Project SEARCH helps young adults with disabilities transition to work
Friends, households and associates stuffed an occasion room on the Glendale Renaissance Hotel in assist of the 24 graduates of this year’s Project SEARCH transition-to-work program.
Project SEARCH is a global program that gives young adults with developmental disabilities with expertise and expertise to transition from highschool to work and the remainder of grownup life.
Graduates waved to family members and excitedly pumped their fists within the air as they crossed the room to obtain their completion certificates. Job coaches and supervisors positioned graduate cords across the necks of every intern and handed them pins that signify their West-Mec alumni standing.
Shelly Thome, director of outstanding scholar companies at West-Mec, mentioned in her opening remarks on the commencement ceremony that she hopes every intern “can transfer all the things they learn with us into their next phase of life.”
Project SEARCH is a associate of West-Mec, a public college district in west Maricopa County that gives career and technical education schemes to highschool college students.
The program is open to current highschool graduates and provides candidates the choice to spend a faculty year at considered one of three internship packages: at Sanmar distribution heart, Luke Air Force Base or the Glendale Renaissance Hotel.
Applications for Project SEARCH internships are accomplished via West-Mec within the spring college semester forward of this system’s begin every fall. After submitting the application, interns full interviews the place they’re matched with this system location that most accurately fits them.
These three organizations turned Project SEARCH internships due to “their willingness to give us space and to integrate us,” Thome mentioned.
“Our interns are treated just like their staff, and we want to make sure that they’re willing to do that and allow us to move seamlessly amongst their staff and their clientele,” Thome mentioned.
Alicia Livingston, a job coach on the Sanmar program, mentioned the purpose of her colleagues and herself is to coach every intern on acceptable work and social behaviors.
“Their growth from the beginning of the year to now is huge,” Livingston mentioned. “We’ve got interns who barely speak at the beginning of the program. And by the end of the program, they’re starting conversations with people and being social.”
Transitioning to work
Studies present that adults with developmental disabilities are disproportionately unemployed or underemployed.
Denise Resnik is the founder and CEO of First Place Phoenix, a housing complicated for adults with autism. She can also be the mom of an grownup son with autism.
“I remember when he was graduating, what we experienced as a family was the fear of how we were going to fill 168 hours every week with meaningful, productive activity when he left all the support and structure of high school,” Resnik mentioned. “And we definitely did not want him graduating from Chaparral High School to a couch.”
Transition to work packages for adults with developmental disabilities exist throughout the U.S. However, some have been criticized for additional separating these with disabilities from the remainder of the world by solely providing designated “simple” duties for little to no pay, related to institutionalization.
Project SEARCH stands out because it offers an built-in strategy, during which interns work proper alongside coworkers already employed in every of their jobs.
“It’s helping to create a generation of people without autism who better understand their friends with autism, and the special abilities that they have, so that their friends are not introduced based on their disability or deficits, but based on the fact that they’re friends, and they have value and strengths,” Resnik mentioned.
No two folks’s personal experiences with disabilities are alike, so there’s no one-size-fits-all strategy to offering acceptable resources. Rather, some folks with disabilities can profit from built-in packages whereas others would possibly want separate work, which is why it is essential for each forms of packages to exist throughout the U.S., Resnik mentioned.
Programs like Project SEARCH and others are particularly essential as a result of they give attention to adults, whereas many resources for these with disabilities, similar to particular education schemes, are solely obtainable for these in elementary to highschool.
“So much money, time and heart is invested in early diagnosis, early intervention, early education, but they spend the majority of their lives in adulthood,” Resnik mentioned.
Graduates, households grateful for Project SEARCH
Mya Moreno excitedly introduces her buddies and job coaches to her family members who got here to assist her on the commencement ceremony for Project SEARCH interns.
Moreno simply accomplished her school-year-long internship on the Renaissance resort, and inside a number of days of commencement has began a new job at a Funko warehouse nearer to her house.
“(I’ve learned) how to get out of my comfort zone a lot, and how to communicate more,” Moreno mentioned about her expertise with Project SEARCH.
Moreno mentioned her favourite a part of the expertise was the chance to work together with different staff on the resort, a few of whom she developed shut friendships with.
Carrie Atkeson, whom Moreno lives with, heard about Project SEARCH due to her personal expertise as a particular schooling trainer in Buckeye. She mentioned she was anxious about Moreno as she neared her highschool commencement and was not fairly prepared to enter the workforce.
Now, nonetheless, Atkeson is assured that Moreno will reach her new job due to the great development she has made because the begin of this system.
“She has gained so much more confidence,” Atkeson mentioned. “The fact that she’s over there, allowing them to take a picture of her, is huge.”
Patrick Clawson, an expert improvement specialist for West-Mec, attended the commencement ceremony in assist of his niece, Lexi, who accomplished her internship on the Luke Air Force Base program.
“I certainly have noticed that, from when she graduated high school to now, her level of maturity has increased, and I think that that has to do with her sense of duty and her sense of purpose,” Clawson mentioned. “She feels like she’s wanted and appreciated for being a hard worker and having a good attitude.”
Clawson’s niece has additionally landed a post-Project SEARCH job thanks to the expertise she gained throughout this system.
“I’ve watched her grow into this capable, self sufficient young woman who has now got a job at Fry’s and is just excelling in life,” Clawson mentioned.
Reach the reporter at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter at @EndiaRain.
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