Key Personal Financial Strategies for Serving Youth in Foster Care Desmond Brown, CFPB Franco Vega, The Right Way Foundation NWX-CFPB HQ Moderator: Heather Brown March 21, 2019 1:00 pm Coordinator: Please stand-by just one moment. Good afternoon and thank you all for standing by. I'd like to inform all participants that your lines have been placed on a listen-only mode until the question and answer session of today's call. Today's call is also being recorded. If anyone has any objections, you may disconnect at this time. I'd like to now turn the call over to Ms. Heather Brown. Thank you and you may begin. Heather Brown: Thank you very much, Operator. Welcome everybody. I'm excited to have everybody here for this session. I think you'll find it to be a very interesting session that will inform the work you do in a lot of areas and not only with foster care but specifically that is the focus. We are talking about using financial literacy for use in foster care. So we have two guests today. And I'm going to go ahead and introduce them. Then I'm going to go through the disclaimer that I normally go through as quickly as I can so that we can focus on our content. And at the end we will do a Q&A session as well. So you can, as usual, write your questions in the Chat or the Q&A and we will also address those at the end while we're waiting for people to give their verbal questions. We're waiting for the operator to open the lines to do that. So, we're fortunate to have Desmond Brown with us. Desmond serves as the Deputy Associate Director for CFPB's Consumer Education and Engagement Division. He's acting actually at this point. He previously served as the Office of Community Affairs Lead for the Bureau. And the Office of Community Affairs focuses on opportunities and challenges of low-income and economically vulnerably consumers. And so Desmond is going to speak with you after I get through my introductory slides to just talk a little bit about some of the resources that you might find useful related to this topic. And then I'm also very excited to welcome Franco Vega. And I was fortunate enough to hear him speak at a conference I went to. And it was so engaging and moving and really got me thinking that this was an area that I definitely wanted to make sure I contributed to regarding youths that are emancipating from foster care, making sure that all of our financial educators have the resources to deal with the special issues that they face. And he has a very engaging story of his life. And so I'm going to introduce the successful part and he'll introduce all the challenges he came through to get to this successful part. So just I get to say all the good stuff about him. He actually enlisted in the Army and he was given an honorable discharge in 1995. In 2000, he crossed the stage from California State University of Dominguez Hills with a degree in Human Services. And ever since then, he's been hard at work on projects and initiatives related to child development for underserved communities as well as financial literacy. And basically everything that challenged youth need to help them be successful. So I very excited for you all to get an opportunity to hear him speak as well. So let me just get quickly through my slides. So the disclaimer, the disclaimer is basically to tell you that this presentation is made by the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection Bureau representatives on behalf of the Bureau. It does not constitute legal interpretation, guidance or advice of the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection. And all presenters are conveying their own views and they may not represent the views of the Bureau. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau regulates the offering and provision of consumer financial products and services under the Federal consumer laws and educates and empowers consumers to make better informed financial decisions. And this slide, many of you that are repeat webinar watchers have seen. But it just talks about what we do with financial education change and the CFPB FinEx program is hosting this webinar and many of the others that you've gotten notices for. And we do regular at least monthly webinars. And we do a monthly newsletter which pretty much references the webinars and their resources. And we also do local convenings in the region. And we do some, you know, we also are available to help promote other resources throughout the Bureau and partner with other parts of the Bureau to help them also execute some of their initiatives and programs. This is a slide that shows you where to go to look for the next webinar. So you can always check back on that and I'll talk about that at the end if we have time. But the next one is going to be April 2 which is a Tuesday not a Thursday. And it's going to be the first of a series on Your Money,Your Goal toolkit that we have. A full curriculum that is like six to eight hours of training that you can be trained to use. And we’re going to do four sessions on how to use that curriculum, and booklets, and handouts, everything are free. You can get them published. Or you can download them from our web page. So definitely try to stay tuned in April for that. Okay with that, I'm going to hand it over to Desmond to talk about the CFPB resources for youths in foster care. Desmond Brown: Thank you so much Heather, good afternoon everyone. And thank you so much for taking the time to join us today for this very important topic. As Heather mentioned, I