Focus on Re-Entry: Financial Success after Prison NWX-CFPB HQ Moderator: Heather Brown March 14, 2019 1:00 pm CT Coordinator: Good afternoon and thank you for standing by and welcome to the CFPB FinEx Focus on Re-Entry Financial Success After Prison. Today’s conference is being recorded. If you have any objections, please disconnect at this time. Your lines are in listen-only mode until the question and answer session of today’s conference. At that time you may press Star followed by the number 1 to ask a question. Please unmute your phones and state your first and last name when prompted. It is now my pleasure to turn today’s conference over to Dr. Heather Brown. Thank you. You may go ahead. Dr. Heather Brown: Thank you so much (Michelle). Welcome everybody. We’ve got a nice group on today. Excited about this topic, focus on re-entry financial success after prison. It’s not something - a topic you see a lot of places but there certainly is a need for the information. And we have a lot of social workers, clergy, financial educators and coaches that will encounter people that have had prison time or may be facing that or may be on their way out. And so our goal is to provide some training and resources that would help you prepare them to transition successfully. And certainly with the challenges we’re facing in the community with substance abuse, the numbers that may be needing some services like this are perhaps higher than they’ve been in a while. So I’m glad that you were able to join us and we have two very interesting speakers. Before we start, I need to go through my standard disclaimer. This presentation is made by a Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection representative on behalf of the bureau. It does not constitute legal interpretation, guidance or advice of the bureau. Any opinions or views stated by the presenter are the presenter’s own and may not represent the bureau’s views. Also the document you’re receiving is for support of a live discussion. For those that actually logged in, you will be getting a copy of the slides that will be sent to you after this session. But just to know that if you pass them on, we just want this in here so people understand that it may not be completely clear everything that we talked about just from reading the slides. Okay so I’m Heather Brown and I’m the FinEx program lead. Many of you may be repeats or you’ve probably heard my voice before. I’m basically facilitating this. Mary Griffin from our - she’s a senior advisor to our associate director of community affairs - I’m sorry, assistant director of community affairs. And she is a person that specializes in re-entry in our organization. And she is a passionate advocate for teaching these kinds of things and getting the word out there. And every time I talk to her I get so inspired in listening to her talk about some of the challenges and the new re-entry data. It’s like we really need to do a Webinar on this. And then she had the wonderful suggestion to invite a guest, Susan Ingles. And Susan is from South Carolina Legal Services, which I believe is part of the Legal Aid network. And Susan is a senior staff attorney and consumer law unit head at the South Carolina Legal Services. She leads a statewide Legal Aid’s firm use of the Your Money, Your Goals toolkit and re-entry kit is part of that. And she also has - she also has worked with incarcerated people and will share some - previously incarcerated people and will share some of the examples that she has with you as we talk. So I’d like to welcome Mary and Susan, and you’ll be hearing from them shortly. Okay so our overview today, quick background on the bureau. Many of you are FinEx members so you’re familiar with us. But I’d just like to go over it quickly for those that may not be. And then we’re going to have some discussion quickly about the financial well-being a little bit and how that applies to our population we’re looking at today, the re-entry population. And we’ll also touch base on Your Money, Your Goals a bit, which will be a great preview because next month we’re going to have a four-part series on Tuesdays one hour each from 2:00 to 3:00, the first four Tuesdays in April on Your Money, Your Goals. So it’s your great chance to get trained on that tool and it’s a fabulous toolkit that you’ll get slides for to use and everything, so encourage you to take part in that as well. And then we’re going to talk about some of the tools available that you can use to work with re-entry, the re-entry population and share experiences in the field. We’ll end with a question and answer session. For those that want to write their questions in the chat or the Q&A area, we’ll review those also at the end. Okay, quick background on the bureau. Many of you are familiar but we’re authorized to exercise our authority for the purpose of ensuring that consumers are provided with timely and understandable information to make responsible decisions about financial transactions. So that’s ultimately the first one. All the others are applicable to the bureau, but this one is very applicable to us in continuing education and engagement and specifically where the FinEx program’s housed in the Office of Education. Our mission is to regulate the offering and provision of consumer financial products or services under the federal consumer financial laws and to educate and empower consumers to make better and informed decisions. We do that in the FinEx program by educating those intermediaries that educate the consumers. So our goal is to better prepare the teachers, educators, counselors and coaches by giving them tools and research that’s evidence based in order to help them do their jobs better. And our vision is free, innovative, competitive, and transparent consumer finance markets where the rights of all parties are protected by the rule of law and where consumers are free to choose the products and services that best fit their individual needs. So the Office of Consumer Education and Engagement is focused on creating opportunities for people to make better choices about money so that they can reach their own life goals, whatever their vision of success is for themselves. And so we do that through print resources. And you can order those through our Pueblo services. And we have that link coming up in some of our documents and also by these Webinars as well. And we also do regional meetings, and that’s something we’re working