Every week, we spotlight a different Power of a Job success story. This week, we bring you Betty Jenne, a WorkSource specialist at WorkSource Kittitas County in Ellensburg.
I have a rather unique story I want to share about a customer named Gene. Gene is an adult with disabilities who worked for 14 years at a fast food restaurant in Ellensburg. The employer decided to close and sold the business to a pizza shop. Gene was hired at the pizza shop, but while they were remodeling, he was unemployed, so I started his unemployment. Then he started going to work.
As he worked at the pizza place, he was working with pizza dough and it didn’t seem to be working out so well. So, he came back to me to see if he could get unemployment, and I was trying to help him. I sent him information and he always diligently brought me all of his paperwork.
When I went to restart his unemployment, I realized that his paperwork had not gotten all the way processed, so we restarted it and processed his paperwork. I reported the incident to my supervisor to let him know that the paperwork was quite massive due to Gene’s transition. We ended up with 42 pages of back claims to be processed. Gene was very diligent with everything. He brought me all of his paystubs. I imported everything for him and he ended up getting over $2,000 in back benefits.
I was so proud of Employment Security for looking at his case and helping him with it, because he really, really needed the money. His brother was supporting him.
Gene needed more help, so we sent him to Washington’s Department of Vocational Resources and to Central Washington Disability Resources. And we also introduced him to Elmview [an organization which ensures that people with disabilities remain in their communities and live full and productive lives].
Gene finally ended up with a great job coach named Elizabeth Sessions who works at Central Washington Disability Resources. She is helping Gene connect with a job. We’re also trying to get him connected with Social Security disability since Gene is 60 years old.
I would encourage everybody to come into WorkSource and check out all the opportunities we have here. We have all kinds of employment classes and we also can help one-on-one.
Note: Unemployment insurance claimants always should contact the Unemployment Claims Center online or at 800-318-6022 for help with their claims. Betty helped Gene at WorkSource because WorkSource policy allows customers with special needs to use WorkSource for help with their unemployment claims.
WorkSource offices and the Unemployment Claims Center have auxiliary aids and services available upon request to people with disabilities. Auxiliary aids may include telecommunication devices such as Washington Relay Service 711 for hearing- or speech-impaired individuals.
Every week, we spotlight a different Power of a Job success story. This week, we bring you Debi Keyzer of WorkSource Central Basin in Moses Lake. Debi is a job coach in the WorkFirst program, which helps low-income parents who receive cash assistance (known as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF) to prepare for and go to work.
“Josh” has been a WorkFirst client of mine several times. He has a tendency to take jobs and not keep them. And he keeps coming back to WorkSource.
One day Josh came in, and a local employer who comes into our office frequently happened to be there. This employer provides services to a big business in Moses Lake.
I talked to Josh about working there. He can’t work nights and weekends because of being a single dad. This place only works Monday through Thursday — four ten-hour days with weekends off. The pay was wonderful, and the more I talked to Josh, the more interested he became.
So, I took him over to meet with the employer. Then he had a second interview the next day with the corporate recruiter on military base in Moses Lake and was hired on the spot, starting at $15.77 per hour! The last job he had, he was making about $10 per hour. He was so happy, he came in saying how thankful he was that he got that job and how much he enjoys working there.
When I met with Josh previously, I always helped him with his resume and showed him how to interview. He had attended our Job Hunter course series in our office. He learned how to really look for a job, apply and how to make a resume look good.
We offer a variety of services that were very beneficial to him. We also have supportive service dollars in the WorkFirst program, and I was able to help him buy steel-toed boots. They’re very spendy but required by the employer. Josh didn’t have the money, so we helped him with that and with money for work clothes gas to make sure he could get to his job.
We offer a lot of other services at WorkSource. It doesn’t matter who you are; we’re there to help you. We provide lots of services to help you to get back to work in the community.