New Ways to Work, in partnership with California Opportunity Youth Network, released a an updated analysis of California’s opportunity youth.
New Ways to Work, California Opportunity Youth Network (COYN), and its dedicated members have been and continue to work diligently to expand the opportunities for the state’s young adult population and help improve their education, employment, and quality-of-life outcomes. Many of these joint efforts focus on those residents who have been or are connected to the foster, juvenile justice, and homelessness care systems in the state, as well as Opportunity Youth. Recently released 2020 US Census Bureau data collected via the ACS provides key insights and statistics on California’s teen and young adult populations, enabling us to better understand them and the many challenges they face. We know that much of the work being conducted across the state to support OY has undoubtedly made a positive impact on many lives in many communities.
The goal for this report is to emphasize the importance of leveraging data in making informed, evidenced-based decisions on how best to serve the state’s OY population. Such data can and often does serve multiple purposes and helps lay the groundwork for making decisions on how best to support disconnected teens and young adults across the state.