currently serve in the Deputy Associate Director role at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in the Division of Consumer Education and Engagement. Prior to that I served in the Office of Community Affairs. And the Office of Community Affairs is a unique office here at the Bureau that is charged with providing resources and tools to support economically vulnerable and traditionally underserved consumers. And what we do in that office is to work with organizations across the country to really listen and hear about some of the challenges that consumers are facing. They might have difficulties exploring and using the financial services marketplace to meet their needs. One of the populations that we've heard a lot from is youth who are aging out of foster care. And we've heard from both stakeholders who are serving this population as well as young people themselves. And many of the issues that they surfaced are challenges that the Bureau is not necessarily the primary agency to help them with. But one issue that came up repeatedly is how are these young people managing their finances? How are they navigating the financial marketplace? And what is the issue around identity theft and credit building that the Bureau could be helpful with? And so we started a few years back looking into this issue and working with foster care providers both at the state level, some of the private providers to really figure out how to build-in resources to reduce some of the high levels of identity theft that has occurred within this population. So going back all the way to 2014, we released a series of tools to help institutions that work with young people who are in foster care as well as those who are aging out of foster care to highlight the issues around identity theft. And try to figure out ways to give providers tools to contact the credit reporting agencies if there are issues of identity theft for young people who are under 18. And we provided the link that's on your screen now is a link to a series of tools that foster care providers whether they are at the state level, county level, or private providers can use to contact the credit reporting companies to make disputes to errors that might appear on credit records. And the reason why the Bureau wanted to focus on this is that we know that as a young person leaves care, if there are issues on their credit reports, credit records, it becomes another barrier and another challenge they have to face as they try to get access to apartments or housing, or purchase a car, and in some cases find employment. And so if we can take those simple steps before they're 18 to address those issues, we feel that it's another way that the Bureau can be helpful in helping these young people transition successfully to adulthood. The second piece of what we've been working on is the issue around helping young people to start and maintain good credit. Because it's one thing to leave care with your credit rating in hand. It's another thing to go out and make mistakes in the first interactions with the financial marketplace that then puts you back at a - in a disadvantage. And so we've also created a series of tools that foster care providers can use to help young people check their credit. Tips and tricks that they can use to maintain good credit. And if they fall into challenges like so many of us do, ways that they can start repairing their credit to get back on track. The last thing that I wanted to mention was on March 11, we published a blog that provided some additional new information and resources around some additional protections that are available to youth in foster care as well as other minors under the age of 16. In September 2018, Congress passed a law that now allows parents as well as child welfare representatives to, for free, put a credit freeze on individuals who are under 16 credit records. And the idea here is that by putting the freeze on their credit records, you would limit the ability for others to -- other fraudsters -- to use their identity to open up a line of credit thereby putting them at risk of identity theft and damaged credit records. So this is a great opportunity for individuals who work with youth in care to follow the steps that we outlined in the blog. And the blog can be found on both the Consumer Financial Protection's website as well as on the FTC's website. We did this blog jointly with both regulators because it's such an important topic. And basically the ideas for both parents, foster parents, state and guardians to make a request with the credit reporting agencies to put a freeze on a young person's credit records so that before they reach the age of 16 or before they leave care, they can have their credit rating protected by stopping others from using their identity to take out a line of credit. This information on the blog or in the blog about how to do that, what steps to follow. It provides phone numbers that organizations can call as well as specific tips and templates that organizations can use to start this process. This is a new, as I mentioned, activity that Congress passed recently that now allows us to do this for free. So hopefully if cost was a barrier in the past, this new law will solve that problem. So again, additionally to these two things specific to foster youth, there are additional information and tools that we have on our website that can help individuals who are working with young people to help them start thinking about ways to manage their