Project SEARCH
If you haven't already worked or spoken with any of the interns of Project SEARCH, you've probably seen Klarey Black sterilizing colonoscopy equipment, Eric Lemieux wiping tables in the East Mall Café or the Main Dining Room, Bo Harron collecting dirty bedding from gurneys or stocking fresh sheets and pillowcases in Endoscopy, or Megan Lantz escorting patients to the rehab gym for physical-therapy appointments.
"They walk tall," says Andrea Henry, director of volunteer services at DHMC. "They're very proud. The first day, they put on those ID badges, and they stood up tall."
And they're just the first wave of developmentally-challenged Upper Valley residents learning job and life skills under the guidance of Project SEARCH teacher Laureen Blum and of supervisors, clinicians, and technicians in 11 departments throughout the medical center. Come January 2012, Henry, Blum, and program partners with several non-profit and state agencies in New Hampshire and Vermont will begin screening a growing list of candidates for the next class of motivated worker-students for academic year 2012-2013 – in as many more departments that are willing to provide the opportunity.
Those new recruits have a hard act to follow.
"The interns are so driven to be here and do a great job," said Blum, a retired special-education teacher who has helped students find work in organizations such as Dartmouth College Dining Services and the Co-op Food Store chain. "They want to be competitive."
Toward that end, in classroom sessions before and after their 4½ hours of daily work duties, Blum and career coach John Burke drill the interns on their skills such as managing money, arranging for transportation to a job site, making eye contact with co-workers and supervisors and dressing appropriately for work.
"The emphasis is that we need to be professional," Blum said. "We need to look professional."
And to stay with the program, they need to make it to class and to work at least 95 percent of the time to stay eligible.
"It's full-time immersion," Blum said. "Every day counts here."
Planning to bring Project SEARCH to DHMC began in late 2010, not long after the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Board of Trustees conferred its James Varnum National Quality Award on the founders of the original Project SEARCH program at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center . With encouragement from administration to join the list of more than 140 such programs worldwide – among them St. Joseph Hospital in Nashua, NH – as soon as possible, Henry forged partnerships with PathWays of the River Valley, Lincoln Street, the New Hampshire and Vermont offices of vocational rehabilitation, and the special-education office of the Hartford School district in Vermont to find candidates for the internships, as well as people to screen, train and guide the interns.
With her internship in rehabilitation nearly done and with rotations in two other departments still to come, Megan Lantz dreams of developing enough different skills to graduate from her seasonal work – teaching snowboarding at Mount Sunapee Resort.
"I would like a full-time paying job," says Lantz, echoing her Project SEARCH colleagues.
