARP funds),
Implementation of priority needs identified in Roadmap - $2.2 million (40% of CYF ARP funds),
Equity - $600,000 (10.9% of CYF ARP funds), and
Child Welfare - $300,000 (5.5% of CYF ARP funds).

On November 8, 2022, the Board received an update on the Child, Youth, and Family priority category, approved $550,000 for the Yolo Basic Income Program through the equity subcategory, approved $50,000 for the RaiseAChild project through the Child Welfare subcategory and received an update on the YCOE Roadmap to the Future. 

The chart below presents the organizations that have already been funded through the CYF priority category, leaving $50,000 to be committed to projects in the subcategory of Equity, $250,000 to be committed to projects in the Child Welfare subcategory and $2,200,000 to be committed to projects based on the YCOE Roadmap Implementation. 

Roadmap to the Future for Yolo County Children and Youth
In February 2022, Yolo County executed a $200,000 contract with the Yolo County Office of Education (YCOE) for the Roadmap to the Future project, a long-term plan to effectively coordinate the services, supports, and opportunities children, youth, and families need in Yolo County to thrive, as well as establish a shared framework to ensure their healthy development. Yolo County’s contract with YCOE includes collecting data on community assets and services for children, youth, and families, mapping community assets and services, completing a needs assessment (including a youth development framework), facilitating community engagement sessions, and publishing a final report.

As YCOE worked with partners to implement the project, YCOE has learned the difficulties of creating the first-ever database of community assets and services. YCOE has successfully created a list of services and community assets by Supervisorial District, as well as held a community engagement session in each District to validate and expand the initial dataset, but believes more time is necessary to collect and validate the data with critical organizations and service providers. This information is also essential to the needs assessment, which requires a rigorous analysis of existing service data, the development of findings regarding strengths and gaps in the support network based on this analysis, and recommendations to expand or support strong elements of the system and fill gaps. As a result of the importance of this work to improve outcomes for children and youth, YCOE has dedicated additional internal funding to this project to accommodate the expanded work and will seek funding from other sources to match YCOE’s commitment.

In addition to the database and needs assessment, YCOE will make recommendations to the Yolo County Board of Supervisors regarding allocation of the $2.2 million available in American Rescue Plan funds to assist children, youth, and families affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. To develop these actions, YCOE will develop prioritization criteria, project descriptions, rankings, and recommendations for early, “no regrets,” actions, informed by shared priorities and the collective body of work established by three convenings of Yolo County leaders in 2021 and 2022, initial information on community needs collected by YCOE through community engagement meetings in 2023, and American Rescue Plan and other Yolo County criteria. YCOE will work closely with the ARP Workgroup to review and refine the prioritization criteria, as well as candidate projects. This work will result in recommendations to the Board of Supervisors in October 2023.

To ensure a high-quality database of community assets and services, as well as a comprehensive needs assessment to identify strengths and gaps in the support system for children, youth, and families, YCOE has determined it is critical to 1) provide sufficient time for data collection, validation, and analysis; and 2) complete the work products sequentially so that deadlines do not overlap. The additional time proposed for this project will strengthen the final product and help ensure robust recommendations to improve the support system which will stand the test of time.

The updated timeline for each component of the project is as follows, which adds a total of nine months to the total project timeline. YCOE originally anticipated completion of the project in September 2023.

Child, Youth, and Families Workgroup
Yolo County Health and Humans Services Agency
Yolo County Office of Education