The concept therefore started with an effort to identify and reach out to those most in need of employment services through new avenues including the use of community workers, staff in smaller neighborhood centers, and mobile units.

A second basic premise of the HRD concept was the belief that people who were disadvantaged needed special kinds of services to help them prepare for and adjust to the modern world of work. These services included special counseling and testing, instruction on the requirements of a regular work situation, referral to occupational training, and continuing contact with the worker after he was employed to help him adjust to his new work environment.

The demonstration or prototype project was a pilot "intensive service" program in three slum neighborhoods of Chicago under the sponsorship of the mayor's committee on manpower. City, State, and Federal agencies joined forces with representatives of business and minority groups and community agencies in carrying out this program. The approach was first to conduct a door-to-door, personto-person survey of employment needs in the target areas and then to follow through with a "two-pronged" effort

To work with employers to increase employment opportunities for the disadvantaged, and

To help disadvantaged individuals prepare and qualify for these jobs.

Experimental programs of the same nature-featuring an intensive door-to-door outreach approach and testing a variety of techniques for meeting the problems of those interviewed-were undertaken in St. Louis, Houston, Rochester, N. Y., and, in a modified form, in the Watts and south-central Los Angeles areas. All projects confirmed the need for and response to such outreach and the accompanying need for more training and job opportunities for the hard-core unemployed.

On August 24, 1966, the U.S. Employment Service issued a program letter to all State employment security agencies entitled "Guidelines for the Development of Plans of Action to Implement a Human Resources Development Program for the Disadvantaged." The letter proposed that priority be given to implementing the HRD program in each of the 139 metropolitan areas in which YOC's were then operating or were contemplated. The guidelines contained in the letter were given to State employment security agencies for use in developing a plan of action for each of these 139 areas. At the same time, it was recognized that the State plan of action must also include provision for outreach, selection and referral services to disadvantaged adults in other parts of the State insofar as MDTA trainees were concerned.

The letter stated that the guidelines contained therein reflected many of the findings which resulted from the demonstration programs in Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, St. Louis, and Rochester, New York.

Instead of further fragmenting and specializing services to disadvantaged and hard-core adults, as distinguished from youth, the letter proposed to develop comprehensive HRD programs which

concentrated on the basic concept of improving the employability of disadvantaged persons regardless of age or other special character

istics.

The program outlined in the letter consisted of four major functions: (1) outreach, (2) improving employability, (3) developing job opportunities and placement services, and (4) providing job market information.

To provide operating bases for the new HRD program, the YOC's expanded their functions to provide service to the disadvantaged in all age groups. In addition, the facilities and services of on-going organizations in slum neighborhoods-including community action agencies' centers, employment service offices, and settlement houses were widely utilized.

It was felt that in slum areas, people from the same neighborhood and culture could, with far greater acceptance and effectiveness than strangers, go from house to house and win response from the men and women who were often mistrustful and hostile to public agency programs. Consequently, the outreach staff in the HRD program were, as far as was possible, neighborhood residents who had received special training.

At the HRD centers, special counseling staff worked individually with persons encouraged to come in by the Outreach staff and planned how to remove the obstacles to their employment. If personal difficulties such as living conditions, family or child-care problems, legal and credit questions, and problems of clothing or tools or transportation hampered employability, or if problems of physical or mental health stood in the way, the welfare and health services of the community || were called upon under cooperative arrangements.

The plan for each individual might include, in any needed combination, basic education, other pre-training preparation, work-experience programs, and institutional, on-the-job, or apprenticeship training. For youth the plan might also involve referral to the Neighborhood Youth Corps or Job Corps.

Outreach in the human resources employability development model

In 1968, the U.S. Employment Service promulgated the human resources employability development model to present procedural and staffing guidelines to assist State and local offices in moving from an HRD framework to a fully functioning program in line with the needs of the disadvantaged clients. The HRD concept has spelled out the role of the Employment Service as the provider of intensive employability services for the disadvantaged. The Work Incentive Program (WIN). Job Opportunities in the Business Sector (JOBS), Concentrated Employment Program (CEP), and other similar programs had given the Employment Service an opportunity to apply the HRD concept at the local level. However, it was felt that to make the HRD programs effective, all the Employment Service components needed to be brought into harmony with the HRD concept.

The intent of the Employability Development Model was to present a broad description of a model that could (1) encompass numerous programs based upon the HRD concept, and (2) provide a wide range of counseling, support, training, and job development. The model was to cover a full range of services, including outreach, en

rollment, assessment, orientation, employability development and tryout training, job development, placement, job coaching, and followup.

The model also introduced the concept of the employability development team consisting of both professionals and preprofessionals. Each client was to progress through the employability development programs with the assistance of an employability development team. The team was to begin with the client at his level of need and proceed with him at his own pace of development.

