At Youth Empowerment Services (YES), the goal is helping young people develop the skills to get and keep a job so they can live on their own after foster care.
The free help—from driving lessons to GED completion and from paid internships to job-finding—is available to youth aged 14 to 21 in San Diego County who are currently in foster care or alumni of foster care.
Big dreams with a back-up plan
Life-skills assessments and career-inventory tests help youth figure out the path to a job that matches their talents and interests. As they get training, young people build a portfolio to help them land a job.
If a teen is set on becoming a pop star, YES encourages those dreams while helping prepare for a fall-back vocation. The action plan might include completing high school, continuing music lessons, landing an internship with the symphony, or working an entry-level job at a music shop.
The YES model is built on the youth-focused approach described in Casey’s It’s My Life, a framework for developing transition services for youth. To tailor services to each person’s needs, YES works closely with local one-stop career centers and San Diego County Children Services.
Keeping a pulse on opportunities
Begun in 1999, YES is a partnership of the San Diego field office of Casey Family Programs, San Diego Workforce Partnership, and ACCESS, Inc., a long-term provider of youth and employment training programs. In 2004, YES received a three-year award of $1.1 million annually in federal Workforce Investment Act funds.
As the workforce broker for the region, the San Diego Workforce Partnership provides insights about employment trends and the skills employers are looking to hire. In addition to preparing youth with basic job-readiness skills—like showing up on time with a positive attitude—YES helps with training required for entry-level jobs, such as CPR for childcare workers.
To contact YES, call 858.560.0871.