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Interviewer: If I were a person
looking for a job and heard about Project SEARCH, how would I get
referred to your program.
Susie Rutkowski: I am going explain
two different ways that we actually work with people with disabilities.
If you are an adult, have graduated from high school, and are hooked
with the Ohio Rehabilitation Services Commission (or BVR or BSVI),
have a counselor, and are interested in working at Children’s
or one of our other facilities, you would tell your counselor. He/she
would refer you to our job developer at Children’s Hospital.
We would look at your interests, skills, and the jobs that we had
coming up that would match with those skills. So, that's the way
we do if you are an adult.
One of the things that we started at Children's, about 9 years ago,
the same time we started our courier program, was a high school
transition program. Each year, we have 12 students that come to
Children's for an entire school year. They rotate through a variety
of different work experiences throughout the year. The really fun
part about that is that, as a high school student in your last year
of high school eligibility, you get to try four different kinds
of jobs in different areas of the hospital. It might be food service,
cart stocking, clerical, patient [related jobs] such as patient
transportation, or a new position that we haven't tried yet. The
hospital gets to look at you, as a young person, and you get to
look at the hospital.
What we think that is so fascinating about the high school program
is that the program quickly changes the culture of the organization.
Twelve youth with disabilities, who have lots of different talents
and abilities, are placed throughout the hospital. Lots of mentoring
and training goes on. As positions open up, the high school students
are selected to do those jobs, because they've tried them. They
have been successful by working in the area for 6 to 8 weeks, and
they end up getting hired by the hospital to do those jobs. We've
also taken the premise of the high school transition program and
transplanted it in four other businesses throughout Cincinnati.
We have begun to work with a bank and two other hospitals. We are
also replicating that model in other places in Cincinnati.
It's a great way to immerse a company with youth with disabilities.
They quickly learn about each other in a fun, non-threatening way
but a way whose outcome is employment. So, those are two ways that
if you were a person with a disability, whether you were a youth
or whether you were an adult, that you could get to work through
Project SEARCH.
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