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Interviewer: What is the benefit
to the hospital when working with Project SEARCH?
Susie Rutkowski: One of the benefits
of working with Project SEARCH is that we do a lot of the up front
work for any hires that are made. When we have an opening that is
either given to us from a department or that we have heard about,
either through HR or somehow through the hospital, we quickly look
at who's on the caseload. We talk to other VR counselors. We look
at students in our high school program. We can do the up front screening
of those people. We can get it down to one or two candidates and
present those to the department and to HR. The other thing that
we've done so things go better in the beginning phases of employment,
is that we have redone all of the orientation procedures, processes,
and all the HIPPA processes.
Anytime someone gets hired, one of our job coaches goes through
orientation with the person and answers all their questions. If
they have to take a special training to get hired, like CPR, we
work with the individual, because sometimes they may have to take
it multiple times in order to get hired. So, we provide that service
for the hospital. We also do traditional job coaching. The person
is supported in the initial phases and long-term follow-along. All
of those things, through each stage of the employment process beginning
with seeing who the best candidate and all the way through long
term retention, are supplied by Project SEARCH. It’s like
a one-stop shop for your retention and hiring needs.
We can help the hospital be successful while they're thinking about
hiring people with disabilities. We're trying to make that as easy
for them as possible. We look at every phase, even to the firing.
We don't like to talk about that. But if there are times when someone
needs to be let go for a variety of reasons, whether that is behavior
or skills, then we work with the managers. We help walk them through
that process. We don't want an attitude, of "I am not going
to hire somebody, because I don't want to think about letting them
go." In that process, if it has to happen, we want to help
walk them through that piece as well.
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