The number of staff needed for a team and the division of work among the staff depended on the size of the caseload, the complexity of client problems, and a number of other variables. It was suggested that one team, assigned the maximum number of 200 clients, could consist of five employment service staff members, a counselor, a manpower or job development specialist, a work and training specialist, a coach, and a clerk-stenographer, and additional aides working with each team through WIN or other programs. In small offices, a team could consist only of a job developer and a counselor along with appropriate community resources and aides.

Outreach was the first step in the employability program and the methods of outreach included the following:

Through personal contact, primarily through trained indigenous workers in the homes, hangouts, and streets of the poverty area, prospective clients were to be referred to the HRD unit for possible enrollment in the program.

The outreach worker will contact and identify the client and motivate him to pursue further information and exploration of the HRD program.

The outreach worker may encourage the client to report back to him if the initial referral contact result was puzzling or unsatisfactory. The outreach worker serves as client advocate, maintaining a limited followup relationship in such instances. He also serves to call attention to weaknesses in the HRD operation.

Aides were to be a primary resource in outreach, enrollment, and orientation and were to serve as indigenous advisors to groups of enrollees. They were also to assist team staff in groups sessions, transportation problems, clerical data gathering, compilation, etc.

The employment service as a comprehensive manpower agency

In June 1969, the U.S. Employment Service issued a document entitled "The Employment Service as a Comprehensive Manpower Agency" which broadly defined substantive changes that were felt to be required in the Employment Service organization, systems design, and operating methods and techniques. This represented a conceptual approach to the redesign of the Employment Service as a Comprehensive Manpower Delivery System. The concept was qualified by a statement that much developmental work remained to be done in testing and validating the conceptual design.

The Employment Service believed that to achieve the desired redirection of the Employment Service, the HRD concept in its broadest sense must permeate all functions and activities. Consequently, all planning, management action, and operations must be compatible

with and directly or indirectly supporting the accomplishment of this goal. While this was envisioned when the HRD concept was introduced, field visits and past evaluations of HRD effectiveness by the Employment Service indicated that field implementation had not achieved the desired redirection and the concentration of effort to fulfill the Employment Service's mission of more adequately serving the disadvantaged.

The stated purpose of this document was to present a new local office system for the delivery of manpower services providing for new functional groupings and functional relationships-which could eventually serve as the model for the complete restructuring of all local offices to enable them to serve as comprehensive manpower agencies. The significant feature of this change was the fact that services to "mainstream" applicants were to be streamlined so as to free staff to provide more intensive services to less competitive and less qualified applicants.

Under the comprehensive manpower system, the Employment Service local offices will provide three levels of service to applicants varying in intensity according to their needs:

(1) Self-directed job information level-self service use by jobready applicants of a computerized or other type job bank listing of job openings and other information about job opportunities. (2) Employability exploration level-job finding assistance and instruction, job development, and job market information for applicants who are unsure of their degree of job-readiness.

(3) Intensive employability development level-a controlled caseload, team approach to provide the hard-core and disadvantaged with the full range of intensified manpower services.

The U.S. Employment Service is currently testing this new system in six cities: Syracuse, Memphis, Phoenix, San Antonio, Wichita, and Pittsburgh. In addition to these six cities, Greenleigh Associates, Inc., under contract, is presently setting up prototype systems in four cities and one rural area. The cities selected for this study are Hartford, Baltimore, Milwaukee, and Tacoma. The rural area selected was the Euphrata-Moses Lake area in the State of Washington.

After the restructuring has been completed and the offices have functioned for a period of time in the 10 model cities and the rural area, the employment service plans to evaluate the results of the models and will then decide whether to further implement the system throughout the country.

As of October 1, 1970, an interim report on these model systems is to be submitted to the Secretary of Labor on March 15, 1971, and a final report is due to be submitted on June 15, 1971.

Outreach and recruitment activities under this new system are directed only toward disadvantaged persons. Accordingly, outstationing of employment service staff at locations such as colleges, union halls, employer establishments, and schools, primarily for the purpose of recruiting and placing job-ready applicants, is to be eliminated. The outreach techniques to be utilized in the new delivery system are the same as described under the HRD Employability Development Model.

CONCLUSION

Thus, like a pebble dropped in the center of quiet water, the ripples of Congressman Dawson's work in behalf of minorities of the disadvantaged people of America continues to be extended in everwidening circles. This, above all, is characteristic of the man, for in his quiet way he worked to achieve the goals he sought.

"Be smart," he would admonish a friend enraged by frustration. "Don't get mad, get smart! Think out your problem. You may find there are many possible ways to solve it!"

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