Program: Allegan County Community Mental Health, Allegan, Michigan
Contact Person: Beth Durkee

Career Concepts is the employment services division of Allegan County Community Mental Health. Career Concepts currently supports 180 people that include people with developmental disabilities and serious mental illness working in various supported employment settings. We worked hard at coming up with a name that defines who we are and our values. We chose Career Concepts because that is what we try to do every day. For us, the mission is to have a real presence in the business community and develop employment outcomes based on what the market needs and what our people want to do. We have been working on every new wrinkle to come along through supported employment since day one and are always asking - what if? Instead of models, we try to help people attain competitive income and make a few new friends. The past two years, we have been heavily into learning about and developing supported self-employment outcomes for folks we have struggled with. We are leveraging VR dollars in different ways than before, developing and implementing individual budgets, PASS Plans and our very own home grown revolving loan system to help people attain capital to develop better self and wage employment outcomes. These efforts have improved our business practices and revitalized our whole operation. This year, eight of us went through seven days of Benefits Planning, Assistance and Outreach (BPA & O) training to make sure we are maximizing peoples earning potential.
Strategies to address barriers: Organizational | Individual

Allegan County Community Mental Health
The Arc of Stanly County, Inc.
Career Design & Development Services
Career Support Systems, Inc.
The Cobb/Douglas Community Services Boards (CSBs)
Community Involvement Programs
HPS, Helping People Succeed, Inc.
KFI
Rise, Inc.
Via of Lehigh Valley