CANI, BLUE JACKET PARTNERSHIP EXPANDS EMPLOYMENT TRAINING

| May 22, 2014

(link to original article in Greater Fort Wayne Business Weekly)

Posted: Thursday, April 3, 2014 11:00 pm | Updated: 7:29 am, Fri Apr 4, 2014.

When the board of directors of Community Action of Northeast Indiana decided that organization should get more involved in employment training and placement initiatives, it just made sense to turn to another agency with experience in that area.

The CANI Career Academy, which just graduated its second class of 2014, is based on and run by Blue Jacket Inc., which was created in 2003 as a project of Allen County Community Corrections to provide employment training and assistance to ex-offenders.

Only about three hours of the four-week, 60-hour program offered to students enrolled through CANI are different than Blue Jacket’s ex-offenders program, said its executive director, Tony Hudson.

CANI Executive Director Steve Hoffman said the organization’s board identified employment-related services as an objective it should pursue a year or so ago as part of a three-year planning process. The nonprofit knew and admired the Blue Jacket program — which focuses primarily on soft skills such as completing a job application, résumé writing, interviewing, career exploration and work life requirements — and decided to piggy-back its offering on that.

“We subcontract with Blue Jacket to provide that for us and it helps them by giving them revenue,” Hoffman said.

The contract also gives CANI clients who complete the course job placement assistance through Blue Jacket’s in-house subsidiary, Opportunity Staffing, and access to Blue Jacket’s clothing bank.

“That’s part of the package we get,” Hoffman said.

The CANI Academy training is geared for clients who are unemployed, but also could be provided to clients who are underemployed and looking for full-time or better-paying work.

CANI offered the job training program four times last year and twice this year, with the next class set to start in May. The two classes this year had 17 and 19 students.

“Last year, attendance was a little weak,” Hoffman acknowledged, but said the organization itself was partly to blame because it hadn’t developed its own structure to support clients in the program.

“It was new. We had to get our own internal processes squared away.”

Clients enrolled in the training course are expected to commit to the process. They get demerits if they are late and can be dropped from the program if they miss a class.

“They have to be there. They’re going to be treated as if they’re at a job,” Hoffman said.

CANI picks up the cost of the training for its clients, but after much discussion, decided to assess them a $30 application fee. “We’re trying to get a little buy-in,” Hoffman explained.

There is already evidence the program is working. Through the end of the first class this year, CANI Academy graduates had a 78-percent job placement rate.

“We think that’s a pretty good number,” Hoffman said.

Each program can handle about 25 students. CANI has been filling most of the slots but hopes to increase partnership efforts with other social-service agencies to bring their clients into the training. It also may look at offering the program at a site other than Blue Jacket’s Calhoun Street facility, Hoffman added.

When Blue Jacket created its training program 11 years ago, it modeled it after a Chicago effort that targeted people living in poverty, the homeless and veterans as well as ex-offenders. It expanded its mission a few years ago to include “all disadvantaged candidates,” Hudson said.

The agency also is investigating the need for classes for those who do not speak English, Hudson added.