DDA Talks to Delia Meinhardt, Assistant Director of Employment with Jobs West

Finding a job is a dauting experience for anyone. Now, imagine having a developmental disability. There are many barriers that can prevent you from finding work and gaining independence. Fortunately, there are people like Delia Meinhardt who helps run DDA's social enterprise operation, Jobs West.

 

TRANSCRIPT:

Evan Kelly  0:05   So welcome to Developmental Disabilities Association's Encouraging Abilities podcast. Joining us today is Delia Meinhardt. Now Delia is the Assistant Director of Employment Services at Jobs West. Now, if you don't know what that is, that is one of DDA's social enterprise operations. Jobs West is an employment service that connects clients with developmental disabilities with employers to help the client find and keep a job but also works with the employer to ensure success of the program. Job West fosters inclusion, community and independence for its clients. Part of that success, of course, is ensuring accessibility for everyone involved. So thanks for joining us today, Delia. Now, can you take us through the process of finding a client and getting them a job, sort of, you know, if you're gonna bridge it sort of start from finished?

Delia Meinhardt  0:54   Yeah, sure. So our client referrals come to us through government programs, such as Community Living British Columbia and work BC employment services. We also find potential clients when we're in the community presenting to local high schools and colleges, we will support them with accessing our service. So before our client can get a job, what we do is we do some prep work with them. So we take the time to discover the person's skills and abilities. Identify what type of environments are ideal. So for example, do they prefer to work independently versus within a team? Do they want to work outside versus inside? We assess work skills, provide skills training, and clients attend implement workshops. Workshops, such as how to write a professional resume, ways to ace an interview, dress to impress, how best to communicate with your colleagues, time management, and what are implement standards. After that we move into placement. We encourage clients to participate in informational interviews. So for those that aren't familiar with us, we schedule a time to meet an employer at the worksite to discuss their business, the industry, what skills are required for a specific position. If it's possible, we ask for a tour of the job site. This gives a chance for the client to see the site and whether it's an environment they would like to work at. Our staff meets with employers and discuss their current business needs. And we specialize in customized employment, which is customizing an existing position within a company as well as creating a new position. So for example, of how this can be a benefit for business, would be an employee in a management position, spending their majority of their time inputting data, compiling information or researching. All of those previous mentioned tasks could be allocated to a client freeing the manager to focus on high level business, rather than entry level tasks. Once a client is placed, we provide on site job training, assist with workplace accommodations if necessary. Once a client is fairly independent, we fade our support to follow up supports, which can look like check ins once a week, once a month, once every quarter. If there is retraining required or the job description changed due to promotion or restructure within the business, our staff can step right back in and support the client... support of the client and employer.

Evan Kelly  3:11   Sounds really good. So how many different businesses does Jobs West work with currently?

Delia Meinhardt  3:16   Yeah, so this number kind of changes daily. Everyday we work with employers, whether it's to develop a new position within the company, provide disability awareness or diversity and inclusion workshops. So for example, like l