on developing more of and getting schedules for the rest of this year and next year. So if that’s something you’re interested in, please reach out to cfpb_finex@cfpb.gov. Okay and these are some of the special populations that we serve. And many of you are familiar with these populations. And we have tools on our Web site if you go to the ConsumerFinance.gov and click on “Practitioners,” and then you click on “Adult Education,” you’ll see these populations and many more tools that are available. This is a brief overview of the FinEx program. We’re over 5000 members now. We have a LinkedIn page that you can join. At the bottom of this slide you see the e-mail box. And any questions you have about the FinEx program, any education questions you have, feel free to send those questions to that box. And I will be responding to you through there. So be patient. We are getting a lot of inquiries, and I try to turn them around fairly quickly but I just - if it’s something urgent, please definitely reach out by call. Okay so now I’m going to turn it over to Mary. And she is with the Office of Community Affairs as I said and she’s going to begin the content of the presentation today. Thank you so much for joining. Mary? Mary Griffin: Thanks Heather. I really appreciate this and thank you so much for everyone who’s participating. Heather mentioned that we have several offices. I’m from the Office of Community Affairs so we really focus on economically vulnerable consumers trying to make sure that it’s an inclusive financial marketplace and to empower these consumers to make informed financial decisions by providing tools and information. Next slide please. In terms of how we think about the people we serve, we sort of identify 100 million folks. We identify underbanked, unbanked, thin credit file, people with disabilities, re-entry population, those folks that are really struggling and also that might be at twice the poverty level. So we’re not talking about a niche market here. We’re talking about a huge segment of the American population. And we know that we can’t reach 100 million people. And we know they’re not all flocking to ConsumerFinance.gov to find out how to deal with their finances. So we work through people through the community channel, through intermediaries. And that’s what we do. That’s why we’re reaching out to you as well, all different sorts of intermediaries. And our ultimate goal in all this work across our offices – which Heather’s office, Office of Financial Education, has really been driving – is the goal of financial well-being. Everything we do is kind of trying to help move people along the financial well-being pathway or improving their financial well-being. Next slide please. And I know many of you know this but I just want to make sure that we kind of give the big picture here. And what we term or have defined – and this is through research and a lot of work – we developed a consumer-driven definition of a state of being reflecting a person’s ability to meet current and ongoing financial obligations, feel secure in their financial future, and make choices that allow enjoyment of life. And again this is about the person themselves, not about what other people say, not about like oh you need to have this amount of money, anything like that. This is very subjective. It’s all about how an individual feels about how they’re doing. Next slide please. So from this definition and again based on a lot of research, we developed the financial well-being scale that is really driven by kind of a framework around behavior, confidence and feelings. And we have a scale, 10-question, pretty simple scale asking questions like “I could handle a major unexpected expense,” “I am secure in my financial future,” these things, “I have money left over at the end of the month.” These are very subjective and they also require a little reflection. And that reflection alone can help in terms of people taking a little time, focus, and maybe addressing some of the things that are causing them stress. Next slide please. My favorite thing about the financial well-being scale though personally is we have it online in a really easy-to-use digital format. And it’s available via mobile. So you can answer the questions, get your score, and get links to some of our other resources using a mobile. So as you’re working with people out there it’s kind of fun depending on the cohort you’re working with to say, “Hey folks, can you pull out your phone and pull this up.” And then people can kind of see what we’re about and what our ultimate goal is. Next slide please. But we’re really interested in how you can work and how we can help you work to influence financial well-being. So we sort of have these drivers of the components of improving financial well-being. And that’s financial skill, financial behavior, and your financial situation. And what I’m going to talk to you now about is we’re sort of focused in the financial skill and financial behavior area because we want to help people take the skills and knowledge and help empower them to do what’s most important, and that is to take action. Could I have the next slide please? So we talk about financial empowerment. And we talk about empowering people to take action, to make changes in their lives. And when I say make changes, it’s about them taking responsibility and them empowering and feeling empowered about taking control over their financial lives. So the way we look at it is we provide some financial literacy which may be some of the knowledge. We add a little skill and most important confidence to use the knowledge because if you have it all and you don’t have the confidence it might not do you much good. And we kind of think of that as financial empowerment. Next slide please. But of course how do we reach people and how do we really get people to take action and to help support people in the field? So we like to work with those people who we think people trust and really listen to. So we work with intermediaries, community channels where we can get access to our ultimate consumers. And we help by providing opportunities or help them with their opportunities for financial empowerment. So next slide please. So we wanted to work with an opportunity to financially empower through service providers. Next slide please. And we did some research and we actually found that people on the front lines don’t always feel – and many of you know this