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State Teams in Action: Two Case Studies

The New Hampshire Teen Workplace Safety Coalition: A Case Study in Team-Building While Working Toward a Long-Range Goal

The experience of the New Hampshire Teen Workplace Safety Coalition demonstrates how a State team can

• take advantage of the strengths and resources of each of its members and
  
  
• work on manageable short-term activities while maintaining a focus on a longer-range goal.

Getting Started

In the summer of 1998, the New Hampshire legislature abolished the work permit requirement for workers aged 16 and 17. This action took place with little warning during the summer, when schools were out of session. Many of the people in New Hampshire’s Departments of Health, Education, and Labor who would become active in the New Hampshire Teen Workplace Safety Coalition learned about this legislation only after it was passed.

Image of NIH Teen Workplace Safety Coalition Fact Sheet

This event provided an immediate impetus for the members of the nascent State team, who were preparing to attend the initial young worker safety meeting at EDC. Lynda Thistle-Elliot of the New Hampshire Department of Education reported, “The repeal of the work certificate system showed us that we needed some coordination. We had people who were working on teen worker safety. Yet this slipped by.” The team understood that reinstating work certificates was not immediately possible. However, they found that they could do a lot to protect young workers. Representatives from the Departments of Health and Education volunteered to chair meetings; team members took turns taking minutes; and all members became involved in the team’s projects.

CD-ROM (Sugar Valley Regional Technical Center, New Hampshire)

Creating Educational Materials

One of the State team’s first projects was to develop a fact sheet for parents. Although this was a relatively quick activity, it gave team members the chance to focus as a group on issues related to young worker safety and to learn firsthand what each member’s agency and organization had to offer. The team used data from the Departments of Health and Labor and child labor law information from the Department of Labor and the Safety Council to create Working Teens—A Guide for Parents. The Safety Council and Department of Labor paid for printing the fact sheet, while the Department of Education distributed copies to every school district in the State.

The team’s next project was to create and distribute book covers featuring information about child labor laws. A number of the agencies and organizations represented on the State team contributed resources or capabilities to help this project succeed. The Department of Education sponsored a contest in which high school students designed book covers with a young worker safety motif. The State team selected the winning design. The Department of Labor checked the information on the book covers for accuracy. The New Hampshire Municipal Association (a membership organization of cities, towns, and townships), State Department of Labor, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) funded the printing of more than 30,000 book covers, which were distributed to students by the Department of Education. The contest generated considerable media attention and helped raise public awareness about workplace safety for teens. Lynda Thistle-Elliot reported that having “an actual product on which to work generated enthusiasm. It kept us going.”

Supporting a Community Project

Another important activity was the State team’s support of a community-based project and subsequent use of the results to benefit other communities. The New Hampshire State team awarded its NIOSH-funded mini-grant to Sugar River Valley Regional Technical Center, a regional vocational education high school. Staff and students at the school used this grant, and information provided by the coalition, to create a CD-ROM entitled Teen Health and Safety in the Workplace. Sugar River Valley, and the State’s other regional technical centers, now use this CD-ROM, along with supplemental print materials and teacher training, to teach teens about workplace safety. The materials are also used by State team members in presentations to educators, State agency personnel, and youths.

Expanding the Team

The benefits of having key organizations represented on the team became evident as the team began to reach out to new audiences. The representative from the New Hampshire chapter of the National Safety Council, for example, arranged for State team members to speak and distribute information at that group’s annual conference.

The team also learned that opportunities can be missed if key State agencies are not represented. The State team discovered that the State Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division had published an article on young workers in New Hampshire Business Week that overlooked the issue of safety, and had also created a bookmark containing information about State child labor laws that neglected to mention that some of these laws were superseded by stricter Federal law. The team recruited Wage and Hour representatives to ensure that such opportunities would not be lost in the future.

The coalition did not let its projects, team-building, and expansion overshadow its initial concern. In spring 2001, two State legislators introduced legislation reinstating the work permit requirement. This time, team members were prepared to reach out to schools, parents, and employers with information about work certificates. The coalition has done much to raise awareness of occupational injuries to teens, and continues to make New Hampshire a safer place for young people to work.

The Connecticut Young Worker Team: A Case Study of Young Worker Safety Training

The Connecticut Young Worker Team demonstrates how agencies and organizations working together can have a far greater impact than any one group could produce on its own. The Connecticut State team did the following:

• Brought together professionals, each with the responsibility for one aspect of young worker safety. They had never worked together and, in many cases, had not even met one another, despite their common interests and responsibilities.
  
  
• Established multidisciplinary training teams
  
  
• Provided safety training in a number of different venues
  
  
• Integrated safety training into a variety of education, health, and job training systems

Getting Started

Some of the key participants did not have any experience with young worker safety, much less organizing a multidisciplinary coalition to address this issue. Marian Storch of the Connecticut Department of Public Health’s Injury Prevention Program, a founding member of the team, reported, “It took us awhile to focus. The reason the health department got involved was because of the training on youth occupational safety held at EDC. Prior to that, young worker safety wasn’t even on our radar screen. We didn’t even know who else in our department was a natural partner. After the forum at EDC, we discovered that this was a topic of interest across several divisions in the department.”

After several meetings focusing on the health implications of youth employment, team members began to reach out to people they knew in other agencies. The team expanded to include representatives from (1) several divisions of the State Departments of Health, Education, and Labor, (2) the regional office of the United States Department of Labor, a local workforce development board and local health department, (3) COSH, and (4) the Governor’s Career Internship Partnership. A broad representation of State agencies and offices proved key to the team’s ability to use those systems with access to working youth and employers. Team members share the duties of chairing meetings and sending out follow up notices.

Supporting a Community Project

Awarding a mini-grant to a community project (using NIOSH funds) provided the team with an initial focus, as well as an important lesson about integrating safety training into programs that connect youth to the workplace. The mini-grant project was coordinated by the Middletown Health Department, which also administers the city’s summer jobs program. The Health Department hired Anita Vallee, a high school teacher, to provide a three-hour training, using Work Safe! (a curriculum developed by the Labor Occupational Health Program at the University of California at Berkeley), to youth in the Middletown summer jobs program.

Newspaper article (Connecticut)

The activity was very well received by teens and their supervisors in the job training program. Vallee later incorporated Work Safe! into career awareness classes at Middletown High School, trained other high school business and career education teachers to use the curriculum, and expanded the summer job program training project. She also surveyed local employers to identify specific work hazards and issues that should be emphasized in the program. This project demonstrated the utility of schools, job training programs, and workplaces as venues for young worker safety training, as well as the value of using a brief yet engaging and effective curriculum like Work Safe!

Conducting Outreach and Training

Most members of the Connecticut State team were trained to use Work Safe! by the NYWRC. In addition to delivering the full three-hour training, team members also provide abridged training (for events lacking time for a complete training) and shorter presentations about the curriculum and young worker safety at professional meetings, workshops, and other events. The active training and presentation schedule maintained by the team resulted from a decision to target teachers and job placement professionals who have opportunities to use the curriculum with young people. Marian Storch reports, “We are trying to knock on as many doors as we can reach. We’d like to get young worker safety training institutionalized in as many different settings as we can.” This strategy is proving its worth. In December 2000, for example, Jennifer Stefanik, a team member from the Capitol Region Workforce Development Board, convinced the board to require State-funded youth employment programs to incorporate young worker safety training into their programs. Stefanik teaches the supervisors and directors of youth programs to use Work Safe!; they, in turn, use the curriculum in their own training for the youth they employ. The Connecticut Young Worker Team is in the process of expanding this program to all eight Workforce Development Boards in the State.

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