The Job Coach Design Team will always remain steadfast in veterans’ advocacy. Veterans are supposed to have Congressionally-mandated priority of service in WIA. In PY 2001, the year before the law passed veterans were 7.2% of all individuals in WIA Adult (Training and Intensive). In PY 2006, it was only 7.7%. The percent of veterans in the civilian labor population was and is 13%, It’s discouraging that essentially no progress has been made despite very clear Congressional intent and the country being at war.
WIA staff clearly needs new tools to improve WIA Intensive and WIA Training to make it more relevant to the numerous mid-life Viet veterans in need; particularly the many with manufacturing experience in their employment backgrounds. We’d like to see WIA service to veterans dramatically improve nationally in each and every county.
In many parts of the country, WIA Intensive Job Search in WIA Adult barely exists. During PY 2006, over 85% of all WIA service areas did not provide WIA Intensive Job Search to even 10 veterans in an entire year under WIA Adult. The Job Coach With Job Search Exercises changes this. Many vets are experiential learners and yet during the last program year only 988 veterans exited WIA Adult OJTs in the entire nation. We believe that our OJT tool combined with local federal contractors can vastly increase that number.
We also hope that our work is used with all WIA clients. Many, many more could be served in WIA Adult. Intensive Job Search is nowhere near as expensive as classroom-based retraining nor are well drafted OJTs.
0 comments:
Post a Comment