and we all know this – sometimes it’s really hard to feel confident, not just about doing it yourself but working with other people about finances. I mean, there’s intimidation, there’s lack of knowledge. There’s just not confidence like what goes into a credit report or credit score. You know, gee, I don’t know, this stuff just gets so complicated. So we wanted to build confidence. So we’re working with front line staff to help them feel confident about having the money conversation. So we built a toolkit called Your Money, Your Goals, which some of you are familiar with. And it’s a suite of resources that I can tell you is iterated, improved upon. We have focus groups. We have testing. And as you can see from the colorful booklets, if any of you were familiar with our early iterations, not so colorful, the green and white. And we heard a lot. We worked with different contractors about building these materials. And now they’re looking a lot more fun, which is what we wanted to do. We didn’t want to intimidate people or have any kind of judgey photos or anything to basically have people feel comfortable about having the conversation. So we have a toolkit which is 250 pages. And it can be intimidating but it really is like the big manual. And then we want people just to have it there. They don’t have to know everything in it. But it’s there so if you want to find out more information you can. We train on it. We help people get the knowledge base and then work with them on the types of tools that link to the knowledge base, and they can work with their clients or the people they serve to help them take action. So next slide please. So our toolkit organization, I’ll just go through this quickly because again, as Heather said, there’s going to be trainings on the toolkit. We’re doing this a little bit in reverse because the re-entry guide is kind of a companion guide to this toolkit, but just so you get a sense. So we have an introduction kind of which provides tools that help people assess - either the front line staff can assess their own, you know, how they feel about their finances or how much they know. And then we have one for the consumer or the person, the client that you might be working with, My Money Picture, for them to kind of assess what’s going on. And that gives the person who’s working with them a little bit idea of like maybe, gee, they’re talking about they’re really struggling to pay bills. Oop, there’s Module 4. There are some tools in paying bills. So we have it organized. Again it’s numbered but the numbers don’t really mean anything. These are just topics that you can go to for whenever you need to if it’s relevant to the setting. So we have setting goals. We have tools. I’m sure a lot of you are familiar with smart goals. That’s kind of our approach to the goal setting. Savings, we have savings plans, information about asset limits and things like that, saving at tax time. We have tracking income and benefits, paying bills and getting through the month. And I think of those three modules together as basically managing money. And our sort of model or the way we really like to work with people and talk to people is similar to what they do in the business field which is cash flow budget building because we don’t just want people to say, “Oh, I have this much income every month and then I have this much spending.” We want them to look at it as a dynamic process that they actually can have some influence over. We can’t influence how much money they have. We can influence a little bit about the timing and what they do with that money. So we teach a lot about creating a cash flow budget where people are focusing on when they’re spending because you can actually change behavior or you can call your creditors to find out whether or not you can - or your landlord to find out whether or not you could switch the timing of your expenses. And that has been a phenomenally successful - when I say successful I mean everyone seems to love it. A lot of programs use static budgets. And when you see we have examples where you can see like the person might have more money coming in during that month but gee, week one they’re already in the hole. Why is that when they have - if you just looked at a monthly budget you wouldn’t see it? So we’re trying to drive the weekly budgets which can help it a lot. Other areas is, you know, FICO has ultra-FICO scores now that actually are taking cash flow into account. We can make - you know, we can help people make the link to, you know, if you get help with managing your money maybe that can actually help you with accessing credit. So as we all know, finances are intertwined. And everything kind of relates to everything. We like to help people understand that. Next slide please. So there are nine modules all together. There you see dealing with debt, understanding credit reports and scores, choosing financial products and services. Again this is about how to compare, how to choose. We are not telling people what to choose because every individual is unique and they approach things as they need to. We just want to make sure they have the information. And then we have Protecting Your Money. Everyone I know - personally I’ve been hacked a lot lately so this is - I’m a little obsessed with protecting our money. But we really want people to think a lot about how to protect what they have and how to spot red flags and of course how to submit a complaint if you have some trouble. So next slide please. As I said, we work with - we have a Train the Trainer model which know most of you are probably familiar with. So we work with organizations. We train the front line staff to be trainers. We try and get, you know, some of their trainers already. We also do some just direct to front line. But the way we reach scale - and we’ve already trained over 25,000 front line workers in legal aid, homeless services, social services, faith-based groups, every kind of group. But that’s how we sort of - that’s how we approach it. Next slide please. So then we get to why re-entry because I know - sorry, that you’re here for that. The reason as I said, we’re working with vulnerable populations. As we all know, people who are affected by the criminal justice system, whether you’re incarcerated, arrested, whatever, that can have huge consequences for you, for your life, also for your financial life. So with 70 to 100 million individuals with criminal records, again