“We’re looking at life-skills training,” Eidson said. “We’re looking at employment, housing preparation, career. We’d like them to have connections and mentors and also to focus on wellness and so, again, many of the same things that a parent would do, the state or the county needs to step in.”

To learn more about the issues facing these teenagers, the Central Pennsylvania Workforce Development Corp. will use a grant from the state Department of Labor and Industry to conduct a research project and share the results with potential stakeholders in the organization’s nine-county coverage area, which includes Montour, Northumberland, Snyder and Union.

Those stakeholders include school districts, juvenile justice organizations, institutions of post-secondary education, child-welfare agencies and community-based youth organizations.

According to Smith, keeping youths in school just makes good economic sense.

“We recognize both the social implications of serving these targeted youth ... we know that this is the right thing to do because these youth need to be connected to resources for education and employment,” she said. “But we also recognize that this is an economic issue that we need all individuals, who are willing and able to work, to have the skill sets to be able to contribute to our regional economy.”

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