credit. Ways to start thinking about saving. Ways to start thinking about controlling debt. And so while this discussion today is primarily about youth in foster care, there are many other resources that are on our website that organizations that are working with young people in general can use to help them manage successfully as they transition into adulthood. So I will leave it there. And hopefully there will be questions at the end. And I really encourage folks to go to our website, consumerfinance.gov for additional tips and tools that they might use in their work. Heather, back to you. Heather Brown: Thank you very much Desmond. Those were great tips and information that you provided and very helpful. We appreciate you being a part of this. So these are a list of resources from the FinEx program and from the Bureau, of course, overall. And so we have a website for, of course, the financial educators' webpage which many of you are familiar with. The second email box is the box that you would send something to if you have a question on financial education. If you want to participate in a regional convening or, you just have some information that you need to share or would like to get, that's sort of our catchall box. And then we have a LinkedIn page which is growing and we're getting a lot more posts. And we encourage you all to post information that's valuable to financial educators that's not necessarily marketing, please on that page. So that we can grow and share. And you can ask questions too and get answers if you have challenges that you're facing. And so, actually the last one was actually a link to an RFI related to credit which I just added here because we did talk a little bit about credit. So you can kind of see some of the issues that come up. Okay. So now I'm going to actually switch slides. It takes just a transition moment. And there we go. We’re going to hand it over to Franco Vega. And he is the - I can't remember if I mentioned that he is the Executive Director of The Right Way Foundation. And he'll talk more about his foundation. But I read his bio from his webpage. So they had already said that so I think I may have missed that. Okay, so I'm passing the baton to Franco. And Franco, do you see - do you have control over the slides now? Franco Vega: Let me see, I believe so. Let me just turn one real quick; yes I do, thank you. Heather Brown: Excellent. Okay. Franco Vega: Okay. Well good morning or good afternoon depending on where you're at in this country. As they mentioned, my name is Franco Vega. I'm the Executive Director and the Founder of the RightWay Foundation. The Right Way Foundation is a unique organization that we've been in business for eight years. And we focus on transition-aged foster youth. When we first started, it was an employment center. We're good at getting kids jobs and youth jobs. And you'll hear me refer to them as kids or babies but they're 18 to 25 years old. But I still call them babies, that's what I consider them. They really haven't grown up yet and so that's an issue we have right now. And so we started out as employment center. And we get all the jobs for LA Live Staples Center that's where the Lakers play and special events. They're building a new NFL home stadium in LA where the Rams and Chargers will play. And we'll get all those jobs too. We control a bunch of restaurants at LAX, our airport, due to our Board member owns them. And so jobs, we have. When we started placing our youth on the jobs, they were getting fired quicker than they were getting hired. And it wasn't for things like stealing or something like that. It was for not showing up. It was for being depressed. They couldn't get out of their bed. It was dealing with homelessness and things like that. So within our first year, I made the transition to get rid of all my employment specialist job developers and started hiring therapists, licensed clinical social workers. Because I started to really look at the big picture that these kids are still battling with trauma from their house and then being removed, going into the foster care system. And then being kicked out of the foster care system, all these factors of trauma. So I said, well let me bring in some therapists, the people who can really deal with the issue and is mental health services. So we're mental health disguised within employment services in a nutshell. And it's a unique approach that we came up with seven-eight years ago that we looked throughout the whole country, and no one was focusing in on that. Meaning that no one was bringing in mental health services to an employment service. Now I convert therapists over to job developers, you know. And it's because I don’t need job developers here. We have jobs. But I need therapists to help them process what they've went through and growing up in the system. And I always ask this billion-dollar question to everyone; how long would it take for you to get over being removed from your home and put into a government system and have the government raise you, you know and that's a billion-dollar question. How long does that take? And sometimes it could take anywhere from 10 to lifetime, you know, that people never get over it. And then how do we deal with that? How do we deal with the trauma issues growing up so you can be successful while on the job? You know, our numbers sadly across the board is very low. I'm talking about the nation with foster care youth. Fifty percent will become homeless almost guaranteed from emancipation. Only 