not a niche market. It’s a huge, huge issue for people. It impacts access to employment, housing, and financial services just generally. They face financial challenges, some unique, some just more heightened than for other folks. But background screening reports and employment is huge. The CFPB does have jurisdiction over background screening reports because background screening reports are a form of consumer report. So when people order background screening reports, often the employer might ask for I want a credit check; I want a drug check; I want verification of employment, and I want a criminal check. So that’s where kind of the criminal records come into it. Credit reports - under the law, credit reporting firms can, you know, use criminal history information and can report it. They typically don’t. Typically it’s the background screening industry which is made up of a lot more than three firms. But they are typically the ones who will report or get requests on criminal checks. And of course consumer and criminal justice debt. I’m sure you’ve heard about the fees and fines people are dealing with. There’s all sorts of criminal justice debt as a result of being in the criminal justice system. And we’ll talk a little bit more about that later but there are also a host of things like when you’re in prison - next slide please. So this is - so we have the re-entry guide so - I’m sorry Heather, next slide. Again, next slide. So we developed this re-entry guide to really focus in on and speak to folks that we want to reach. And those are the people who have had criminal records or are incarcerated, pre-sentencing, whenever that conversation needs to take place. But we want to help front line staff have a conversation about money, identify the financial challenges to successful transition, which again can be different depending on the type of support and the type of programs available in someone’s area, create goals and identify steps to achieve them. I’m sure any of you familiar with the criminal justice system and working with folks who are affected by it, goals and kind of taking steps to achieve them is part of kind of the cognitive behavior therapy approach that the criminal justice system takes with people who have been affected by it, service providers who are working in prisons, community supervision, sort of in all those settings. Obtaining documents related to identification, help ease the transition process, this is a huge issue for people that those of us who haven’t been affected on it might not think is front and center. Next slide please. And identify and prioritize their debt as I said, including criminal justice system debt. Very different consumer versus criminal debt. Very different consequences. And we hope to help people think about it in those ways. Access and review credit reports of course, and then understand their rights as we do with anyone we work with, understanding your rights under the criminal background screening process, during the employment application process, your rights basically under the Fair Credit Reporting Act as it relates to background screening reports. So the next slide please. The contents kind of track that. We have getting started, managing money. As I said, that deals with income, you know, money coming in, money going out, and how you time it, dealing with debt, understanding credit reports and scores, background screen and reports, using and protecting your money. And then what we do in our focus on re-entry is we provide just very, very briefly some additional resources, government resources that we think are particularly relevant and helpful for this population. So for example the child support rules recently changed about people incarcerated, people getting modifications in their child support. Well rather than having to go to three different sources, we put the link right in there. We have some links on taxes, Social Security, things like that. It’s a short section but we just wanted to get people right to where they needed to go when they’re working with folks. Next slide please. And how do you focus on re-entry? Well you can use it any time while someone’s awaiting trial or sentencing, in jail or prison serving a sentence, or following release. We’ve been working a lot more in prisons, realizing that the earlier you’re talking to people about the issues, the quicker they can get resolution. For example talking about managing money and dealing with child support, dealing with student loans while you’re in prison, getting your credit report while you’re in prison, all these things people in prison can do. But if no one’s talking about it they won’t know about it. And they kind of are losing an opportunity to kind of get ahead in their financial life, so to help their transition be more successful. So again, you know, the guide provides additional or substitute narrative information and tools and addresses the special issues. And it does track the modules as they appear in the main toolkit but it’s a much briefer form – link to the toolkit. And as you know in prisons it’s a little harder to use one-on-one so we’re working with the teaching, the education focus in prison as well. And often they use these tools in a classroom setting or, you know, small group settings or one on one. Next slide please. So we have a lot of different settings. I just mentioned some of them. And we really welcome any feedback on where it might work. We’ve heard from people that we think we should focus on the families of incarcerated people. I think that’s a great idea, how we get to them, a different story. We would love some information about that but all these are just examples. We had a prison library that we didn’t even know about that took all the materials, ordered them for free and started setting up some classes. It’s just wonderful how they’re being used. And now I’m going to turn it over to Susie Ingles from South Carolina Legal Services who has been just a fantastic link again to reach people that we’re trying to serve. And she can talk about how it really works out there. So I’ll turn it over again. Thanks everyone. Susan Ingles: Hey, thanks Mary. I’m delighted to join the Webinar and share some of the experiences that we’ve had with Your Money, Your Goals down here in South Carolina. As you know, I’m a big fan of the toolkit. And we’ve been recently – in the last couple years – using the re-entry guide in some different ways. I’m