Transcript
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All right. And again, welcome everyone to this month’s 30 min of excellent session. My name is Kim Meadows, and I am the director of training here at Nautil. In case this is your 1st time being on the 30 min of excellent session. We do this once every month.
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And it’s our time to really highlight best practices and services and programs from throughout the field. And then it’s also a time to help build our workforce development community and see what your peers are doing throughout the country. So we always look forward to this time together today. April is a really special month, so we really wanted to focus this month on.
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Um, working with individuals who are justice involved. And so April is recognized as Second Chance Month, and this is a time to raise awareness about the barriers many individuals face after incarceration.
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Uh, to highlight the importance of career pathways to employment, stability, and opportunity. But it’s also a good reminder that we as workforce professionals and employers pay a vital role in opening the doors and changing lives of these individuals.
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Um, and so with that said, I am excited to welcome our tag team duo here. We have Doug Van Zant, and then we have Kiva and Tila, and they are going to walk us through and really talk about how to work with Second Chance citizens in this presentation. So.
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I say lean in. I always tell everybody lean in. I know there’s a lot going on, but really just focus your attention on the material that they have. They have some great things to share with us, and they will take questions at the end of the presentation. But as of right now, I will turn it over to Doug and Kiva, and you all can take it away.
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Good morning, or actually, it’s afternoon for you guys. It’s still morning for us here in Oregon. I’m I’m Doug Van Zandt, and I’m a workforce specialist for Clackamas County H. 3s, which is.
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In Oregon, in Oregon City, Oregon, and I’m joined today by Kiva Attila. She’s also a workforce specialist, and we’re going to kind of.
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give you some good information today on the second chance.
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gainful employment and resources, and we’re very passionate about the work we do due to our own background and lived experience, and I think it’s it’s a fantastic, uh.
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thing that CAMA offered me to speak on this subject today, and we’re really excited to give you this this information. And at the end I have a short video of a success story. I think that it’ll really end on a good note.
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And then like Kim said, I’ll be taking questions and stuff at the end, so.
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All right. You want to. Okay. Okay, Doug Van Zant. So I’m a workforce specialist. I work with a program called STEP Employment and Training. What we do is we service every individual that’s looking for gainful employment.
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that lives in Clackamas County, I would say 75% of the people that I that I work with on a yearly basis is justice involved, recently released from a state institution, local institution, and have extreme barriers.
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I have. I have over 20 years experience in the social services field. I worked with 2 nonprofits. I worked in prison transitions before I got into workforce, and also I worked in mental health and addiction counseling.
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which prompt me to, uh… there was another purpose I needed to serve in. I think helping the most recent returnees from incarceration was was my.
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mission that I wanted to get on and I’ve been successfully able to do that for the last 11 years with Blackmas County. I think reentry after incarceration is a key is just one of the most important jobs that any workforce specialist could have.
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Um, I… you know, when I get up every morning, I’m one of those guys that can’t wait to get to work to see what opportunities I can have to help somebody.
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Um, next slide, please.
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Okay, so my approach is my release date from prison was June 28th of 2,002.
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I went through the system because I made poor choices in my early life.
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Grew up in a household that wasn’t really probably the best for me. And I was kind of rebellious.
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Today I… today I believe in accountability and compassion to work with somebody. I like to meet people where they’re at when they come into me, and uh… build a proper case plan. One of the key components that I do also is is I help people overcome barrier barriers and build skills and gain confidence.
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So I don’t judge people. as I do, what can we do to get to the next level? I show a lot of authenticity and humor, and I have. I believe in everybody.
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Um, I, one of the things that I really, when I first started in the field, um, I, people would come in and see me and they’d say, oh, you don’t understand where I’ve been. And I just get out my wallet and pull out my prison ID card and put it on the table and explain.
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Okay, this is where I’ve been. I I shared my my personal experience of incarceration, and also I thought it was very important to to explain the struggles that I personally experienced going through getting out of prison in 2,002 with nothing.
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and also having to be turned down for job opportunities because of my background.
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And to me, to me, there’s no… if somebody tells me no, that means come back tomorrow.
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And I kind of like stayed with that my whole whole career, and it.
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you know, like I said, I I like to see the best and make sure everybody has has every chance to succeed.
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Can you go to the next slide? Here’s some of my glamorous shots.
