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SCHENECTADY COUNTY
System aimed to help workers
Official labors to coordinate job-related aid
BY KATHLEEN MOORE Gazette Reporter

    The county’s One Stop job programs are being reorganized to keep workers from falling through the cracks.
    Now, skilled carpenters who can’t afford a $300 set of tools can get them through the county welfare system even if the worker isn’t on welfare.
    Likewise, nurse aides who need a car to travel to their patients will be funneled to Catholic Charities, which runs the Wheels to Work program.
    “We’re creating a system that allows that back and forth,” said Social Services Commissioner Dennis Packard, who was given responsibility this year for all job services, from welfare to job placement to youth employment. He is working to reorganize the entire system now, hoping to collaborate with every private and public agency that offers jobsrelated services.
    “We need to do what we do well, and not do the things we haven’t done or don’t know how to do,” he said.
    So he won’t try to re-create wheels to work, or a job retention program, or any of the other services now offered by nonprofits.
    “There are so many — Schenectady Community Action, Washington Irving [Educational Center], Municipal Housing — these all have employment components to them,” Packard said. “Collaboration — we’re going to try to develop that.”
    The reorganization came as Hamilton Hill-based jobs placement agency Jobs Etc. closed down. City officials had said the agency was an unnecessary duplication of the county’s One Stop program, and urged consolidation.
    The agency instead tried to re-create itself as a jobs retention mentoring program, but could not get funding.
    Packard said the loss of Jobs Etc. has not affected the One Stop at all.
    But his reorganization appears to resolve several problems that Jobs Etc. workers could not fi x. They regularly struggled to find ways for skilled workers to buy the uniforms, tools and cars they needed to start their jobs. In many cases, the workers ended up in minimum wage jobs instead.
    Packard said the connection to the welfare-to-work office could solve many of those problems.
    “The One Stop might help a person find a job, but that job requires this person to buy a uniform and they don’t have the money. They’re in danger of going on public assistance if they don’t get the job. We can buy them the uniform,” Packard said. The county could buy tools and other expensive start-up equipment as well, he said, although there are financial limits.
    Welfare recipients preparing for work could also benefit from the connection to the One Stop job services.
    “Welfare-to-work staff do not do résumé preparation. They don’t offer workshops in interview techniques. They don’t offer workshops in financial literacy, how to budget when you get that first paycheck,” Packard said.
    Rather than add those programs to the office, staff are now directed to send those workers to the One Stop.
    “It will hopefully be a nowrong-door point of entry,” Packard said. “People did get sent to us [welfare-to-work] before — it shouldn’t be taken as a criticism. My goal is to make this process really function seamlessly.”