3000 Employment Services

3440 Post-employment Services

Strategies to assist clients in becoming socially and financially stable are developed from a framework that includes the individual's and family's social and economic reality. Post-Employment Case Management services may be provided by the career navigator or purchased through contracted employment services. Services provided may include:

1. developing a Post-Employment Self-Sufficiency Plan that provides monitoring, re-assessment, planning, and service delivery that prioritizes emergent needs, mobilizes resources, describes responsibility, identifies timelines, and establishes goals;

2. developing contingency plans in the areas of child care, transportation, and preventable crises;

3. providing solutions-based problem solving and crisis intervention for coping with job stress, time/financial management, difficult employers/coworkers, and life balance (balancing work, school, and family responsibilities);

4. networking with community resources to help clients identify and establish their own network of services and resources so they can leave the program with an increased awareness of resources that can be utilized to overcome barriers;

5. creating systems of communication that meet the challenge of contacting people who are unavailable during daytime hours; establishing ongoing contact with participants by phone, handwritten notes and postcards, information and referral calls and messages, official letters, e-mail, and office visits; developing a scheduling matrix to plan dates for participant contact for effective and efficient monitoring;

6. helping participants understand and maintain eligibility for programs such as health insurance, Child Support Services (CSS), continuing and transitional ES Services, the Advanced Payment Option of the Earned Income Credit, income-eligible child care subsidy, food assistance and utility assistance;

7. providing employment retention and re-employment services such as job readiness and job search to assist an individual to remain employed or to locate another job or to help a participant who loses employment to find another job as quickly as possible;

8. visiting the job site, with the participant's permission;

9. providing referrals to available education and training resources, as needed, to increase an employed participant's skills or to help the participant qualify for advancement and longer-term employment while receiving cash assistance and for 12 months following the loss of cash assistance.

The philosophy behind providing post-employment services is that participants will;

• retain their jobs for longer periods of time;

• improve their wage levels; and

• identify new personal skills and potential ways to pursue the move toward self-sufficiency.