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From my days of being incarcerated and arrest cycles. And I actually use this.
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In part of my intake process with when I see a particular individual just released from incarceration.
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And and how I live today is I stay connected and give back to the community.
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that helped shape me. And also, I’ve seen real change in my own life, and I use that to show others that change is possible. And.
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We were kind of we we think that we do unique services.
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Here at this agency, um, because we think outside the box. How can we help this person be successful? How can we build the skill set to have them get gainful employment and to be a successful in the community that they’re releasing to.
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And I’m committed in finding purpose. for people that can believe in themselves.
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Next slide. Okay, so work readiness is really not the primary barrier access is.
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Many justice involved individuals, when they come out after doing.
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In conservation time are ready and willing to work and they have a lot of transferable skills that sometimes aren’t really aren’t really put on the resume for… You know, just they had the previous jobs they work, but we think outside the box and put… and make up the resume with a lot of transferable skills that they can use in the daily job.
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And and at most cases are motivated to stabilize their lives.
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And, like, the biggest barriers, like, that we notice on a pretty common time is the background check situation. How to appeal a background check, how to go through the process of explaining your criminal history.
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And and then also, as far as. The other needs that’s really crucial is the housing housing instability in Oregon. We’re having a crisis of homelessness and not enough housing that people can afford.
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Um, and also the employment gaps on the resume, how to explain that.
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And and of course. This is a pretty common one is the stigma in hiring systems of talking to robots.
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And going through the background check and getting denied automatically.
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Next slide, please. Okay, so strength based perspective. So justice involved individual also always a lot.
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I’ll just involve individuals often bring resilience. That means.
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staying strong, keeping, you know, getting turned down, but but getting back up and still applying, and uh… One of the one of the things we do in Clackamas County. We actually do really intense case management, and they’re we’re in the car with this at the employers. A lot of us go into the interviews, and we talk about we talk about, you know, the strengths of the individuals that we’re having interviewed.
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And we talk about accountability. We want to make sure that the accountability piece is involved in in the resilience. And then also being adaptable, you know, getting out and maybe getting a get started job.
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to move into the next level. Um, we’re able to also work with the numerous community partners that the Clackamas County has really, um, has, has so many great community partners that we, um.
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Trade Services. We work together on a lot of stuff. A lot of times that we do support services with three different agencies so that we can make sure that the prospective returning citizen from incarceration has all the, uh, the resources available so that they can.
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get that job. And also, here’s, this is kind of like my best one is persistence.
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Like my motto says, no means come back tomorrow. In my own personal experience, when I got out of prison on June 28th of 2002, I was constantly turned down for job after job after job. That was before Ban the Box came in. That was just like, okay.
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You just got out of prison, I don’t trust you, I don’t know anything about you, is all I know is that you had a job 5 years ago, for example.
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So we we really… really want to stay focused on on the big goal. And the motivation for stability.
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We teach that, and they they show up to our case management meetings on time. They also are constantly looking for the the right job so they can be able to pay their bills. And then we’re the cheerleaders also. So we we cheer them on.
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for everything they do, and also, you know, we don’t we don’t listen like, hey, nobody’s going to hire me because I have felonies. I have tattoos or I don’t have any job history.
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We’re serious motivators here in Clackamas County, and we want to make sure that each and every person that walks in our doors gets the genuine services so that we can keep everything in perspective. And the only strength that you’ve got is your word sometimes. And, you know, we teach that. We teach the accountability as far as.
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You know, give a background, but don’t, you know, keep it in perspective. And I think perspective is super key in everything that we do.
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Okay, next next slide, please.
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Okay, so so a lot of a lot of the the storytelling framework, the past, accountability, change, and present readiness.
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We always teach past be brief and factual because we know it’ll come in on a on a background check. And we want to we want to really.
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Just a brief factual time. And on the accountability, own the situation, because it’s going to come up. Just own the situation.
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And then talk about… talk about the change. What did you work on on while you were incarcerated? Did you take some additional training? Did you, um… get some education. Were you working to improve your life skills and soft skills?
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And we just keep it real brief on the on the storytelling framework and present readiness. Why are they there now?
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They’re there because they made some bad choices. They they want to be a productive citizen.
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They… they want a chance to prove themselves. I mean, there’s there’s a whole bunch of stuff we could talk. I could talk a half an hour just on this section here.