14% of our RightWay youth are homeless right now so that's good. Nine out of ten girls being victims of sex trafficking on the streets of South Central Lost Angeles or runaways from the foster care system. Eighty percent of males rotting away in California State prison come from the foster care or child welfare system in California. And we've only had out of 350 plus students in our program in the last seven-eight years, only two males have been to prison. And we enjoy that number. So we are breaking the pipeline of foster care pipeline to prison ratio. We are reducing homelessness because 14% of our youth are homeless. We are saving our girls from sex trafficking. But we have a lot more work to do. We have a lot more work to do. And it's not an easy population to work with. Heather did mention, I started my career in '95. I've been working with gangs from Watts to East LA. I've been working with homelessness on Skid Row. And I've been working with foster youth all at the same time. And by far, foster youth is the hardest population to work with. My life story and then I'm going to turn it over to my COO so we could talk about the trauma-informed training that we created and as far as for financial literacy. I was in the system myself. My mom abused me like an animal. When I was in juvenile hall she passed away and I was rescued by an African-American family. But that trauma never really went away. I did run from the streets and join the Army that saved me. But as I got out of the Army when I was 21 or 22 in 1995, the trauma came back. And then as a man, started having a family, a wife and kids, the trauma came back. And so at a late age, I think I started to get over my trauma really when I was 37-years-old and I'm 46 right now. So we can't let kids get my age. You know, I'm lucky. We have to deal with it right now and help these kids get over their abuse. At the end of the day, we have to convince them that it wasn't their fault. We have to show them the picture that they didn't ask to be borne. It's just they had a rough time. But if they deal with it, they'll have a brighter future. And they can stop this from happening in the future. And my COO who I'm about to introduce, her name is Andrea Slyter. She's an LPSW. She's been in business for 14 years. And she's really the one that we hired to really create everything we do being trauma informed. So anything I do here is trauma informed. We do trauma-informed job placement. We teach corporate America about how to work with our youth in a trauma-informed approach. And then a couple of years ago, we created our trauma-informed financial portion. So without further ado, Andrea Slyter is our COO and she'll begin her piece. Andrea Slyter: Okay. Well thank you for having me. So like Franco said we, you know, we've also had a financial capability or literacy component to our program. But we never ever really paid attention to that portion of our program needing to be trauma informed. But again, if we set out to create a trauma-informed organization then all of our programs and services, all of our staff and interns to be trauma informed. You know, that's just a significant part of what we do in order to carry out the work that we do. So today we're going to get sort of an abbreviated training about trauma and why it's so important when providing, you know, of course financial capability services to clients but also just having a trauma-informed approach to everything that we're doing. So we'll start off with the definition of trauma. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration came up with a great concept of what trauma is and we can read it on the slide here. That it results from an event, series of events or set of circumstances that is experienced by an individual as physically or emotionally harmful or threatening. And that has lasting adverse effects on the individual's functioning and physical, social, emotional or spiritual wellbeing. And I really like that definition because I think it captures, you know, what trauma is very well without pathologizing trauma or individuals who have experienced trauma. I love this outline that SAMHSA has come up with the three Es of trauma. I think it captures traumatic experiences and just sort of the whole concept of trauma really well. The first E being events which are, you know, related to circumstances of trauma. That can include a variety of things. It could be an actual or extreme threat of physical or psychological harm. Or sever life threatening, you know, circumstances like abuse and neglect. And these are things that of course, you know, in particular will impair healthy development or, you know, well-adjusted development. Of course trauma occurring as a single occurrence or it can be something that's repeated over time. A second E being an individual's experience. And what I like about this is that an experience can be different for individuals who have experienced the same trauma. So for example, if you have a sibling set that's experiencing the same exact type of abuse within a home, those individuals might respond very differently. And those would be due to things like internal factors, you know, such as resiliency or external factors like having a really good support system. So those are really important things to note when working with clients who've experienced trauma. The other thing related to experience that I'd like to note is just sort of the feelings that kind of surround or shape the experience. And those are things