43
Agency officials says the new MYCAP is stabilized and sustainable
YOUNGSTOWN
Just two months after losing its Head Start/Early Head Start program, Mahoning-Youngstown Community Action Partnership leaders say the agency has restructured and stabilized itself and is looking to grow in other areas in the future.
The Mahoning-Youngstown Community Action Partnership was given the not-unexpected news July 2 that it was permanently disqualified from the Child and Adult Care Food Program food-service grant that it used to feed Head Start participants, effective July 31.
The food program is a U.S. Department of Agriculture Food and Nutrition Service effort, administered in Ohio by the state board of education, which provides aid to child-care programs such as Head Start.
Without the CACFP grant, and unable to find an alternate source for the $400,000 a year needed for Head Start food-operations, MYCAP had to relinquish the program, said Shelia Triplett, interim chief executive officer.
The fallout from losing Head Start was hurtful and swift, Triplett said, and resulted in a number of moves by the MYCAP board of directors.
Since the July 2 notification, MYCAP’s complement of employees was reduced from about 155 to 22.
Most of the employees, 127, were associated with Head Start, and all but one was hired by the Community Development Institute of Denver, which took over as interim operator of the Mahoning County Head Start on Aug. 1, Triplett said.
On top of that, nine non-Head Start agency employees were laid off, leaving 22 to manage and operate MYCAP’s remaining programs, said Ben McGee, MYCAP board chairman.
The agency’s annual budget dropped from about $13.2 million to around $5 million, Triplett said.
The leadership team recommended, and the board approved, additional cost-cutting measures aimed at positioning MYCAP to emerge from the loss of Head Start, a program it had operated for 48 years, poised for the future.
Among them is reducing the number of days of service from five to four — Monday through Thursday — while increasing the number of hours daily. The new service hours are 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m.
The purpose is to make obtaining services more convenient, particularly for working clients who might, under the previous office hours, have had to take off work, McGee said.
The ultimate goal was to not adversely affect client services while streamlining the agency for a future without Head Start.
Triplett, McGee and other MYCAP staff and board members recently met with Randall Hunt, deputy chief of the Ohio Development Services Agency’s Office of Community Assistance and other OCA staff members, to explain how, as McGee termed it, MYCAP plans to “stabilize, sustain and scale [grow].”
The state agency funds remaining MYCAP programs, including the Home Energy Assistance Program; Home Weatherization Assistance Program; Percentage of Income Payment Plan Plus; and Summer and Winter Crisis programs.
McGee explained that while MYCAP had hoped for a different outcome July 31 than the loss of Head Start, the agency had been preparing for the worst-case scenario since March.
The effort was significant, he said.
“We answered the ‘what ifs’: What would the agency look without Head Start; what’s next in that case; and what can be done to increase the agency’s role within its mission,” McGee said.
The mission is to mitigate the impact poverty has on people and provide them a path to self-sufficiency and independence, he said.
“As a result of the effort, we developed a plan and have implemented it,” Triplett said.
From a personnel perspective, people with multiple skill sets were kept, Triplett said.
“We had to make some drastic decisions on who was staying and who was leaving without affecting customer service. We looked internally to strengthen, stabilize and make the agency sustainable and able to look toward future growth. We no longer have any specialists. All the administrative staff provide direct services,” she said.
“It was the most-difficult decision I have ever had to make,” Triplett said.
“We aren’t just surviving, we feel we can grow. We are stabilized and our total focus is on moving forward,” McGee said.