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Next slide, please. Okay, retention focus. So one of one of the things that we that we feel would that that’s super important is the job retention and new skills gain employment success, support, and stability.
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That… so the… it’s not just a placement. What affects the the retention are transportation reliability like if it’s on a bus line, or do they have a driver’s license, or or do they have a car, or.
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is is the job they’re trying to get to. They can’t get to. So we problem solve all that transportation reliability. Case management is such a crucial part of a placement. Communications part.
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Communicate, so you get on the job in the first day, and you’re really unsure and unstable. Let’s work together and see how we can communicate better so that you can advance in this job.
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And here again with our case management, we do workplace coaching. We have. I have 73 employers in the the area right now that that I work with, and um… A lot of times like the Hr. Department will call me like, Hey, we’re noticing that the communications isn’t real good. Can you come and work with this? This individual on the job?
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We’ve been able to build relationships with employers that we actually go to the interviewing, like I said in the earlier slide, and also that we can actually coach them on some stuff that they don’t feel like they’re doing a very good job on. They maybe the workforce specialists that come into the facility.
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and do some teaching on, hey, you need to do. This is the this is the job description you need to try doing it this way.
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And we’ve been very successful at doing that. The case management, like I said, basic stability needs like, do they? Do they need tools for the job? Do they need workflows? Do they need help with the transportation?
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We’re able to, with our community partners, be able to reach out and gain some valuable support service dollars that we can help facilitate that.
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And here’s one of the things I really like to do is I like to follow up follow up after placement and do, you know, check in sometimes weekly, sometimes monthly.
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I liked it here on the phone, like, yeah, this job is the best job I ever had, and I already got an advancement. I’m moving up to a new department. I’m making five more dollars. And, you know, so we actually stay with the.
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with the recent release incarcerated person, we usually stay with them up to 90 days, sometimes 2 years, sometimes 6 months, whatever it takes for them to be successful. Um… And like I said, a job offer start starts employment set success. It doesn’t complete it, because I like I said. I I’m involved in every single one of my clients.
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It released incarcerated persons life, sometimes daily, sometimes weekly, and sometimes monthly. And… that they sometimes, if they are struggling with the skill with with our great community partners here, we can actually send people to trainings, short-term trains where they can keep the job and go to short-term trainings on our on their off hours.
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We’ve been very successful out here with that. And I’ve had I’ve had people come back to me a year later after we’ve placed them in jobs.
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saying, man, I can’t believe that I’ve been there a year, and I wanted to quit the first day, and you talked me into not doing that.
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Because I didn’t feel comfortable. And so, you know, like I said, we’re involved in each and every one of our clients live out here.
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Next slide, Kim. Okay, employer engagement. So this this is something that I that I do 20 h a week. I’m out knocking on doors of employers and talking to them and explaining to them about.
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the the the benefits of hiring somebody that’s got a barriers in their life and backgrounds. And we also offered Ojt on the job training programs where they can help supplement some of their.
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wages and also the WOTC, where they can get the tax credit. And then we also use work experience, which is free that they come in, and it’s… it’s like a free trial.
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And we’ve been very, very lucky in that part where employers are really, really like those benefits. And it helps open a lot more opportunities for our people.
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Um, and… I have most of my employers call me like on Monday or Tuesday, say I have three openings here or I got two openings or I got one opening. And so with with the our ability to network with the local employers here.
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Um, we built a lot, a really good reputation and they know what they’re getting from our very first opportunity, um, where people are restarting their lives, have sometimes have mental health issues, sometimes have addiction issues that came from that.
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And we’ve been very, very happy with the results that we get by just communicating. I’ll stop in and just say hi or whatever, and they’ll go, Oh yeah, hey, hey, look at your guy out there. Look at his welding already, or, you know, it’s.
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It’s just it, it’s really employee engagement is is the one of the most fun finest roles that I get to do because I obviously like to talk. And it’s important to me to build a crucial relationship with employers.
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And advocating for for fair hiring. I normalize the second chance hiring because, you know, I’m transparent with the type of, uh.
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clientele that I have when I offered that to the employer.
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I also share success stories and, and share where I came from. And, and I really encourage the employers and HR departments to really be involved.
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I’ve had them come to events. We have job fairs, and we have numerous other kind of events in the community that that I’m able to meet. Opportunities are created through relationships, not just application.
