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Interviewer: Susie, what is the
secret to your success?
Susie Rutkowski: It is really
not a secret. The secret is relationships. Our program is all about
building partnerships and relationships. Our main partners are Children's
Hospital, Great Oaks, the Department of Voc Rehab, and MRDD who
helps support follow-along. We always say that no one agency or
hospital could have done this by themselves. We each bring specific
gifts to the collaboration. We've done lots of research even on
collaboration. It is a true collaboration, because we each have
come out of our own organization to form this partnership. But,
there are pieces of us that still belong back to our organizations.
When we write grants, we look at who is the best person to be the
fiscal agent. When we look at staff, we are going to add two new
staff people soon, we will look at which organization is the best
one to own those staff people.
Now that we have started replicating within our own city of Cincinnati,
it’s the relationships that we build with the other hospitals
and banks that we are working with that gives us success. But, the
secret really is working with other people. When we are at Children's,
people think that our staff works for Children's. Jennifer, who
is our follow-along person, is in every department everyday where
our folks are working. They look to her to solve problems so that
people can keep their jobs. The reason we have had people working
there 9 years is that Jennifer has built relationships with those
departments. They call on her to help them figure out what is the
best way to support this person in my department, so he or she can
stay and become a long term employee. As we have had career advancement
throughout the hospital, its building those relationships. They
can come back to us and say, "How can I move someone through
the system so that they can stay at Children's? We want them to
have another opportunity now?"
Something wonderful happens over and over again. Now that we've
had a long term relationship with Children's, when they look at
starting a new position, they don't call HR anymore. They call us
and say, "We have an opportunity for a new position, and we
think somebody with a disability can do that job, how can you help
us?" That would not happen had we not had this great relationship.
They trust us. They know that we'll do a good job to match a person
with the needs of their department. They trust us that if it doesn't
work out that we can help them work through that as well. There
is a reciprocal enjoyment of each others gifts and talents that
we bring to the partnership that we call Project SEARCH.
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