Halton Region program helping students with special needs enter the workforce

Oakville Trafalgar Memorial Hospital is the new site of a school-to-work internship for students with developmental disabilities called Project SEARCH.

“My strength is in building collaborative relationships, working with community partners to create a program that supports our learners’ interests, needs, and strengths so they can be successful,” explained Lisa Prentice, lead teacher and program coordinator of Project SEARCH Halton.

Between September and June, students will be introduced to skills in team building, communication, job searching and problem-solving.

“Project SEARCH is a program designed to bring employability skills to young adults with special needs,” said Jim Feyerer, director of human resources at Halton Healthcare.

“We teach them how to get out and become independent in the workplace and live full thriving lives.”

The nine-month internship pairs a job site with a teacher and 12 students in their final year of the Halton District School Board’s Community Pathways program, along with two skills trainers from Community Living Oakville.

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“We actually have more than 20 internships available to our interns at Oakville Trafalgar Memorial Hospital,” Prentice said.

“We spend a lot of time initially getting to know our interns so that we can appropriately match them to their needs, interests, and strength.”

He highlighted Hunter Krause’s internship placement with the medical device reprocessing office at the hospital.

“We set very high expectations for our interns and they rise to those expectations. The jobs they are doing are real jobs,” Prentice said.

“We have sparked their passion and they now see that they have a purpose, which I think will take them into the future with job success.”

“I like my internship a lot,” said Krause.

“I don’t have to worry about the pressure like I have with school. It’s good because it teaches me new skills and it also gets me to learn what it feels like to be in a workplace.”