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That’s super important, also, to me. Next slide, please.
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Okay. So here’s the… here’s the program that I’m currently running, the snap training and employment program. It I call it the step program. And, like I said earlier, everybody that’s receiving snap benefits. I get paid. I get paid. We have a contract with Oregon Department of Human Services.
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which is the. What they do is provide food stamps and other benefits for people and OHP, which is Oregon Health Plan, and my program, like I said, is one-on-one search support, case management.
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Um, I usually work with 140 clients a year. So I’m pretty busy, busy person. And also, um, you know, it’s… I love what I do, and it’s super important to me that I’m available and I can also.
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Do my unique services that we do here, individualized, you know, training. We work with.
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welding schools, we work with colleges, we work with other departments and other community partners here in in Clackamas County, and everybody everybody in the network is we we got the same mission and same goals. We want to help.
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People get gainful employment. We want to break the stigma, and we also want to remove any kind of barriers.
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And it’s it’s a phenomenal job. And I’m sure all 62 or 62 you people out there.
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can relate with that, that we want to help the still suffering people so that they can break down those barriers.
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So this story I want to show you. This is a person that came in from multiple prison sentences in different states, and was about ready to go to prison again.
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And that’s and that’s when I kind of met got the referral from community corrections on this person saying, is there anything you can do for this person? Because right now, she’s going to be going back to prison, and… We don’t really want to do that, but we want to also try.
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To over… help her overcome some barriers. So far, what we’ve done hasn’t worked. What can you do? So I, you know, this was a referral I really enjoy. So this is a story of the client. This is… This is a good one. So, Kim, you want to play the video, please?
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I will, and just, uh, give me a thumbs up if you can hear it.
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When I started using when I was 12. The first time I got arrested, I was 13, and, um, the last time I used and was arrested, I was 29. It was right before my 30th birthday. I was given prison or treatment.
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As another alternative, and I chose treatment, and I went through Clackamas County Substance Abuse Program, CSAP, it’s an inpatient, um, and then outpatient, and then I also was sentenced to drug court.
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Can you have full screen.
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I can’t see the full screen.
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Oh.
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Going into treatment, I didn’t want to. I was… I just didn’t feel like I needed it. I thought I knew what was best, and I just wasn’t ready at that moment.
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I was just getting clean off of years of using, and I called drug court and I asked them to come down to CSAP, and I wanted to plead my case, let them know that I didn’t need inpatient, and I had this whole detailed plan. And they said, nope, you gotta stay here. This is prison or treatment is your options.” And the next morning I was sitting down.
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doing homework, and it was this, um, thing called a thinking report, and you write down a negative thought, and then you write reframes. My negative thought was, I don’t need to be here, I don’t want to be here, and my reframe was, nothing bad can come out of putting my all into this program. And I did, and here I am, three and a half years later and super grateful and I’ve stayed in really close contact with Drug Court for almost two years.
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After I graduated the program, I continued weekly therapy. It really helped change my thinking long-term. And then just, you know, career-wise, CFCC, they’ve helped me with so much. Finding jobs and advancing in jobs, they’ve helped pay for clothing, work boots, clothing for jobs.
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helped build resumes. They’ve walked me through so many different things. They help pay my rent while I was going to school. Over the last 11 years or so, I’ve spent hundreds of hours and weeks, months of my life.
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In that Clackamas County Courthouse, due to my addiction and criminality, and now I’m a heavy equipment operator, you know, helping build the new courthouse, which is pretty cool. In treatment, I rode out one year plan, five-year plan and ten-year plan.
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And definitely, I think I’ve hit everything on my five-year plan. You know, my daughter was put up for adoption and that process had started and I got her back. The judge said that in all of her years, she had never been able to give a child back in these type of circumstances. I was definitely proud of myself for that one. And then.
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I just bought a house earlier this year. I know that there’s hope now. I didn’t know that there was hope before. I really felt like I was just that was going to be my life. I was going to be… An addict and a criminal forever. And now that I’ve, you know, accepted help and made changes in my life, like, my life is full of hope. And I know that, um, these programs work, and I know that there’s, um… I have a bright future and a lot of that is just due to all the people that have helped me along.
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away. I mean, it’s proven that it works when you apply it to your life.