that could include guilt, or shame, or humiliation, betrayal, you know, mistrust that a lot of the time results from having those types of experiences. And particularly experiences of those in foster care, you know, there's oftentimes that mistrust that occurs. The other E or the last E actually is effects or the impacts of trauma. And, you know, with the effects of trauma it's important to note that sometimes things occur immediately. And sometimes impacts have a delayed onset. And it's just really important to know these factors, you know, when working with individuals that have experienced trauma. So what I'm about to sort of review here, I know I don't have all of the effects so it's not a comprehensive list. But these are just sort of the things that we at Right Way Foundation make note of pretty frequently. And especially like in my therapy sessions, this is what I'm seeing a lot of. So things like intrusive memories or flashbacks, these impacts are very different. Intrusive memories are things like well I'll explain flashbacks first. Flashbacks are things like you're living the trauma in that moment so you're actually reliving it in that moment. Whereas an intrusive memory is just something that you're thinking about the traumatic event or anything surrounding the traumatic event that's causing an impairment. A lot of self-blame occurs. So something that we see very frequently, you know, feeling like it's their fault. Preoccupation with, you know, the traumatic event. Things like difficulty making decisions or difficulty focusing or concentrating. We oftentimes see problems with memory. And then the last two are pretty significant. You know, and I'd like to call attention to this next one which is persistent negative beliefs or expectations about oneself, others or the world. Not only does the brain begin to expect an traumatic event from happening but this is where that mistrust of others develops. And this is really important to note because, you know, we work with a population where this is pretty prevalent. And with the work that we do, everything that we do here is based in the relationship and in the rapport and the engagement of our clients. And so we are trying to build a very trusting relationship with them. The last one being suicidal thinking, again, this is not necessarily - this doesn't necessarily mean that an individual has an intent to commit suicide. But it's just something along the lines of, you know, of thought process of, you know, things might be easier if I wasn't here. [Brief Silence] Okay. A lot of what we do here at the Right Way Foundation when we do this trauma-informed training, I mean everything that we do here is kind of the foundation is from the adverse childhood experiences study. And this is a study related to trauma where Kaiser in conjunction with CDC, Centers for Disease Control, examined over 17,000 of Kaiser members. They had their surveys regarding childhood experiences and their health status. And they basically found that there was a relationship between childhood abuse and other types of household dysfunction and the development of risk factors for negative health and wellbeing outcomes. And so they studied the three types of Aces which were abuse, any, of course, physical abuse, emotional abuse and sexual abuse. Neglect, like physical neglect and then of course emotional neglect as being emotionally unavailable. And then household dysfunctions so it could have been an incarcerated relative, parent. Mental illness, you know, whether there was interpersonal or intimate partner violence, substance abuse or divorce, basically those aces. And then of course, based on those surveys of their members discovered that there were these effects of those aces. So things like the lack of physical activity, smoking, alcoholism, drug use. Individuals missing work frequently. And then physical and mental health impacts like obesity, diabetes, cancer, STDs and suicide attempts. And I like this graphic. I think it kind of captures the Aces study very well. And essentially is just adverse childhood experiences and how it kind of leads to all of these things like disrupted neural development. So trauma does in fact have significant impacts on brain development and brain growth. Social-emotional cognitive impairment. And then, you know, that would lead to an adoption of health risk behaviors such as, you know, substance abuse or self-injury, things like that. And then eventually leading to an early death is what they found. All right, so why is this so important with the work that we do with transitioned-age foster youth? Well it's important to understand what trauma's impact has on transitioning-age foster youth through the lens of like attachment theory. So really a lack of healthy attachments. And then, you know, the instability that they endure or that they experience. And then the abuse that foster youths go through has yielded some of these outcomes for youth that are emancipated from foster care. And Franco had mentioned a few earlier. But one I would like to make note of according to the Northwest Foster Youth Alumni study in 2005 was that foster youth exiting the system experienced PTSD at a higher rate than America's war veterans. So it's about twice the rate compared to America's war veterans. Okay. And in the context of our work and why trauma is important because, you know, Franco did mention we do provide therapy. Therapy kind of leads the way here and is a significant part of our program. It's a