Verdugo Job Center awarded grant by state ED

A new state grant will allow the Verdugo Workforce Investment Board’s Job Center to help train people with disabilities with the skills they need to qualify for new jobs.

The center, which serves Burbank, Glendale and La Cañada, was awarded the $166,666 grant by the California Employment Development Department, under its Disability Employment Accelerator Program.

“It enables us to continue some good work that we’ve been doing,” said Robert Mejia, the board and job center’s interim director. “This grant is going to focus a little more on skill development.”

The funds will be used to provide training to 52 people over the next 17 months in computer office skills, such as Microsoft Office and QuickBooks.

“Employers are really looking for people who know their way around spreadsheets,” Mejia said.

The effort will focus primarily on training for individuals with mental health diagnoses, Mejia said, such as those with severe stress due to long-term unemployment.

According to statistics from the U.S. Department of Labor for June, workforce participation for people with disabilities is 20%, compared to nearly 70% for people without disabilities. Unemployment among people with disabilities is 9.3%, four points higher than the unemployment rate for those without disabilities, which is 5.3%.

The challenge of placing people with disabilities in jobs “is complicated by the fact that many are long-term unemployed, and lack in-demand basic computer and software skills,” according to an announcement from the Verdugo Workforce Investment Board.

The job center will partner with the local Employment Development Department office and the California Department of Rehabilitation, as well as high schools, community colleges, adult schools, nonprofits and veteran groups.

Some of the funds will also be used to educate employers about things such as the legal aspects of hiring people with disabilities, such as accommodations, and to “dispel myths,” Mejia said.

Patricia Kelly and Joan Ortiz, the mother and daughter co-founders of Limerick Inc. in Burbank, have worked with the Verdugo Job Center over the past four years to hire people with disabilities, through an on-the-job training program where the center subsidizes employee salaries while they are trained in customer service, sales, assembly and help desk jobs.

“They fit very well into our work environment,” Kelly said. “They just fit in perfectly.”

Ortiz said one of the benefits for the 24-year-old small business in working with the jobs center is that because the center screens candidates to match them with the right position, it takes some of the load off of the owners, who don’t have a dedicated human resources department of their own.

Kelly said the company employs residents and clients of Villa Esperanza Services, a Pasadena-based nonprofit that cares for and educates children, adults and seniors with developmental, intellectual and other disabilities. A section on the company’s website highlights that relationship to bring awareness to the opportunities to hire people with disabilities.

“I think once they know of it and use it, they will be happy,” she said, of such programs.

For more information about the Verdugo Job Center’s programs, employers and job-seekers can call (818) 409-0476.