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Interviewer: Could you describe
how your model developed through Project SEARCH?
Susie Rutkowski: One of the very first jobs that we looked
at was a career job. The hospital had hired about 10 people to be
couriers throughout the hospital to pick up blood samples, biopsies,
x-rays, etc. They really weren't doing a very good job. The hospital
was going to end that position and hire a robot to make a run throughout
the hospital. The problem with using a robot is that it would only
have a set route that it could go on through the hospital and could
not deviate from that. So, we wrote a very simple business plan
and approached the hospital to see if we could hire people with
disabilities to do that job. They said, "yes, you can try it
for 90 days and see if it is successful."
The first thing we did was a job analysis and found that it really
wasn't being done very efficiently. We could systematize the job
and be successful with people with disabilities doing that job.
We reached out to the community of providers in Cincinnati to help
us fill those 11 to 13 positions that we needed for the job. We
got some great folks as a result, and some of them are still working
today, 9 years later. The problem was that in hiring 13 people with
disabilities from different agencies we got: 13 different job developers,
13 different job coaches, and 13 different methods of doing things.
[The hospital got] different policies and procedures, different
job coaching techniques, and different dress codes.
From the hospital's standpoint of safety, they also had to badge
all those people and park all of those people that wasn't something
they wanted to do. They were interested in a program in terms of
working with people with disabilities, but they weren't interested
in the chaos that went along with it.
So, we developed a different model. We developed
a single point of entry or a preferred vendor model where the hospital
looks to Great Oaks for it's needs in terms of providing them with
people with disabilities to be employees. We supplied job coaches
and job developers, but they look like hospital employees. They
are badged as hospital employees. They are consistent with the same
group of people working throughout the hospital. Any nurse or doctor
would think that they are Children's Hospital employees. We conform
to what the hospital wants. We live the mission and culture of the
hospital. We try to fulfill the hospital's needs. We learn the business
and respond to the managers in a way that keeps the hospital happy
and meets their business needs. So, through that preferred vendor
model, or single point of entry, when we have an opening, or when
we get a request for a person with a disability to fill a job, we
work back through Great Oaks. The rehab services commission is supplying
and helping us to fund the project, but the work actually flows
through Great Oaks as a partner to Children's.
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