Laura
07-08-2007, 03:47 AM
from The NYTimes
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/08/business/yourmoney/08homefront.html?ref=yourmoney&pagewanted=print
July 8, 2007
Homefront
Where Disabilities Aren’t Allowed to Win
By JOSEPH P. FRIED
WHEN Jesus Montero, 28, immigrated from Peru six years ago to join his mother and begin a new life in New York, he had three strikes against him.
Mr. Montero is deaf, he cannot speak, and he reads only “a little Spanish and less English,” he said last month through a sign-language interpreter. As a result, he said, the jobs he could get were on the level of “washing cars, making hamburgers — not steady work, and it paid little.”
But now things are looking up. Since April, he has been training to become a steadily employed building cleaner at a wage that he expects will allow him to live more comfortably and be financially independent of his relatives.
Mr. Montero, a resident of Queens, was recently practicing vacuuming at Fedcap Rehabilitation Services, a 72-year-old nonprofit organization in Manhattan. Fedcap runs job training and employment programs for people with physical, developmental or learning disabilities or mental illness.
The clients, who are New York City residents, are trained for one of a variety of vocations, including mailroom and data entry jobs, cleaning, general office work, food service and hotel work. Clients are then placed with private or public employers, or hired by Fedcap itself.
In addition to running the training programs, Fedcap has contracts to provide companies and federal, state and city agencies with workers. Many of the 1,200 former trainees now on Fedcap’s payroll are assigned to locations like courthouses, office buildings, the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, and the Long Island Rail Road area of Pennsylvania Station.
The 1,200 workers average nearly $15 an hour, or $600 for a 40-hour week, Fedcap says. Those hired by other employers have starting wages averaging about $10 an hour.
The organization was founded in 1935 as the Federation of Crippled and Disabled. It became the Federation of the Handicapped in the 1940s and Fedcap Rehabilitation Services in 1992.
“We have broadened our mission over the years,” said Susan Fonfa, the organization’s executive director. “At first, most of the people we served were people with physical disabilities, but we expanded to include people with other disabilities like learning disabilities and mental illnesses.” At various times, Fedcap has also trained people who were not disabled but were unemployed for other reasons or were seeking to get off welfare rolls, she said.
Today, 5 percent of the trainees are not in any disability category but are jobless because they have other barriers to employment, like poor English skills, said a spokeswoman for the group, Haley Gilman.
The training, which is full time and runs from three to six months, is free to the clients, who are referred by public agencies, including the state’s Office of Vocational and Educational Services for Individuals With Disabilities and the federal Department of Veterans Affairs.
Last year Fedcap enrolled 230 people with disabilities in its training programs, Ms. Gilman said. About 90 percent completed their courses, and 90 percent of those who did so were placed in jobs — about half with Fedcap for its staffing service and half with other employers, she said.
Generally, 90 percent of the people who go to work for Fedcap are still with it after one year, and nearly 75 percent after five years, the organization says. But it lacks reliable data on how many of those hired by other employers are still in the work force after a year, because once they complete the training Fedcap often loses touch with them, said Jennifer Bertrand, its community relations director.
At Fedcap’s training center in the Chelsea neighborhood last month, Mr. Montero said through the interpreter, “I’m learning how to clean the floors and offices now, and I’ve already learned cleaning bathrooms.”
Ivan Cruz, 29, of Brooklyn, who was being trained for mailroom work, said that a steadily worsening eye disease had cost him two jobs — processing money at an armored car company, where he had worked for four years, and with a car service, where he had been for three years. “I was depressed; I didn’t want to go out of the house,” he said.
But a corneal transplant last year improved his sight, enabling him to enroll at Fedcap.
Some trainees are people completing treatment for drug addiction. Rosa Richardson, 54, a former home health aide from the Bronx and a mother of four adult children, said she had become addicted to cocaine. Two years ago, Ms. Richardson said, she entered a residential rehabilitation program, and in April she began Fedcap’s hotel employment program.
“I would like to do the switchboard or take reservations,” she said. Working the switchboard would pay about $15 an hour to start, she said, double her pay as a home health aide two years ago. And there would be another benefit. “I like to talk on the phone,” she said.
