Transcript - slide 5
How do you meet the needs of individual job seekers?

Interviewer:  Susie, could you describe how your program works now?

Susie Rutkowski:  Yes, I am going to back track a little and talk about how most traditional job development programs work. What usually happens is that in any city or even small towns, there are several "rehab" agencies doing supported employment. This is a great thing, but we aren't always very organized. We often don't work together or talk to each other. So, each agency has a group of folks that are doing job development. Each of those folks has a case load of people.

We often converge on the same businesses, because they are big, have a good reputation, or they have a lot of jobs. To a business, this looks chaotic. It’s like the wheel or spokes on a circle. You've got the business in the middle and all the agencies coming at them with folks saying, "Could you please get Katty a job? She is a nice worker. She's got pretty red hair, and I think she would do a fine job for you."

We don't always look at the business needs of that particular place. What kind of jobs do they have, and does it make sense for people with disabilities to work there? Have I fully researched them as a place of employment? To Children's, [this process] looked very chaotic to them, and they didn't want that. They did not want a myriad of places coming at them. They wanted something much more organized.

Now, we are all about meeting the needs of Children's. They work exclusively with Project SEARCH as a single point of entry for them. We either get the folks with disabilities through our high school program, which filters through Great Oaks even though the students come from all over town. Or, they come directly through "voc rehab", through our job developer and our retention person. They're both Great Oaks employees, but the adults are filtered through those two staff people at Children's.

Interviewer:  You talked about making sure that you are meeting the needs of the employer. How do you also ensure that you are meeting the needs of each individual job seeker?

Susie Rutkowski:  We work very closely with VR counselors so that the person that they recommend has an interest in working at the hospital. We talk about what job skills are going to be needed for that job and does that person have and bring those skills. We discuss all kinds of issues that you would in any normal employment situation, such as transportation. Can the [person] be independent in transportation and social skills? We discuss thoroughly the person. We make sure that this is place that [the person] wants to be. This is a place where he/she can be successful, and a place where he/she can get to every day. Everyone, the whole team, is supportive, not just from the business point of view, but from that person and his or her circle of support.

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