Heather Latter
With plans to expand its employment services, staff of Community Living Fort Frances and District looked to the expertise of Bob Vansickle, supervisor of employment service at Community Living Sarnia-Lambton, during training that took place Monday and Tuesday at La Place Rendez-Vous.
“We want to get into the summer employment,” said Alanna Barr, executive director of the local branch.
“It’s an area that we haven’t gone before,” she noted, adding they offer employment services to adults but not to those under age 18.
“So this is something really new for us.”
Barr knew of Vansickle’s expertise and asked if he would travel to Fort Frances to present to staff here.
He also brought along Kathy Hoof, the Toolkits for Transition co-ordinator.
“We wanted him [Vansickle] to help us enlarge the direction we are going,” said Barr, noting they are expanding on the Employment and Modernization grant the local organization received last year.
“We have some transitional planning but it’s to get those younger students,” she explained.
“They are the future users of our services and we want to make sure we have the connection.
“We want to build on those students as a resource and provide opportunities that they are not really getting,” Barr added.
“There are not too many young, disabled students in our community that have access to employment and we want to ensure that.”
Barr stressed it’s important for these students to get work experience.
“It’s building their future, as well.”
She added the local organization also want to improve what it already has.
“We were just looking for additional resources because we want to make sure we are going to have the best program, the best services, to offer to people,” Barr said.
“So this an additional resources for us and we want to build on their experience,” she reasoned.
“We don’t want to reinvent the wheel.”
Vansickle said the funds his branch received from the Employment and Modernization grant were used to develop two turn-key toolkits containing all the materials and the resources needed to run the Summer Employment and jobStart programs.
“For instance, everything for the summer program—from funding applications to job descriptions, to interview questions for job coaches, to a training manual for the job coaches, and information on how to market to employers,” he noted.
“All of that stuff is all in there so it doesn’t have to be recreated,” he explained.
“We’ve been able to take 25 years of work and just put it into a toolkit.”
Meanwhile, a toolkit also was developed for the jobStart program, which has been running for 15 years.
“The summer toolkit is geared towards young people aged 15-21, and so it’s an opportunity for them to be able to build skills and to get experience,” Vansickle said about the difference between the two programs.
“Then jobStart really kicks in when someone is done school,” he added.
“It’s more intensive,” he noted. “It’s six weeks long and during that six weeks, we’re working on that stuff we already talked about, but we’ll also have local guest speakers.”
Vansickle suggested the local branch will be looking for people in the area to come in and help with presentations, whether they are local employers, human resources, the local health unit, local police department, etc.
“After they finish the six weeks, the goal is we know folks well enough if they are ready for employment, we put them into a job,” he said, though noting sometimes not everyone is ready for employment at that time.
“So there might be another intervention that people might look at going to, such as continuing education, volunteerism to develop some skills, whatever might be the next step in their journey,” Vansickle added.
Barr said their goal is to have a job coach in place by May to help work with the younger students in a summer employment program locally.
Vansickle noted his agency uses a pre-employment workshop to really get to know the clients so they can make the best job match possible with local businesses.
“It’s a very non-committal way for local employers to experiment with hiring a young person who has an intellectual disability,” he said.
“And to know they are going to get support from someone,” echoed Barr.
“The whole weight of the employment relationship is not just on the employer, but we’ll be there to support the person so that they can be successful.
“It’s about getting a successful summer job and hopefully returning the next summer,” she reasoned.
Vansickle added the younger people can start gaining employment experience, the better.
“So I think it is commendable that Community Living Fort Frances wants to start even younger,” he enthused.
“It’s fantastic.”
Barr said thanks to last year’s Employment and Modernization grant, there are 14 people locally who have been competitively employed since last May.
“I think that shows a very high level of success,” said Vansickle, noting that having a job is a sense of identity for people.
“There’s dignity through having a job and having a purpose in life,” he reasoned.
“There’s dignity in moving away from income support. There’s dignity in becoming a taxpayer.”
“For people to see you are a valuable contributor to the community,” agreed Barr.