significant part of our youths not just getting a job but keeping their jobs. And, you know, as part of our - we have a 32-hour curriculum that includes mental wellness and wellbeing. That includes the job readiness training. But our last component and a very significant component is our financial literacy class. And all of our instructors that facilitate financial literacy go through our trauma-informed training. You know, they're only here two hours a week but it's very important that they're communicating in such a way to not, you know, re-traumatize our clients. You know, because in our trauma-informed training we talk about things like biases. And, you know, not making assumptions about clients. Like, for example, it's in the little things really in how we communicate. Like we've had students come in and talk about, you know, oh well my parents, they provide, you know, they pay for my rent. Or, you know, they're paying for my car payment. And, you know, we want our instructors and our facilitators to be informed about our population. So, you know, just being very sensitive. You know, speaking in an empathetic way. And we want them to kind of, you know, leave their own kind of biases at the door and communicate to them in a more sensitive and trauma-informed manner. So some of the financial products or services that we provide are going to - back to our financial literacy workshops that we have as part of our larger program Operation Emancipation. And the important piece of this is that we provide ongoing emotional support definitely as part of our program. But we also incorporate that into therapy sessions. So as a - I'm in the process of actually getting certified as a financial coach because what I've noticed is that a lot of my clients bring up, you know, financial decisions or financial issues within our sessions. And although I am, you know, really I guess, you know, obviously a strong believer in setting health boundaries, you know, these are the issues that our clients want to talk about. So I think it's really important for me to be, you know, well versed in these matters. And so, you know, I was also noticing that there was a significant link between my clients, you know, who were being diagnosed with depression and anxiety and their financial decisions. So there was a direct link. And therefore I really needed to pay attention to this. And we needed to pay attention to this as an organization. And so that emotional support is significant. Another thing that we offer like I was mentioning is our financial coaching. So our case managers are trained in financial - are certified, excuse me, as financial coaches. Franco is in the process of getting certified as a financial coach as well because we want this to be infused into everything we do here. Currently, we are offering - we're conducting a pilot program with 16 of our program alumni. We're offering them the credit building loan, you know, as a means to obviously build their credit. This is something that we actually surveyed. We held a focus group with our youth to determine what the best product was for them. And this is what we came up with. And I kind of mentioned, yes, I kind of mentioned that first piece there. And again, you know, our financial priority or our financial program is a priority. Because, you know, we're an organization that operates as an employment center for foster K. And so it's, you know, it's significant and it's important that Right Way is offering a variety of financial capability services that are trauma informed. You know, because oftentimes, we are the sole support system for our young people. And, you know, it kind of just makes sense. And then having good credit scores of course is, something that was brought up earlier by Ms. Brown, will help youths secure things like their most basic needs as related to housing or transportation. All right. And then, you know, everything that we do here, you know, we like to think of our organization as youth centered. And everything we do here, we like to get our youth's input. Because if they are the recipients of our services, we want to know the best approach to, you know, providing quality services. So we've administered questionnaires on financial capability and wellbeing. We've learned, you know, that youth want to gain confidence in their ability to manage their money and build their credit. They want to create and adhere to a monthly budget. They want to repair and build their credit to get the things that they need such as housing, not necessarily the things that they want. And in fact they were able to decipher between the two which is great. And then, we surveyed alumni about the two credit building products, the secured credit card. And I referenced this earlier but the secured card and a credit building loan. And we learned that the credit building loan would be the most beneficial given their circumstances because the majority of our youth either had no credit or bad credit. What our young people liked was specifically the possibility of graduating to a secured or unsecure card at the end of 12 months, paying off the loans. And then getting their deposit of $300 back. And then we decided to offer a match of $300 at the end of the year so that was a really nice incentive. And they also liked seeing their credit score improve after six-months of on-time payments. And so these are all the things that our youths were mentioning to us. And so they helped us actually guide the development of the program really. I'm