How to fix city's youth services

In an editorial on April 25, the

Daily News

called on Mayor Nutter and the city to rethink the way we organize and fund programs for children.

We'd like to expand on this idea. The demise of Philadelphia Safe and Sound has focused widespread attention on the disorganized way we've gone about providing after-school, community-based prevention and youth-development programs to help families and children in the city.

The Nutter administration quickly organized an open bidding process to select a successor to Safe and Sound. But just changing the intermediary organization isn't going to address, let alone solve, the larger problems.

The Fels Institute of Government at Penn recently completed a yearlong project funded by the William Penn Foundation in which we interviewed and convened key stakeholders, collected data and looked at how some other cities have dealt with similar situations. (See the report at fels.upenn.edu/Projects/.)

The report conservatively estimated that more than $226 million will be spent this fiscal year on after-school and other community-based prevention programs, a much larger amount than in many comparable cities. These funds are spent by various city departments, intermediaries and private non-profits through byzantine pathways, without an overall plan and with inadequate means to collect data and track outcomes.

The report also says that the city is too dependent on a single state funding stream. Of the estimated money being expended this fiscal year, 60 percent comes from Act 148 funds administered by the state Department of Public Welfare. If this money is less available due to strained fiscal conditions or a change in guidelines governing its use, the consequences for the city youth services could be severe. The city needs to diversify its funding sources, including expanded use of the School-Age Child Care subsidy and more support from corporations and foundations.

City government, which has used various public offices and committees to try to manage these programs, saw its role greatly eroded at the end of the Street administration as the mayor relied more and more on intermediaries like Safe and Sound. It's time for the city under the leadership of the deputy mayor for health and opportunity to provide overall policy guidance for youth services.

This will involve making sure that the desired outcomes for the after-school and youth-services system and the means for tracking performance are incorporated into the city's operating departments and all contracts with nonprofit service providers.

Overall policy guidance needs to be informed by those who are directly affected, including young people. Planning and advisory committees at citywide and neighborhood levels are needed. The more stakeholders who are part of this process, the more likely we are to have agreed-on policies, procedures and services that we citizens can rally behind.

Throughout the project, several questions were raised: What's the purpose of trying to improve the organization and funding of youth services? What should be the measure of success? After much discussion, we decided that the overall mission should be to make sure that every child graduates from high school and goes on to secondary education or training, or is supported in entering the world of work.

Dramatically improving the graduation rate is also one of the goals that Mayor Nutter articulated in his inaugural. But efforts to increase it, including providing support at all age levels, can't just be driven by the mayor.

It needs strong collaboration with the School District, which was missing during the Street and Vallas era. Reforming youth services will require a new collaborative relationship between the mayor and the new school CEO. *

Burton Cohen is an organizational consultant and adjunct associate professor at Penn. Thomas McKenna is director of the Nonprofit Certificate Program at the Fels Institute of Government at Penn.