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Sorry if it’s a tearjerker.
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Yeah.
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Definitely a tearjerker. Thank you so much for sharing. I know we’re right here at the… at our 30 min, but thank you for sharing that information, Doug. Thank you for being transparent. I’ll definitely send this video out and the Powerpoint to everybody who registered. If you have any questions, I didn’t see any in the chat box.
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Well, I think, excuse me from Tiffany. She says, do you serve the public with the STEP program or just your current clients?
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Okay.
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the public. Yes. Yeah. So nobody gets. I know I know I’m I know we’re like relatively small agencies sometimes. But we we don’t turn anybody away if we can’t do everything for them.
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We get on the… on the… we make sure they have services from somebody right then. We don’t we don’t like we don’t like to see anybody get turned away.
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Awesome. Oh.
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There’s one more question about how you specifically deal with registrants, people that need to register on the sex offender list.
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So which one was that? I just put. Okay, so yeah, I… Um, we… we take all offenders.
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Um, we find the common good in everybody. we sometimes we have to get creative with our case management. It’s it’s important. But everybody deserves a chance.
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And like I said, if there’s something that we can’t help them, we reach out and do all the follow through to make sure that we can help the.
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that the the recent release. So yeah, we would we? I don’t know. So we.
00:30:46.000 –> 00:31:09.000
you know, like, I think the biggest thing for, like, me and Kiva, um, is that, you know, we’ve been there, we’ve… We’ve seen it in a lot of you, I know a lot of people have. And the stigma is out there. We’re like stigma breakers. We want to see.
00:31:09.000 –> 00:31:25.000
people to actually taking a look at people to help the communities have a better community to live in. And we’re we think at the I just seen a question pop up. Clackamas County, Oregon.
00:31:25.000 –> 00:31:30.000
is is like is my my zone that I have to follow.
00:31:30.000 –> 00:31:44.000
To answer that question. But yeah, and like I said, me and Kiba are, like, big stigma breakers. We want to make a difference in people’s lives, and we want to make a difference in the community, um, in, you know, with the times going on currently in the world.
00:31:44.000 –> 00:32:00.000
We’re always trying to see what we can do. And in Clackamas we have a great community partnership. It’s Clackamas Workforce Partnership is one of our best partners that we’ve that we’re working with.
00:32:00.000 –> 00:32:15.000
I could name probably 20 more, you know, and, and we get we get a lot of support from other agencies and they know what kind of work we do. Something I really wanted to bring up, you know, fast forward.
00:32:15.000 –> 00:32:31.000
So we start doing expungement work five years ago in a Clackamas Workforce Partnership, Amanda Wall is, was the one that set that program up. And we do criminal expungements now once a month.
00:32:31.000 –> 00:32:39.000
the second Monday of every month. So that’s been… that’s that’s opened up a lot of new doors for people. And.
00:32:39.000 –> 00:32:50.000
You know, it’s it’s it’s been amazing. We see people coming in with that they haven’t been in trouble for like 10 years and they have all these felonies on their record.
00:32:50.000 –> 00:33:01.000
120 days later, they have no felonies on their record. They come back and say, hey, I got a job working for the government or whatever, you know, and it’s like, you know, that’s, that’s why we do this work.
00:33:01.000 –> 00:33:11.000
We do this work because we want to see people smile and be happy and content with their life.
00:33:11.000 –> 00:33:26.000
All right. I think we’ve answered all. Excuse me, all of the questions. Doug and Kiva, thank you so much. One of the things I just want to highlight is definitely that success story was was amazing. That’s one of the things that we really tried to do with Nauta is advocate.
00:33:26.000 –> 00:33:44.000
For all these wonderful services and programs that we have throughout workforce development. So, if you all or anybody on the call, if you have any success stories that you want to share with NADA, we have a place on our website where you can come and put those videos or give us that success story, and we try to get that out to the workforce.
00:33:44.000 –> 00:34:01.000
Um, community, as well as our elected officials. So anything that you want to share with us, we do encourage you to advocate for your programs. We appreciate you all. Thank you for staying with us an extra 4 min. Um, Doug and Kiva, have a wonderful rest of your day.
00:34:01.000 –> 00:34:13.000
And then everybody who’s been a part of it, thank you for being a part, and we hope to see you again very, very soon. Enjoy your Wednesday.
