Empowering Employment
The Empowering Employment program is designed to provide on the job training to individuals with disabilities, who are fully immersed in the workplace, in addition to receiving employability skills training, and post program job development. Not only does this provide job training for individuals with disabilities, but it also provides education, training, and awareness to the employer. This program combines an adult service provider agency with support and services for individuals with disabilities in the workplace and provides training opportunities. The goal at the end of the program is skill development that leads to long-term employment. This program is meant to be scalable and sustainable over time, offering small cohorts of the program to lead to competitive, integrated employment, and retention of employees upon hire.
CORE Careers
CORE Foundations takes a multifaceted, person-centered approach to helping individuals with disabilities obtain and maintain meaningful employment. These supports span across the job cycle and include everything from job searching and preparation to support for independent workers. Outlined below are several service offerings through our CORE Careers program.
- Job Readiness: If an individual is interested in future employment, but is not ready to actively seek employment, they can still participate in the CORE Careers program by working on job readiness. In this program, community members work with staff to learn meaningful employment skills (work/life balance, advocacy, professionalism, etc.) that they will one day be able to apply to their future employment.
- Job Development: Job Development Services provide support to community members to obtain a meaningful job in a competitive integrated employment setting. Working directly with qualified staff, community members engage in a variety of tasks and exercises to secure paid employment. Job development activities include but are not limited to:
- Resume Building
- Interview Preparation and Support
- Informational Interviews
- Mock Interviews
- Community Surveying
- Application Completion and Follow-up
- Social Skills
- Use of virtual reality curriculum to support skill acquisition
- Ongoing Job Supports: Ongoing Job Supports provide community members support in learning and completing job tasks when beginning a new job, after a promotion, or following a significant change in duties or circumstances. We develop individualized support in collaboration with the Person-Centered Planning Team to support successful employment
- Follow Along Job Supports: Follow-along support provides a faded support structure to ensure that community members have the support needed to maintain their job
Sequence of 12-week curriculum for Empowering Employment
Week 1
Topics covered:
- Welcome to CORE Careers!
- Review Employment Plan together
Week 2
Topics covered:
- Behavioral Expectations
- Introduce Team Members
- Share cell phone numbers
- Cell Phone Etiquette
Week 3
Topics covered:
- Schedule expectations
- How to call out or cancel services
- Review behavioral / cell phone etiquette
Week 4
Topics covered:
- Accessing emails
- Writing professional emails
Week 5
Topics covered:
- Interview readiness
- Body language and communication
Week 6
Topics covered:
- Apply for positions and review interview skills related to applications submitted/ personal goal setting
Week 7
Topics covered:
- Apply for positions and review interview skills related to applications submitted/ personal goal setting
Week 8
Topics covered:
- Apply for positions and review interview skills related to applications submitted/ personal goal setting
Week 9
Topics covered:
- Apply for positions and review interview skills related to applications submitted/ personal goal setting
Week 10
Topics covered:
- Apply for positions and review interview skills related to applications submitted
Week 11
Topics covered:
- Review task initiation and avoiding distractions at work
Week 12
Topics covered:
- Finalize Resume and discuss future goals