going to talk most specifically about how we used it in the drug court program here in South Carolina. But I also want to mention that we’re doing a lot of clinics on criminal records expungement. And so we’re going to start integrating this guide into the services that we provide there and specifically re-entry week activities that we’ll be having in April. So quickly the drug court here is a criminal diversion program. And what it does is basically if you have a crime that you’ve been convicted of that’s the really result of having a drug addition, your sentence or your conviction can be suspended or either transferred to this drug court for an 18-month program, after which, if you complete it, your sentence will be declared satisfied. So it’s a wonderful program. It includes, you know, counseling, case management, of course random drug screens and, you know, ongoing court sessions to monitor their progress. But now of course we’re excited that we’ve added financial empowerment to that list of great things that our drug court does. One thing to mention is that they do have some costs involved with it. And that becomes important when you’re talking about finances of course. There’s an application fee of $150 and they have to pay $35 a week for the entire 18 months that they are in that program. So they are looking for financial help anyway, but even just for that $35 a week it’s good for them to look at their income and their outgo to see where that $35 is going to come from. I do want to say that we’ve got these three approaches that we’re going to talk about. You can go to the next slide. And of course there are so many tools in the toolkit, checklists, worksheets, any number of things. These are just three in the re-entry guide that I’ll talk about real quickly as I go through, Having the Money Conversation, Setting the Goals, and then Getting your Documentation. And I know Mary mentioned the financial well-being scale and the mobility factor of it. I thought I would mention that one of the things that we did with the drug court program, this was like a five-part class. They attended - or actually I went to where they were five weeks in a row. So it was a 30-minute to 45-minute class for five weeks in a row. And we used the financial well-being scale to try to get a feel to measure the outcome of what we were doing. And so with the mobility factor, they almost all of them had a smart phone. So they were able to do that scale at the beginning and then at the end and get a feel for themselves of whether they had improved over the course of the five weeks. So that was an exciting thing for them to be able to do. And of course we started with an exercise where they talked about the different kinds - they split into groups and they talked about money and words for money, movies, books and all that kind of an exercise where they got comfortable talking about money. And then we get into having that money conversation because they had gotten comfortable with that. The toolkit has this Starting the Money Conversation, which really asks questions that are causing them to reflect a lot on their money situation and how that’s affecting their lives. And of course in the drug court program they’re already doing a lot of reflection. But the financial reflection is just as important as the rest. And I found this to be a really useful tool for them. And then we - once they kind of had that feeling of what they were needing to do and wanting to do, we - I guess I should maybe move through the slides here. The money picture worksheet is the next slide where we have that conversation. And there’s two of those so we can move onto the slide on setting specific goals. The slide 37? Woman: Actually 35 but I can move up if you’d like. Susan Ingles: Yes. Woman: This is 37? Susan Ingles: Yes let’s go on to 37 where we’re setting goals. I want to be mindful of my time here. So on this worksheet we were surprised that so many of the students did have goals that might have been as simple as figuring out how to pay that $35 a week or, you know, buying a car. We had one individual who had a goal of buying a house. So that was exciting but when you use this tool to set those goals, you set the steps. Short-term goals and long-term goals have steps to them. So if it was buying a car they might need to improve their credit as a step, save a down payment as a step. And so that got us into the discussions of things like how to save, how interest rates work and that sort of thing. Let’s go to the next slide. Documentation of identity, this is another item that we use quite a bit of course in the drug court. Many of them, we had different levels of people. Some were about to finish the program. Some were just getting into the program. So they had - some of them had either already had jobs or were in the process of getting a job. They had done a lot of gathering of these documents that we all need to have, especially when re-entering the work force. And you can see the list here. And it tells you - you can mark your status and you don’t have it, it tells you where to get it. And it has the helpful links. Next slide. Here’s another part of the list of documents that are important, including all the way down to medical records and bank account information. So this was a great exercise for our students because they hadn’t necessarily thought about all the documentation sort of of their life outside of the criminal justice system that was important to things like getting a job or getting a bank account which you can’t always get when you don’t have certain records. Some of them might have an issue with their driver’s license and so they need to clear up something on their driving record to make sure that their driver’s license is in place, especially if that’s going to be something important for the job. Let’s go to the next slide, dealing with debt. This was important for our group. We had the great tool that helps you track your debt. We also, I might mention, used the “Behind on Bills” booklet with our class. And they really loved that. Next time I think we’ll use that “Debt Getting in Your Way, Get a Handle on It,” which is a new booklet that wasn’t in existence when we started this program. But in any event, when you’re using some of these great tools with the dealing with debt section you’ve got the checklist of course where you can set out what debts you have and prioritize them and use the Tracking