Transcript - slide 9
How are you beginning to replicate Project SEARCH into other businesses?

Interviewer:  You just mentioned that you are beginning to replicate Project SEARCH into other businesses, could you talk about how you are doing that?

Susie Rutkowski:  Absolutely. Both locally and nationally, we have started to replicate. Some of those partnerships are getting to be established well. We have our oldest replication effort at Clint Memorial Hospital in Wilmington, Ohio. It's about 45 miles north of Cincinnati. We've had a program there for 5 years. We have worked with Provident Bank locally that just got bought out by National City Bank, for 3 years. Just this year, we started working with another local hospital, Mercy Hospital. This is just our first year there, but they have already hired two students, one young lady who is deaf that's going to be a phlebotomist, and another young lady who is deaf is going to work in their health and fitness center. That's very exciting locally.

We are in conversation with a university in Cincinnati, Xavier University, about starting a program next year. What's equally as exciting is going out to other hospitals and businesses across the country. Just this past fall, we worked with Emory Crawford Long Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia to start a program there, and Vanderbilt University’s hospital. We've also worked with Seattle Children's, and other places that are interested in both the high school and adult models who want to have people with disabilities work at their hospital. We're very excited to move out of both Cincinnati and Columbus, Ohio and nationwide to help hospitals and other businesses look at these single point of entry and preferred vendor models. We will help them work with the local rehab organizations in their communities and put people with disabilities to work across Ohio and across the country.

Interviewer:  As you are working with hospitals and other businesses, how do you recommend that they identify an agency or a vendor to assist them with this type of replication?

Susie Rutkowski:  When we start consulting with someone else, we ask them to look at schools in their area, rehab agencies or other service community agencies that they have had experience with or that they've heard about. We can also do research for them such as looking at larger school districts or identifying what the department of VR is called in their local community to get started. Larger school districts or career technical schools are the best, because their outcome is employment, and they might have adult components as well. We will do research for them and/or start brainstorming with them about what would be the best partnerships. A triad is the best: a school, hospital or business as the employer partnered with a service agency that has a voc rehab component. This is usually the best kind of partnership that works for this kind of model.

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