Page 22 - 2022 Feb Report

February Report 2022
Disability Convening report (3)
campus and at First Coast Technical College. Throughout the program they integrate academic course work and practical experience, including internships. There are dozens of career pathways available to CTE students.
Deana Criess arranged for her blind colleague, Brian Switzer, to join her at the convening, and I believe that we were all enriched by the experience. She and Brian talked about the Perkins Career Launch program which has as its goal to prepare students of the program to leave with skills that make them more qualified for jobs than other applicants. They focus on competitive, integrated employment that will lead to a career. The students make known when entering the program what fields they are interested in and Career Launch customizes the program for each individual. They focus mainly on customer service and by doing so their graduates are able to find work in any sector in any location. They have placed graduates in fields including technology, hospitality, utilities, health care, education, finance, insurance and vision rehabilitation.
Some estimates suggest that as many as 70% of adults with visual impairments are unemployed. Barriers to employment include participant barriers, employer barriers and society barriers. Career Launch addresses all these barriers. By teaching the students about ways in which to understand adaptive technology and ways in which to make known to potential employers how easy it is to implement adaptations, they are preparing them to overcome what is really a fear of blindness and blind people in the general public and among potential employers. One key outcome of the program has been that not only are the participants being educated, but so are the employers. They have developed an employer tool kit to help with this.
Rob Mollard described how the Bridges program prepares students for employment and then tracks them after they are hired to help assure that they are successful. Employer Representatives therefore work as both job developers and case workers. Bridges has a great deal of success placing young adults with disabilities on the job. Over the past 30 years they have placed more than 20,000 young adults in competitive, integrated employment. Just in 2020-2021, there were 941 young people placed in jobs that generated $9.2 million in aggregate wages.
Currently, they are part of a major research study using a randomized control process in which students are randomly assigned as either Bridges students or as students in the regular support programs available at their schools. The hope among Bridges staff, obviously, is that the random control process (the gold standard in research) will show the importance and the success of the Bridges program. The students will be tracked for twenty years after being placed (or not being placed) on jobs, so there will be both short term information about the success of Bridges in helping place young adults on the job and long term measures of their work records.
Gloria Puentes represented Sodexo (she is director of Global DEI) as an employer partner with Bridges. Sodexo is an international company with locations in all 50 states and many countries around the world. They launched a new Workforce Initiative in 2017 with a focus on DEI, importantly including disability as one kind of diversity. She emphasized the importance of soft skills and how employers making hiring decisions will frequently focus on them. Bridges ERs are aware of this and work with the students to improve their soft skills. Gloria pointed out that DEI relates to the bottom line. There is better retention among students who come with a diverse background and this results in significant cost savings. She specified the large cost each time an employer had to make a new hire, noting that one estimate shows that it costs $36,000 to onboard a new employee. She also noted that one potential threat to Bridges participants is that technology is taking over some entry level jobs such as cashiers.
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