Your Debt tool to do that. So let’s go to the next slide. And I do want to mention that with the criminal justice they have debts that are related to their crime, whether it be fines or restitution or things like that. But they also - in using some of the other tools in the toolkit, for example in getting their credit report which was part of what we did at the very first class, we used the tool of getting your credit report so that they would have it and we could look at it and do things with it in the last class. We had a couple of individuals who had some items on their credit report that were actually related to their crime. Like one of them had a rather large hospital bill that he was never going to be able to pay. But it allowed him to identify that that was out there and have some tools that would help him figure out how he could deal with that because there was no way that he was ever going to be able to repay that. So I think that’s all for me. I went through that real quick but I want to turn it back over to Mary for the background screening reports and Mary take it away. Mary Griffin: Great, thank you so much Susie. So you can kind of see how it was used in a drug court setting, and it’s just kind of helpful to sort of walk through. Every time I listen to Susie I learn something new. I should also say those booklets, we now have four booklets available that are kind of issue specific. They are incredibly popular. We’ve sent out thousands and thousands of them. And they’re little wirebound booklets but what we heard about from people in prison is, you know, well we can’t have wirebound booklets in prison. So we have - we now have them special ordered so correctional facilities can order them from us without the wire binding. And we’re making that available in the next few weeks because they’re really excited because they’re very simple, even more simple than in the toolkit tools. There’s only eight of them in those little booklets. Again they’re not intimidating. They’re colorful. They’re engaging. And you can hear more about them later but just so you know, we do have them available in the prison settings. So I’m just going to talk a little bit about background screening reports because as Susie said, this comes up again and again. And if you don’t know what’s on your criminal record, things might show up on a background screening report. And sometimes they’re accurate. A lot of times they’re not accurate. So people need to know kind of their rights and sort of how it works. So we have some tools about - to help people walk through it but next slide please. One of the things we do is in addition to the tools in these toolkits we have these - next slide please, sorry. We have these things we call handouts which are just information about maybe rights or things like that. So there’s a closer look handout about background screening reports. And this is relevant because people have different protections than like under credit reports. Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, people have to get prior notice before an employer can access and use a background screening report. And they have to get the prior written consent of the individual. A lot of people don’t know this. And a lot of times you’re giving the consent, like on applications. And this applies whenever, whether you’re applying for a job, whether you’re going for a promotion, anything like that. I mean, employers can get access to background screening reports any time, but they do have to get your prior consent. And also if they’re going to use anything in that background screening report to make a decision, they have to inform you about your rights before they make that decision. Now that’s a little different than with credit reports when the adverse action notice called, it’s after the decision’s been made about the credit. So these are really key rights for people. Also we’re sort of - we’re hoping that people will take a look at maybe finding out what’s in their background screening report before they apply for a job. So they might have time, especially there are so many states working on expungement and sealing of records and making changes. And because there are often errors we want people to get out there and really get ahead of the curve and try and look at their background screening report, see if there’s errors and then get the errors fixed. I don’t know if everyone’s seen what I’m seeing, because Heather my slides aren’t advancing. I don’t know if they are for other people but I wanted to just show people the next slide is after the closer look handout is a background screening report checklist. And that background screening report checklist allows you to work with your client and to walk through the background screening report. You know, was I in prison then? Is that really me? Is that my name? Is all the information – like credit reports – is all that information accurate? And then we also provide information on if there’s - there’s one thing if there’s an error in the background screening report. But then there could be an error in the underlying criminal record. So this is different - this is I guess a little similar to the credit reports if you’re thinking about like the loan, there’s an underlying issue with the actual credit agreement or what you’ve been paying on your loan. But we have some links to how you can obtain your criminal record, which is often not really easy for people. And then we have links to how to dispute errors in your criminal records. But one of the things we like to remind people particularly if you’re getting into errors in the criminal records themselves as opposed to background screening reports, that you really should seek some expert assistance like people like Susie and legal aids across the country. Expungement clinics are in many places now. So we’re really also trying to prompt people to go to people who can really help them with this to get it done right. But anyways, I’ll wrap it up. The other slides we had are just a couple – you probably heard this – but please if you have issues, if any of your clients have issues with background screening firms, with financial services providers, we do have a pretty easy-to-use complaint system. The more we hear from people we have heard from people in prison and we’re trying to accommodate more and more people submitting complaints from prison. But the more we hear from people who are experiencing these