Out-of-school time is critical for America’s young people. Community organizations, politicians, school districts, foundations, parents and young people are working to fill this out-of-school time with quality productive activities that are supervised by caring adults in safe places. Without this, young people are far more challenged to fully develop into adults that are productive and successful.

Sacramento County is similar to many other political communities in the United States; our out-of-school time system is an unassembled puzzle.  However, a large contingency of Sacramentans interested in children and youth issues have placed out-of-school time at or near the top of their priority list. Out-of-school time was selected as one of the indicators from the Children’s Report Card at the Children’s Summit held in November 2000.  At the Children’s Summit and at the Community Forum on out-of-school time held in May 2001, the community set forth objectives on how to being addressing the challenge of filling out-of-school time with positive and productive activities.  One mandate from these various planning efforts, including the Children’s Summit and the Community Forum on Out-of-School Time, was to create a coordinating council to lead the development of a synchronized out-of-school time system. The recommended agenda would include:

   •  Advocate for policy and systems changes

   •  Provide access to and coordinating technical support and training for a broad group of providers

   •  Engage youth and parents in the effort at all levels (policy, program, and advocacy)

   •  Improve communication and information sharing across the diverse set of stakeholders–creating a shared vision and common goals, sharing information to promote partnerships, and leveraging resources 

   •  Planning, data collection, and mapping of assets at the program level/program quality indicators

   •  A resource broker

Additionally, the strategies would include:

   •  Create and sustain a coordinating council

   •  Create a resource bank to connect funding to programs

   •  Support work on removing tranportation barriers, assess system capacity

   •  Assist with staff recruitment, training and retention

   •  Promote maximium use of community facilities and support use of schools as community learning centers

   •  Expand current data collection to include out-of-school programs and activities and create a County-wide asset map

   •   Community-wide public information campaign to promote the benefits of out-of-school time programs

   •  Create evaluation and technical support resources, common indicators of success and locally agreed on quality care standards and youth development principles that can guide programs

   •  Build capacity around cultural competence in the context of program delivery

   •  Promote parental involvement and train parents to become advocates

   •  Promote youth engagement in all aspects of the system: advocacy, advisory boards,

      program delivery, program planning, and evaluation

   •  Develop strategies on teens transitioning to adulthood by creating networking opportunities, peer mentoring, community service and gender specific activities

The following report was prepared by the Sacramento County Children’s Coalition; Child Action, Inc.; Sunrise Recreation and Park District, the Foundation Consortium, the Youth Services Provider Network, and the Community Services Planning Council.  The report was also prepared with the assistance of The Forum for Youth Investment, Greater Resources for After School Programming (GRASP), and many Sacramento County community agencies, stakeholders and youth.

Sacramento Investing in Youth (182 k .pdf file*)
Appendices
	Summaries of Existing Reports (248k .pdf file*)
	Survey of Youth Service Providers (417 k .pdf file*)
	Youth Focus Groups (340 k .pdf file*) NOTE: may require 11x17 paper to print
	Notes from the Out-of-School Community Forum (443 k .pdf file*)
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