Duane Hicks
Community Living Fort Frances and District (CLFFD) has received $300,000 from the provincial government to promote inclusive employment as well as improve services and supports for people with developmental disabilities.
The funding boon will allow the agency to implement a new training program for staff members on customized employment approaches.
It also will enable them to work with employers to identify business needs and tailor strategies to meet these needs.
This will provide competitive employment positions for individuals with developmental disabilities.
As well, the agency will enhance its employer outreach activities, and provide resources and awareness to promote the hiring of individuals with developmental disabilities.
“It’s an innovative approach to employment,” CLFFD executive director Alanna Barr noted Monday.
She added the two-year grant will provide Community Living “with an opportunity to sort of think outside the box in terms of how we are doing employment for persons with a developmental disability.”
“What we are going to do is focus on customized employment,” Barr explained.
“It’s really about helping people find their ‘dream job.’”
Barr noted many jobs are advertised but this new program is not about those jobs—it’s about creating ones that suit the needs of the job-seeker and the potential employer.
“It may be that employer needs somebody for an hour a day, a couple hours a week, for a specific task,” she remarked.
“So we’re going to identify those targets with the individuals and employers, and fill the needs of the employer.
“We’re going to look at skills and what an employer needs with the goal that the employer hires the person,” Barr added.
“They’re not hired through a contract with Community Living,” she stressed. “They become an employee of the employer.
“It’s their very own job.”
Barr said CLFFD currently has supportive employment services, but this new program will be customized to suit all the parties’ needs.
She added it’s innovative and when CLFFD put in an application for the grant, the organization indicated to the Ministry of Community and Social Services that it would provide a report at the end of the project “to show people the pros and cons of customized employment, with an eye that most of it is going to be positive.”
Barr said CLFFD has until March, 2017 to work on the program, after which time it will continue on its own steam.
By that time, it will have made in-roads with the employer community.
Barr noted the $300,000 will pay for two staff positions, telephones, and other costs related to the two-year program, which will have a district-wide approach.
“Our government is proud to support this innovative partnership in Fort Frances that will lead to employment opportunities and promote a higher quality of life for people with developmental disabilities in this community and district,” Thunder Bay-Atikokan MPP Bill Mauro noted in a press release.
The fund is part of Ontario’s 2014 budget commitment to invest $810 million over three years to build stronger services and supports for individuals with developmental disabilities.
“The Employment and Modernization Fund is an important component of our government’s $810-million investment in developmental services,” said Community and Social Services minister Dr. Helena Jaczek.
“By investing in these projects, we are helping to make participation in Ontario’s economy and communities a priority for everyone in our society, especially for our most vulnerable,” she noted.
Ontario funds more than $1.8 billion worth of developmental services each year.
More than 62,000 adults in Ontario have a developmental disability.
The province funds 370 agencies across the Ontario that deliver services to people with developmental disabilities and their families.