problems who have been impacted by the criminal justice system and have a financial problem, the more that we can help develop tools, address these problems for them. So with that, I was just going to open it up for questions. And I’m sorry because I guess the slides aren’t advancing. But everybody will get access to the deck so you can get access to the deck later. But maybe we could open it up for questions now. Coordinator: Thank you. At this time if you would like to ask a question you may press Star 1. Please unmute your phones and state your first and last name when prompted. Again that is Star 1 if you would like to ask a question, Star 2 to withdraw your question. Mary Griffin: Before - I did just want to answer - I see one question that’s in the chat. Is there any discussion about making this more pre-re-entry accessible as opposed to during re-entry? That’s a great question. We would love to get connected to pretrial services folks. We think there’s a great place for legal aid, criminal legal aid if they’re working with their clients and they know they might have some struggles. Any time we would like to get these in the hands. But again, it’s limited resources. The more we know - that’s why we like to work in prisons, sort of big prisons where we can get to a lot of people at once. So (Lynn) if you have any ideas we’d love to hear them and feel free to just reach out to us and give us a holler. In terms of prisoners having access to computers, they may have access to computers. There’s a lot of like digital literacy going on in prisons. They don’t have access to Internet. Typically I think everywhere will not give access to Internet. But there is a way to take like our tools that are digital, download them onto a closed system, and then people can – this is what we’re hoping – people can work with them. As they’re learning digital literacy they can also be learning financial literacy. So those – if anybody knows opportunities for that we would love to hear that too. But typically when they’re incarcerated they don’t have access. That’s why we’re still very paper oriented as well. Coordinator: One moment please. We do have a few questions. One moment. (Lujenik Mohammed), you may go ahead. (Lujenik Mohammed): Okay, can you hear me? Mary Griffin: Yes, I can hear you. (Lujenik Mohammed): Okay so my question is regarding the background screening reports and how does an individual go about getting copies of their own screening report? That’s one question. And my other question is concerning something that just came to my attention that individuals can get. I think it’s called the certificate of qualifications for employment. And my question in regards to that is that the same as what one of the presenters was talking about in terms of expungement? I want to know if that’s the same thing or are you talking about something different? Thank you. Mary Griffin: Okay I’ll answer the first and maybe Susie can answer the second although I think the certificate is very state specific. In terms of what we’re suggesting to people is if you know - there’s a couple ways to do it. You could go to some of the big background screening reporting companies and ask for a copy of your background screening report. Anybody can go and do that. Not every company has that system in place but a lot of them do. You can go online. But if you know you’re going to be applying to a place, what we’re suggesting is maybe to call the place ahead of time and ask them which background screening company they use because it’s most relevant to know what they’re looking at because just like credit reports sometimes, those background screening firms – because there are so many of them – it’s even more so each background screening firm may be looking at different things depending on each employer, depending on what their protocols are, where they’re getting information, and things like that. But we are suggesting that people try and get out ahead and somehow find out which background screening firm is being used by the employer and then try and get a copy. Susie do you want to talk about the certificate? I don’t know if South Carolina uses that. Susan Ingles: Yeah, I don’t think we use that. But I can address the criminal records expungement, which is a different kind of thing and that’s from a criminal background check. And what we do with that is our prosecutors’ offices here will provide you for I think it’s $25 with your criminal background and all your record. And then it can be reviewed to determine if any of that is eligible for expungement, meaning it would no longer show on your record if it’s expunged. So there’s a whole process for doing that. And I agree with Mary that a lot of these things can be state specific. And so I think, you know, I would be only speaking to South Carolina. Whatever state you’re in, you should check with your legal aid or your prosecutors’ offices. Mary Griffin: Now my understanding about the certificate, which I’m trying to remember. I think I’ve heard about it in Iowa, different places. In some places a certificate for qualification for employment is a way to - a client can seek it and it’s kind of a way to get around the criminal record. What it’s basically saying is we’re saying that even with a criminal record, we the state, state agency, is kind of almost going to certify that person is qualified for employment. I think they’re all a little different. So again it has to be state specific. But I think this is a way to help ensure - to help people in the job market who might otherwise not get hired because of their criminal record. And the state’s kind of taken on like almost as a guarantee, like with that certificate. But again, it’s very state specific. And I will tell you the expungement is like – I don’t know – 40 states have made some expungement changes. Pennsylvania, the first state to have done this, has an automatic sealing law. So they now - you don’t even have to request. And they’re going through an amazing process because you can imagine the millions and millions of records that might have to be expunged. So they have the criteria. And it used to be that, you know, people would have to submit. And now it’s automatic. So the courts - if you fit into those categories the courts have to automatically seal those records. It’s sort of an amazing change in the law. But that’s the only state I know about. Susan Ingles: Here in South Carolina we just amended our