Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Jobs Matter: Employment is Essential

By Employment Job Coach Constance Taylor

Employment is essential for our participants and is an immediate conversation that we have with our participants upon entering our program.  Many individuals have a scattered work history and years of sustaining just above water.

Assessments and conversations say the opposite of what many people believe about themselves.  Our job becomes pretty difficult because it may require having to convince them that they are valuable and capable of so much more than what they are experiencing.  An old proverb, believed to have been recorded as early as 1175, says,  “you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.”  The proverb is true you can’t make the horse drink, but I believe that if the horse is in heat exhaustion long enough and you keep leading it in the right direction, you can only hope that one day it will drink the cool water and be restored.

So it is with the families we serve.  We realize many of them have experienced a trail of homelessness and are pretty hopeless by the time they cross our paths.  Some want to hear the words, “ yes, you are hired” after only a few applications have been submitted.  I know that is not a reality, so I keep encouraging them to work harder and put in more applications because one day it is going to pay off.

The difficult thing is that for many job searchers,  just like the horse that needs the water to be refreshed, but  will not drink it, many of our participants need  income to survive, but will not complete the process necessary until the last hour.  We can only show them the steps and hope and pray that one day, they will extend themselves beyond where they are currently operating until they get the call and hear the words, “yes, you are hired.” 

Although, we have a large percentage of participants that do leave with employment, there is also that small percentage that leaves unemployed.  Often times, after a few months of having left Community LINC, I get a phone call and the person on the end says, “guess what Ms. Connie, I got a job”  I am always so happy to hear that they are employed and able to care for their family sufficiently, without having to search for resources from multiple agencies.

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