looking at this slide and I'm kind of chuckling to myself because on the top it says collaborating partners. And as a small nonprofit, we've been a little bit hesitant to partner with people because, you know, just because of our experiences with attempting to partner with others, organizations. And how sometimes our attempt to collaborate led to, you know, other organizations trying to compete for very similar, you know, whether it's funding or just feeling like there was a sense of competition and not a sense of collaboration. But, you know, after all that search we have found partners, great partners, that have been willing to collaborate. One for example is (Justine Petersen) who has certified our staff in financial coaching as well as they are the entity that is providing the credit building loan. The USC Credit Union has been a great partner. They are the ones that provide our financial literacy classes to our clients. They have all been - their instructors have all been trauma informed. And they were very open to being trauma informed. And in fact noted how the trauma-informed training could be taken back to their businesses or their organization and utilized with all of their staff. JAP is affiliated with the University of Southern California. It stands for Joint Educational Project. They're sort of the service-learning arm of USC. And so they provide student volunteers to local nonprofits. And so, of course, we happen to be one of them. And so their students in conjunction with the Credit Union provide those financial literacy classes I mentioned earlier. And then our newest partner is the Pacific Asian Consortium and Employment. They've provided our young people with credit classes, just credit building classes. And just kind of how to understand their credit and that's been a great partnership. And definitely something we plan to do ongoing. And I mentioned this earlier too with the trust in partnership with other CBOs. It was really, this was really a process for Right Way we needed to adapt. Because we needed to sort of - we needed to not impose but we needed to offer the trauma-informed care training without being too imposing. You know, we had to understand that nonprofits and other organizations, their time is limited just like ours was. And so we needed to approach it in such a way that it was appealing and that it was beneficial. And, of course, that led, you know, they see the work that we're doing. They see the training that we're offering. And that kind of leads to mutual trust. And any questions, feel free to ask but thank you. Franco Vega: And then real quick to piggyback off of Andrea, this is Franco again. Yes, our trauma-informed training is normally five to six hours. So we had to skim through this for you guys. And we give it - we train folks in the art institutions, art worlds, government agencies like our City of LA criminal justice, our prosecuting attorneys who sometimes lockup our babies. And then other agencies across the United States too, also. So we had to go fast for you guys. So we tried to give you a good idea, a good picture. So if anyone has any questions, go ahead, let them fly. Heather Brown: Thank you. Operator, can you give the instructions on how the callers can ask a question? And those that don't want to speak, you can write your questions in the Q&A or Chat, thank you. Operator. Coordinator: Thank you very much. And now we will begin the question and answer portion. To ask a question on the phone lines, please press Star followed by 1. Please ensure your phone is unmuted and record your name clearly when prompted. Again, that is Star followed by 1; one moment while we wait for questions. Heather Brown: Thank you. And one thing I just wanted to, this was excellent. Thank you so much. Thanks to Desmond and thanks to Franco and also thanks to Andrea. It was a great presentation. And as you were talking through the trauma-informed content, I just thought about, you know, there's so many different applications for this that it really could be given to a wider audience. And at some point in the future we might want to do that. Because I'm thinking of people that have had their homes foreclosed. People that had job loss. It's not the same maybe extreme trauma that you're talking about but it depends, you know, it feels like it when you're in the middle of it. And, of course, you know, military personnel that have come back from combat zones. There are so many types. And you mentioned the shame and guilt and all that, that’s really big with financial loss and job loss. And so I think that really this is something that would make all financial coaches and counselors stronger if they're able to identify the signs and deal with them and meet the client where they are so that's great. Okay, let me see, I don't see any questions in the Q&A online or the Chat, it didn't seem like. Let me just make sure I didn't miss anything, no. Operator, do you have any questions on the line? Coordinator: I do not have any questions on the phone lines right now. But I did just notice it looks like you have a question in the Q&A. Heather Brown: Okay, let me see here. Would you mind reading it? Can you see it Operator because I can't see, oh it just came in. Thank you. Oh, yes. It says here, what topics do you suggest we teach regarding saving plans for 12th grade foster care teens? Franco Vega: I'm sorry, repeat that question one more time. Heather Brown: Sure. What topics do you suggest we teach regarding savings plans for 