July 3rd marked the birth of a new era for CalWORKs/Welfare-to-Work (CW/WTW) Employment Services. It is the date that a group of DSS Career Employment Specialists (CES’s) assumed the role of Job Services Specialists and became a team delivering services to WTW (and some General Relief clients) participants countywide! Read on for more details (and see this slide show of the new Job Services Team conducting training for program staff).
After over 20 years of having a contractor provide CW/WTW orientation, assessment testing, supervised job search, short-term career advancement activities, job search and job readiness workshops, DSS decided to bring all of these activities in-house as a cost saving measure in support of the County’s rebalancing efforts. Though we regretfully had to end our long standing partnership with the outgoing contractor (ResCare Workforce Services), the change created an opportunity to unleash the creativity of our own staff to build and create a new program to serve our clients.
Our team, led by DBS II Nancy Saengjaeng (serving as Project Lead) and CES Supervisor Mark Laurel (Job Services supervisor), had less than six weeks to plan a model, develop a curriculum, select staff, create materials, develop and deliver staff training as well as transition clients seamlessly from one program to another. The incredible undertaking, not to mention the added stress of the process of downsizing our organization (recent layoff) at the same time added to the challenge. Nancy and Mark solicited the help of Staff Development Trainer, Esther Herrera and others to work on this project. Meanwhile, Mark worked with Division Chiefs to identify CES’s to staff the new unit. Selected were Victoria Arce, Xochitl Ibarra, Rob Perry, Brenda Reyes, Yolanda Salgado-Tovar, Peter Sotelo, and Norma Valdez. To round up the team, AOP Monique Iriarte and existing Job Developers/JOB$ Coordinators, AlRay Grossi and Steve Hernandez were added to the team. Our enthusiastic and highly motivated team rolled up their sleeves, developed business processes, collaborated on curriculum flow and presentation and were ready and serving clients on schedule!
A very special THANKS to the new Job Services, CalWORKs Employment Connection team and to those that helped them behind the scenes to ensure we successfully launched our new program! It really takes a village to pull something of this magnitude off in such a short time. Staff working behind the scenes include other DBS’s, managers, facilities, fiscal, systems, clerical support, and other program supervisors and managers. We could not have done this without their quick response and support! THANK YOU ALL! Please be on the lookout for future Intercom articles with more about all of the services offered by the CalWORKs Employment Connection Team!