E-mail: homefront@nytimes.com.
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/08/business/yourmoney/08homefront.html?ref=yourmoney&pagewanted=print
July 8, 2007
Homefront
Where Disabilities Aren’t Allowed to Win
By JOSEPH P. FRIED
WHEN Jesus Montero, 28, immigrated from Peru six years ago to join his mother and begin a new life in New York, he had three strikes against him.
Mr. Montero is deaf, he cannot speak, and he reads only “a little Spanish and less English,” he said last month through a sign-language interpreter. As a result, he said, the jobs he could get were on the level of “washing cars, making hamburgers — not steady work, and it paid little.”
But now things are looking up. Since April, he has been training to become a steadily employed building cleaner at a wage that he expects will allow him to live more comfortably and be financially independent of his relatives.
Mr. Montero, a resident of Queens, was recently practicing vacuuming at Fedcap Rehabilitation Services, a 72-year-old nonprofit organization in Manhattan. Fedcap runs job training and employment programs for people with physical, developmental or learning disabilities or mental illness.
The clients, who are New York City residents, are trained for one of a variety of vocations, including mailroom and data entry jobs, cleaning, general office work, food service and hotel work. Clients are then placed with private or public employers, or hired by Fedcap itself.
In addition to running the training programs, Fedcap has contracts to provide companies and federal, state and city agencies with workers. Many of the 1,200 former trainees now on Fedcap’s payroll are assigned to locations like courthouses, office buildings, the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, and the Long Island Rail Road area of Pennsylvania Station.
The 1,200 workers average nearly $15 an hour, or $600 for a 40-hour week, Fedcap says. Those hired by other employers have starting wages averaging about $10 an hour.
The organization was founded in 1935 as the Federation of Crippled and Disabled. It became the Federation of the Handicapped in the 1940s and Fedcap Rehabilitation Services in 1992.
“We have broadened our mission over the years,” said Susan Fonfa, the organization’s executive director. “At first, most of the people we served were people with physical disabilities, but we expanded to include people with other disabilities like learning disabilities and mental illnesses.” At various times, Fedcap has also trained people who were not disabled but were unemployed for other reasons or were seeking to get off welfare rolls, she said.
Today, 5 percent of the trainees are not in any disability category but are jobless because they have other barriers to employment, like poor English skills, said a spokeswoman for the group, Haley Gilman.
The training, which is full time and runs from three to six months, is free to the clients, who are referred by public agencies, including the state’s Office of Vocational and Educational Services for Individuals With Disabilities and the federal Department of Veterans Affairs.
Last year Fedcap enrolled 230 people with disabilities in its training programs, Ms. Gilman said. About 90 percent completed their courses, and 90 percent of those who did so were placed in jobs — about half with Fedcap for its staffing service and half with other employers, she said.
Generally, 90 percent of the people who go to work for Fedcap are still with it after one year, and nearly 75 percent after five years, the organization says. But it lacks reliable data on how many of those hired by other employers are still in the work force after a year, because once they complete the training Fedcap often loses touch with them, said Jennifer Bertrand, its community relations director.
At Fedcap’s training center in the Chelsea neighborhood last month, Mr. Montero said through the interpreter, “I’m learning how to clean the floors and offices now, and I’ve already learned cleaning bathrooms.”
Ivan Cruz, 29, of Brooklyn, who was being trained for mailroom work, said that a steadily worsening eye disease had cost him two jobs — processing money at an armored car company, where he had worked for four years, and with a car service, where he had been for three years. “I was depressed; I didn’t want to go out of the house,” he said.
But a corneal transplant last year improved his sight, enabling him to enroll at Fedcap.
Some trainees are people completing treatment for drug addiction. Rosa Richardson, 54, a former home health aide from the Bronx and a mother of four adult children, said she had become addicted to cocaine. Two years ago, Ms. Richardson said, she entered a residential rehabilitation program, and in April she began Fedcap’s hotel employment program.
“I would like to do the switchboard or take reservations,” she said. Working the switchboard would pay about $15 an hour to start, she said, double her pay as a home health aide two years ago. And there would be another benefit. “I like to talk on the phone,” she said.
E-mail: homefront@nytimes.com.
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company