12th grade foster care teens? And while Franco's reflecting on that, I just wanted to mention that we do have a K through 12 site on our webpage at the Bureau. And we just put in a full curriculum on financial literacy with activities and worksheets that you can download. And it aligns with a lot of the state's regulations for states that require that training for high schoolers. So that might be a resource to you all if that's something you need as well. Franco, did you want to add anything to that? Franco Vega: Yes. One hot topic that everyone loves to hear is pay yourself first. Start teaching our kids when they get a pay check that they pay themselves. Again, take a certain amount of that paycheck and put it into a savings account that they never touch or they don't have easy access to. That would be my suggestion that we have fun with. Anything Andrea? Andraya Slyter: Yes. I would also say, you know, I referenced it in the training earlier but maybe, you know, a discussion about how, you know, your mental state period I guess. I wouldn't say mental wellbeing but your mental state and how that's sort of linked to spending habits. So for example, I have clients in particular that are dealing with depression-anxiety. And when they spend money and usually it's money that don't have, it makes them feel better but it's a temporary fix. So maybe, you know, something along those lines. Heather Brown: Thank you. I also had somebody that asked about providing Page 2 of the PowerPoint so they can get additional dates. And I think they meant the previous PowerPoint that I showed, the introductory one. But I'm going to send everybody a copy of the PowerPoint so, you know, both PowerPoints today. So everybody that logged in online and gave their email feel free - you're going to get one sent out today or tomorrow. I've got to do the last week's seminar too. So if anybody's on the line from that, I'll get that to you as well. If, let's see, I'm going to write in our webpage here. If for some reason you didn't get it, you can just write me. But as long as you gave your email when you logged into the phone, I can send it out to everybody that way. So thank you for that question. Operator, do we have any questions in queue? Coordinator: At this time we have no questions in the phone lines. Again, for those on the phone lines, if you would like to ask a question, please press Star followed by 1. One moment while we wait for any questions. Heather Brown: Okay. Somebody asked me what the website is for the K to 12. And I'm going to try to find that real quick while we're waiting for one more set of questions to queue. And if we don't have any, then we'll just give you all some time back. Just let me sort of pull up; I don't work with the K through 12 program regularly. It's on, if you go to website, I do know that it's on the page when you land, if you go to Practitioner Resources, my Internet's slow now. If you go to Practitioner Resources and then go down to, I think it's a dropdown menu for that actually provides you a link to the K through 12 stuff. For some reason I'm having trouble getting my webpage up. But just also, so that you know, you can just also go to our webpage and do a search on K through 12 and you can get all the resources that are there. And if someone has trouble finding it, you can go ahead and email the CFPB FinEx box. I'll provide the link. Okay, let's see. I did not get the site; the phone went in and out. So anything that you did not receive that you heard, one, you'll probably get in the slides. And two, if you look in the Chat you can see the CFPB_finex@cfpb.gov. And you can send an email to that site as well. Okay, so I'll give a last call for questions and then we'll wrap up. Operator, are there any questions that did come in? Coordinator: I do not show any questions at this time. Heather Brown: Okay. And I see that some people said they were having trouble with some of the phone sound and I apologize for that. But we will get the slides out to you so you'll have those for review. So as I mentioned before, our next webinar is the 2nd of April which is a Tuesday. And then each Tuesday in April from 2 to 3, we're going to have training on Your Money-Your Goals toolkit. And that covers pretty much every aspect of financial literacy that you would want to teach. It's our new and revised booklets. And the instructor is going to walk financial educators through how to use the entire curriculum in those hours. And normally, it's a longer class. And we gave it to certain cohorts that apply and compete to do it because we can't train everybody. So please share that information with your colleagues. It will be posted on our website the dates and everything shortly and hopefully by the end of this week, definitely middle of next week. And stay tuned for the announcement on logging in for those sessions. But please reserve the Tuesdays in April from 2 to 3. Okay, well it looks like we've captured all of the comments and questions. And thank you all for participating. We had a good crowd. And thank you to our speakers for the information. It was really helpful and useful and I look forward to having you all back at some time. Operator, this concludes our call. Coordinator: And that concludes today's conference. Thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect. Speakers, if you would like to wait just a moment for post call. Heather Brown: Thank you. END NWX-CFPB HQ Moderator: Heather Brown 03-21-19/1:00 pm Confirmation #8880667 Page 1