Throughout her career, Evelyn Frankford’s passion has been to help youth
and young adults, especially those that tend to be marginalized
or excluded, find their way into satisfying and productive adult
lives.
She does this by helping the public and community institutions
responsible for mental health, education, child welfare, and workforce
preparation better organize their initiatives to help youth navigate
normative but complex developmental transitions.
Of late, she has used her knowledge of state government in New York, Massachusetts, and elsewhere to pursue sustainability strategies that build on assets and strengths - both personal and systems - and that help stakeholders connect to the contemporary policy environment.
In the beginning…
After Evelyn got her Master's in Social Work at New York University
in community organizing and public policy, she started out working
in settlement houses in New York City's Lower East Side. These neighborhood-based
multi-service centers, committed to positive action at the intersection
of public systems (government, community groups, health and human
services) to improve the communities and lives of people in need,
powerfully influenced her entire career. She developed programs
to help girls get skills in living, stay in school, and imagine
their productive futures and she helped community groups learn how
to negotiate with New York City government to keep their health
care services and elderly programs.
Then, for many years…
She worked for an independent public policy analysis and advocacy
organization in Albany, New York, where she eventually became Deputy
Director. She collaborated with partners inside and outside government
to devise children's mental health programs that ranged from mental
health promotion in schools to early intervention in the community
to better organizing of treatment in the community via “Systems
of Care”.
Evelyn developed early iterations of Community Schools, garnered
funding for community-based child welfare services, and developed
legislation that produced a new State Office of Children and Family
Services in 1997. As well, she led a coalition of 25 groups that
produced “Reinvestment” legislation (1993) to move state
funding from psychiatric hospitals to community care.
Along the way, she learned how state government works - the legislative
process, regulations, budgets, inter-agency collaboration - and
especially how to create partnerships of outside organizations and
coalitions (policy researchers, advocates, providers, family groups)
with inside policy leaders (in the legislature and the executive
branches) to achieve policy goals and get solid sustainable programs.
She used that knowledge in Colorado, where she served as legislative
representative of a good-government organization and then, on her
return east, as a consultant to many New York State settlement houses
and mental health agencies.
Most recently…
Evelyn has summarized years of experience in systems work by focusing
on sustainability of evidence-based interventions to promote youth
mental health in schools and communities, interventions that too
often start and stop in pilot projects. In association with the
Center for Health and Health Care in Schools (www.healthinschools.org),
she has helped to create a web-based tool: Partner,
Build, Grow:
An Action Guide for Sustaining Child Development and Prevention
Approaches.
Evelyn’s commitment to universal approaches for all youth
has shaped her approach to policy and program development for Transition
Age Youth and Young Adults (Emerging Adults), people ages 16-25
who have experienced public systems because of their mental health
challenges. For the Massachusetts and Washington DC Departments
of Mental Health, her approach has emphasized strengths and assets
via education and employment supports. She has conducted focus groups
with such youth, who emphasize their desire for education and adequate
income in order to live productively.
As a Visiting Fellow at the University of Massachusetts-Boston
Center for Social Policy, Evelyn carried out a variety of projects
on adult basic education and comprehensive school-based asset-oriented
mental health interventions.
Evelyn uses her skills in providing technical assistance in association
with national centers funded by private foundations and the federal
government, state government, and schools and community health and
mental health partners. She has expanded her expertise into many
child and youth development content areas.
In her volunteer life, Evelyn pursues this passion for helping
marginalized youth with the Paris-based Fourth World Movement, for
which she has translated, from French to English, her friend Geneviève
Defraigne Tardieu’s book on the Movement’s approach
to adult education as a strategy for engaging people with lived
experience of poverty to build political courage to overcome it.
(http://4thworldmovement.org/) |