criminal records expungement rules. And so I think you do have to keep up with whatever your state is doing so check locally. But also should probably mention pardons. I know here we have probably almost - I know it’s in the 60%, 60% to 70% range of pardons being granted. It’s a much more difficult process. It doesn’t expunge the record, but it does help with the employment issues. (Lujenik Mohammed): Okay, thank you. Coordinator: Thank you. Our next question comes from (Sasha Davella). You may go ahead. (Sasha Davella): Hi. Yeah, I’m really new to this. And I just wanted to (unintelligible) are these materials available in Spanish. And I know that CFPB does a good job of making publications available not only in Spanish but other languages as well, so that was my question. And if it is available in Spanish, if it could be ordered. Mary Griffin: Yeah, I’ll just tell you. We’re sorry because it is so hard to keep up with, you know, the amount of times we change it. The original toolkit is available in Spanish and you can download - I mean, you can order those Spanish toolkits. The new toolkit we have not yet - we just put it out about a month ago. We have not yet got that in Spanish. In terms of our booklets, we now have “Behind on Bills.” If you look at one of the slides with the booklets you can see we now have “Behind on Bills” in Spanish. And I would suggest you can order those for free. The re-entry guide, we’re just going to - I should tell you we’re just going through a revision of the re-entry guide. And once the guide is revised and updated and it’s going to have some new tools and match the newly updated financial empowerment toolkit because the newly updated toolkit is now digitally accessible. And by that I mean you can go on to the toolkit and they’re autofillable, autocalculable tools, so easy to use. You can scroll up and down through the whole toolkit or we have the individual tools available. If you’re doing a cash flow budget with someone you can fill it in, voila, adds up. It’s really wonderful. So we are kind of updating the re-entry guide tools with that as well. But unfortunately they won’t be available in Spanish until we’re able to revise and then get the translation done. There’s just kind of a caboose going. I mean, a line of things because we’re changing so much right now. But thank you for the inquiry because I can take that back and hopefully it helps push things. Coordinator: Thank you. Once again if you do have any questions or comments you may press Star 1. Please unmute your phone and state your first and last name when prompted. Again that is Star 1. Mary Griffin: The digital version’s at the Web site. The easiest thing is to Google Your Money, Your Goals. You get to our page. We also have it listed everywhere there but even I Google it to get to it really quickly. Your Money, Your Goals, you get to the page. And the re-entry guide is one of the companion guides. There’s a link there to companion guides and you can get to it. But the digital toolkit you can find - full toolkit you can find right there. (David Young) I appreciate what you’re saying about getting on the secure tablet. We have talked to people about getting on the tablet. It is just a matter of our resources. They’re interested. They’re welcome to just take it and put it on tablets. But it’s just, you know, I’m basically the only person really working on this. So it just gets hard to cover all the bases. But please, if people have connections or - feel free to tell them all this stuff is downloadable, free, everything. The only thing people can’t do is you can’t co-brand it. But you can rebrand it to your own, the tools. You just can’t change the content in them, but you just can’t co-brand. Coordinator: We do have one more question. As a reminder that is Star 1 if you do have any questions. The next question comes from (David Young). You may go ahead sir. (David Young): I think – thank you very much – I think you answered my question. We’re working with Edovo here in Montana but also across 26 states. And they’re reaching about 100,000 incarcerated individuals at about 100 different facilities. So I will follow up with them and see about if they don’t have your materials maybe they will rebrand them and put them on their secure tablet. Mary Griffin: Yeah, and please - they’re welcome to reach out to me because I’ve talked to a few people about it. We’d love to hear where they are. We’ve been in a couple state prison systems, so I’d love to find out, you know, where they are. But we would love to facilitate that. We think it’s a great opportunity. (David Young): Great, so do I, and I’ll follow up with an e-mail to you. Mary Griffin: Great, wonderful. Coordinator: And at this time I am showing no further questions. Dr. Heather Brown: Wonderful. Well thank you both very much. And Mary thank you for working through - I got dropped and then I had trouble getting back in to the conference. But you handled everything beautifully and kept things moving. I apologize for that technical glitch. And I thank everyone for joining us. Our next Webinar is going to be next Thursday from 2:00 to 3:00, and the topic is financial resources and financial needs of foster care individuals, particularly young adults that are going to become emancipated pretty quickly. And we have a guest speaker both from the bureau and from a nonprofit that works specifically with youth that are being emancipated from foster care. So hopefully you can join that. And again we’re going to the Your Money, Your Goals that both Susie and Mary talked about every - the first four Tuesdays in April from 2:00 to 3:00. So if you’re a FinEx member you’ll get a notice with the login information. If you’re not, please e-mail cfpb_finex@cfpb.gov so that you can become a member or sign up through our Web page, although it was having some trouble yesterday. Hopefully that’s resolved. Okay, well thank you everybody. Thank you so much again Mary and Susie. It was a wonderful presentation and a lot of great information. And I look forward to maybe having you all back at a later date to get even more in depth in some of the topics. This will conclude our conference. Operator do you want to give them instructions to sign off? Coordinator: Thank you. At this time this does conclude today’s conference call. You may go ahead and disconnect at this time. END NWX-CFPB HQ Moderator: Heather Brown 03-14-19/1:00 pm CT Confirmation # 8880618 Page 1