The Employment Collaborative of Cuyahoga County

YES To Employment

Season 2, Episode 4 — 18 October 2018

About this episode

Dale Verstegen talks with Jared Daly, Chris Carpenter and Eric Hibinjer of the Employment Collaborative of Cuyahoga County, Ohio. The Employment Collaborative of Cuyahoga County is a group of 37 local employment services providers, formed in 2014. They discuss how the Collaborative works to improve the quality of services to people with disabilities seeking employment, and better engage with businesses seeking employees.

About the presenters

Jared Daly has a Bachelor’s in Arts from Lake Erie College in Psychology and Criminal Justice. Upon graduating Jared worked two years as the Lead Job Developer for Goodwill Industries of Greater Cleveland and East Central Ohio developing and training new staff on job development and job coaching techniques. He now currently works for The Cuyahoga County Board of Developmental Disabilities as the Coordinator of Employer Engagement Services. Jared was the founder and now lead facilitator of the Cuyahoga County Employment Collaborative (ECCC). The ECCC is a group that has aggregated services of 37 local Employment Services providers to more efficiently connect the local business community to the diverse talent pool served by all participating partners. Jared recently completed a manual on creating and facilitating local Employment Collaboratives that is currently being utilized by counties throughout the state of Ohio.

Chris Carpenter is the Strategic Analysis Manager for the Cuyahoga County Board of Developmental Disabilities (CCBDD), a local government agency that annually serves more than 10,000 individuals from the Greater Cleveland area. In this role, Chris assists the board in analyzing, developing, and implementing performance and operational measurement functions, and is the Program Administrator for the Board’s State Vocational Rehabilitation contract. Chris also oversees CCBDD’s Business Engagement team, and their region wide Business Engagement Initiative. He has previous experience in supervising Job Placement Services, Supported EmploymentServices, Job Coaching, Summer Work programs, and Adult Day Services. Chris holds a Master of Science in Education from the University of Akron, a Master of Education in Rehabilitation Counseling from Kent State University, and is a Certified Employment Support Professional.

Eric Hibinger is the Job Placement Supervisor at Oakleaf Partners. He graduated with his Bachelor’s of Science in Education as a Mild/Moderate Intervention Specialist. He taught five years for two charter schools in the greater Cleveland area. His main focus group was kids with emotional disturbances/behavioral challenges that were in the high school age range. For the past 4 years, Eric has been working at UCP of Greater Cleveland in their Adult Services Department, otherwise known as Oakleaf Partners. Eric started as a job developer and was instrumental in the training and onboarding of new staff at his agency while successfully helping the individuals that Oakleaf Partners was serving at the time find integrated competitive employment. In 2017 Eric moved into the role of Job Placement Supervisor and is responsible for a case load of 130+ individuals who work with seven job placement staff.

Dale Verstegen is a Senior Research Associate at TranScen and one of the State Liaison for the YES! Center.

Transcript

Announcer: You’re listening to YES! To Employment, a podcast series that seeks to improve competitive, integrated employment outcomes for transition-aged youth and young adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

In June Dale Verstegen took the opportunity of being at the APSE Annual Conference to talk with Jared Daly, Chris Carpenter and Eric Hibinjer of the Employment Collaborative of Cuyahoga County, Ohio. The Employment Collaborative of Cuyahoga County is a group of 37 local employment services providers, formed in 2014. They discuss how the Collaborative works to improve the quality of services to people with disabilities seeking employment, and better engage with businesses seeking employees.

Musical interlude

Complete transcript forthcoming

Announcer: You’ve been listening to YES! To Employment, a podcast that seeks to improve competitive, integrated employment outcomes for transition-aged youth and young adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

Today we spoke with with Jared Daly, Chris Carpenter and Eric Hibinger of the Employment Collaborative of Cuyahoga County. The Collaborative will soon be launching a new website and releasing a manual on how to start and run an employment collaborative. You can follow them on Facebook at facebook.com/EmploymentCollabCuyahoga for contact information and updates.

For more about YES! To Employment, including show notes, links to the resources discussed, a complete transcript and a schedule of episodes, visit www.yestoemployment.org/podcast. You can subscribe through iTunes or your favorite Android podcast app to have the series delivered automatically to your device so you never miss an episode. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please give us a rating on iTunes. Ratings will help us get the series in front of more listeners.

YES! To Employment is a production of the Youth Employment Solutions Center, the national Training and Technical Assistance Center that serves as a hub of information and expertise for the Partnerships in Employment (PIE) state projects. The YES! Center is a collaboration of TASH and TransCen. You can learn more about TASH at tash.org and more about TranCen at transcen.org. You can receive updates from the YES! Center on this podcast and our other activities by following us on Facebook or on twitter at @YEStoEmployment.

Partnerships in Employment is a series of seed grants funded by the Administration for Community Living’s Administration on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, made to states for the purpose of transforming state disability support systems to competitive, integrated employment. AIDD is dedicated to ensuring that individuals with developmental disabilities and their families are able to fully participate in, and contribute to all aspects of community life in the United States and its territories.

Music for YES! To Employment is an original composition and performance by Sunny Cefaratti, the Co-Director and Autistic Self Advocacy Mentor at the Musical Autist. You can learn more about the Musical Autist at www.themusicalautist.org.

Be sure to keep YES! To Employment on your subscription list: we’ll be back with another innovator in competitive integrated employment soon.

Musical postlude

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This interview was originally recorded in June 2018.

The audio of this interview and the transcript have been lightly edited for clarity.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. You are free to copy, redistribute or adapt it for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial, provided you adhere to the terms, including that you attribute the original source.

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