Dear Management Team,

We in the Training Branch are committed to Professional Development and quality services. In our efforts to provide the best instruction and staff preparation possible, we continually seek to improve how training is offered. For several years now, we have offered the SNAP Basic training over a four week period to incorporate field based learning and shorter lab sessions, based partially on budget and time constraints. We found that overloading staff with information in a briefer period of time only leads to confusion and negatively impacts knowledge retention. It was also a hardship for many staff to be away from home and families continuously for several weeks in a row.

At the beginning of the SNAP Basic, each participant’s supervisor received a copy of a Training Summary, listing the objectives, time frames and learning experiences for each assignment of the Basic. A review of this material will enable you to know exactly what your worker has covered in the training segments.

Your worker has just completed Part I – Field Based Learning 1 and Part II – Lab 1 of the SNAP Basic Training. Each participant has been introduced to the primary eligibility determination policies. This includes the application process, technical eligibility factors, WR/ABAWD requirements and exemptions, the financial eligibility factors of resources and earned and unearned income, deductions including standard deduction, dependent care deduction, earned income deduction and shelter deductions, and verification/documentation. If this is your worker’s first program, upon completion of Part II, she or he will be able to, with assistance, begin Recertification interviews and take Applications with simple income, and determine ETP target codes.

Your worker will have fewer assignments in Part III – Field Based Learning 2 and should be able to complete them within about three days. We ask that you give your worker the opportunity to practice the new skills she/he has learned by conducting Application and Recert interviews with the assistance of a tenured worker in this program. We cannot express how important it is that each training participant receive support and mentoring in the local office. The field is where the most learning occurs. This will insure maximum retention, which in the long run will pay off for everyone concerned.

There are some SNAP policies and procedures that the training participants have not yet covered and these will be addressed in Part III – Field Based Learning 2 and Part IV – Lab 2. These will include student and self-employment and farm income, medical and child support deductions, procedures for active ETP/ABAWD counties (including the Up-front Assessment), case changes, and EBT. Your worker may need additional assistance in these areas until she/he has covered them in training.

In addition to this letter, your employee should have been provided with a self-evaluation form which asks them to rate how well they feel they have grasped the training objectives covered in the first half of their training. Please ask your employee to share this information with you.

You can support your employee by taking these actions:

Tips for Promoting Learning Transfer:

Review the course objectives with your employee and ask them to assess their skill level on each objective

Ask the employee in which areas they feel they need the most help

Ask the employee to describe the kind of help they would like (practice, explanation, observing, etc.)

Provide the employee with time to practice each of the objectives

Ask the employee to demonstrate to you how they perform each objective

Offer constructive support to the employee as you observe them completing tasks (Remember, errors made present wonderful learning opportunities)

Complement the employee for tasks done well (Remember: you get what you praise)

Pair the employee with one of your high performing workers so they can observe a skilled employee performed the learned task.

If you find your employee seems to be having problems with any of the objectives, please do not hesitate to contact us so that improvements can be made in the curriculum. If you have any questions, contact John Fox at (859) 246-2294, Sandy Queen at (859) 200-1409, or Dwight Parkerat (859) 246-2294.

Thanks for your continued support for learning.