Children’s was honored by the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED) for its exceptional efforts to hire and retain people with disabilities at an Employers Hiring People with Disabilities event. Children’s was one of 27 employers, and only one of two health systems, present at this event. Our partnership with Project SEARCH is undoubtedly one of the reasons that we are able to attract and retain employees with disabilities.
Project SEARCH
Children’s is proud to be a sponsoring organization of Project SEARCH, an organization that helps interns to acquire jobs in a competitive employment environment. For the past eight years, Children’s has worked with the Minneapolis Public Schools Transition Plus program. Interns from this program get on-the-job training and experience in a variety of departments, and gain transferable job skills.
Annually, Children’s has 8-10 interns in this program who spend 10 weeks rotating through different jobs throughout the hospital, and receive support with accommodations, adaptations and one-on-one job coaching throughout their experience. Interns have the opportunity to try jobs in 11 different departments, filling roles like food preparation, housekeeping, bedside chart sanitizing and stocking, data entry and more.
Since 2012, at least 80% of Project SEARCH interns at Children’s found competitive employment after graduation.
Jabraun’s story
Project SEARCH’s mission is to enable interns to acquire a job in a competitive employment environment. In celebration of our accomplishments in partnership with Project SEARCH, we are highlighting the success of one of our former interns: Jabraun M.
During his internship, Jabraun loved working with Child Life in the sibling play area at our Minneapolis hospital, and always gave himself freely, showing gentle guidance and genuine warmth to all of the kids in his care. After graduating from Project SEARCH in May 2014, he wanted to pursue his dream to work with kids, and found a job at the YWCA Children’s Center as a classroom aide in February 2018. Due to his natural approach to his job, his managers asked him to take classes to achieve his child development associate certificate. Jabraun took classes every Saturday for 8 months and achieved his goal the following June.
With this accomplishment under his belt, Jabraun advanced his career and became a teaching assistant at the YWCA. Congratulations, Jabraun! We love seeing our Project SEARCH graduates follow and achieve their dreams.
