In the Driver's Seat - christopher reardon

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25Mandi: In Denver, very few programswould say, “Oh, you know what? You canplace this person. You can give themtransportation for 18 months. It’s awin/win situation here. Let’s take advantageof it.” It was more competition,which was very odd because Bridges is notcompetitive. They would still get credit forall of the placements, and we would dothe follow-up services with that client. Butwe had to try to find job-ready people.And there is so much territorialism thatother programs are not going to send ustheir best clients. Why would they do that?Then they don’t have that person. Thatwas their philosophy: Why would we sendyou our best clients and then not be ableWe finally just said “forget it.” It was toohard to work around all of their new rules.They were going through so many changesthat it was easier for us not to use them asa recruitment source. If people came fromwelfare, yes, we would serve them. But wedidn’t use the welfare department as areferral source.Robert: In Chicago, too, the originalcollaborative mostly involved other jobprograms. It turned out to be a substantialbust. That became very clear even beforeI got there, and we started to developrelationships with CBOs and churches andministers and alliances with the aldermanand the congressman up there. They havethese job fairs all the time. There are soNo matter what approach we used, no matter who went out andtalked to them, no matter what benefits we could show them, about 1in 10 would say, “Okay, we’ll send you some clients.” Then if theydid, it was the people they didn’t want to serve. —Mandi Huserto count that person? And no matter howmuch we explained it to them, they stillthought we were stealing their clients.Chris: You’re talking about public agencies,like the ones charged with moving peoplefrom welfare to work?Mandi: Right. It was extremely difficult towork with the welfare department. Wewould have interviews set up for theclients and they would say, “Oh, no. Theyhave to be at a meeting over here today.”So do you want them to go to a jobinterview or do you want them to cometo one of your mandatory meetings? Letthem go to the interview and they’ll havea job tomorrow. I told one of the welfarecaseworkers, “I can guarantee you thisperson will have a job tomorrow if sheshows up at the interview.” And shesaid, “No, we won’t excuse her fromthis meeting.”many other avenues that we’ve had tolook at; we can’t rely on referrals fromthe one-stops.We recently moved one of our orientationsites to the Chicago Department of HumanServices building, where they’re lettingus operate at no charge because we areserving some of their emergency servicefolks. These are people who were basicallyhomeless. The good thing about that isthat they have a caseworker, and if we’reable to get them a job, then the kind ofsupport services that our staff wouldn’thave enough time to provide can beprovided by the caseworker. So we’ve hadabout five or six good placements, and wejust started doing this in the last month.They’re pretty solid too—no problems.They’re really motivated.Chris: It sounds like there were realcommunication barriers at some of thesites. How did you and your staff in
26Baltimore succeed in conveying thestructure and goals of Bridges to yourpartners and get them to really buy into it?Linda: Well, it took a lot of hand holding,a lot of favors. By favors, I mean reallytrying to get in there with people likeOED, the state Office of Employment andDevelopment, and other members of ourcollaborative. For instance, OED may havea delegation coming in from anothercountry, and they need somebody to pickthem up from the train station. If we had avan available, we would charge a small feeto cover our operating costs, but we woulddo it. We would do things like that toencourage collaboration. You scratch myback, I’ll scratch yours.invite people to come out on the next day.Members of their congregations helpedwith recruitment and doing the applications,and with the training and support.A number of congregation members hadsocial-work degrees and volunteered todo counseling. They offered clothing,suits and dresses for people to wearwhen they went on interviews. So theywere really supportive.Other organizations we tapped into thatpeople in training programs traditionallywouldn’t think about were the missions,the shelters. They were able to help someof our individuals who were in transitionfor housing, and we were able to help anumber of their residents get jobs and getWe built up our relationship with them by exchanging staff visits andhaving them come out to see what we do and just get familiar with theprocess. They quickly realized that, unlike a lot of programs out there,we actually had something to offer. It was not just talk. We had jobs.—Robert CarterChris: Did that pay off in any tangible way?What did OED do for you in return?Linda: They started referring people tous. We used their training rooms for ourorientation. We did joint job fairs. So therelationship really grew over time. Samething with the Baltimore MetropolitanCouncil, the MPO for the Baltimore region.We did a couple of panel discussions downthere and they eventually helped us obtainAccess to Jobs funding. It got to be a real,true collaborative.Chris: How helpful were churches andother community-based organizations?Linda: The other CBOs were absolutelygreat to us. We partnered with thechurches, which were our number onesource of referrals. When we did job fairs,they would announce us during theSunday morning worship service andon their feet. Now they have their ownapartments, and they’re self-sustaining.So the CBOs and the churches and theneighborhood associations were prettygood. Everybody on the grassroots levelpretty much saw that we were havingan impact on unemployment in EastBaltimore.We have a list of a good 60 partners—likecommunity-based organizations that startedfeeding people to us and providing othersupport services. If they offered child care,we could refer people. It wasn’t that theywere in competition with us, but they sawthe advantage of partnering and teamingup together.Chris: “Collaboration” has become quitea buzzword in recent years. But how doyou get partner organizations to seeyour relationship as an integral part oftheir work?
Page 2 and 3: I N THED RIVER’ SS EATFive local
Page 4: 1CONTENTS3 Foreword:Getting to Work
Page 7 and 8: 4CONTRIBUTORSAbout the project dire
Page 10 and 11: 7INTRODUCTIONVoices of ExperienceTh
Page 12 and 13: 9challenges by expanding and contin
Page 14 and 15: 11so we’re looking at some other
Page 16 and 17: 13Linda: We modeled our training af
Page 18 and 19: 15A Snapshot of the ParticipantsAt
Page 20 and 21: 17drunk or whatever, that affects t
Page 22 and 23: 19because it’s the kind of traini
Page 24 and 25: 21Linda: Yes, they saw the van when
Page 26 and 27: 23into the suburbs and employers ar
Page 30 and 31: 27Robert: Well, take the Safer Foun
Page 32 and 33: 29HEADS OR TAILSMany of them would
Page 34 and 35: 31The concern was the integrity of
Page 36 and 37: 33• Discrimination: The marketpla
Page 38 and 39: Milwaukee. The Milwaukee Private In
Page 40 and 41: 37U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOUSING ANDURB
Page 43: Public/Private VenturesThe Chanin B

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