November 16, 2016
Project SEARCH and MMC win awards for program
By Rose Myers
Marshall Medical Centers
Kayla Hodges thought she was just doing her job. Turns out she was doing award-winning work.
“I just buckled down and tried my best,” says the 20-year-old Marshall Medical North employee.
Apparently that was the winning formula because Kayla was awarded the Student of the Year award by the Governor’s Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities.
“I was very excited,” she says.
Kayla was one of the original nine students who interned at Marshall Medical with the Project SEARCH program in 2015-16. Project SEARCH is a national program that targets students with intellectual and developmental disabilities with a goal of helping them become employable.
“We are so proud of Kayla and all she has accomplished,’’ says Project SEARCH Instructor Beth Hanner. “She has truly overcome so much and is reaching her goals through hard work and perseverance.”
The students from high schools all over the county worked for 10 months rotating between departments in Marshall North and South and TherapyPlus. Two students were hired to work permanently at each hospital, and five students landed jobs elsewhere.
Marshall Medicals’ partnership with Project SEARCH earned three awards from the Governor’s Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities, a program of the Alabama Department of Rehabilitation Service or ADRS. The mission of ADRS is to enable Alabama’s children and adults with disabilities to achieve their maximum potential.
“We at Marshall Medical Centers have found the Project Search partnership to be a very worthwhile program,” says Sabrina Weaver, director of Human Resources for MMC. “It has been very satisfying for members of our staff to work with these interns to help them learn job skills to better prepare them for future career opportunities. And, it has provided us with some terrific employees, like Kayla, who have proven to be dedicated, hard-working and very appreciative of the opportunity. I would highly recommend the program to other employers in the area.”
Marshall Medical Centers won Partnership of the Year for 2016 for recruiting people with disabilities, meeting the special needs of employees with disabilities and for demonstrating a genuine concern for the well-being of people with disabilities.
“The Marshall Medical Centers piece of this partnership formed through Project SEARCH is so important,” Hanner says. “They provide not only a facility but also a staff that mentors, guides and helps us lead our interns toward their goal of employment.”
The Marshall County Project Search Team won the 2016 Collaboration Award “in appreciation of your true spirit of cooperation via collaborative resources and networking on initiatives that contribute to the employment of individuals with disabilities.”
Kayla, a graduate of DAR High School, lives in Grant and is planning to get married next year. She works in the environmental services department performing housekeeping duties. She said she likes working in a healthcare environment much better than her previous job in a fast food restaurant.
In Marshall County Project SEARCH is a partnership between ADRS, the state and county boards of education and ARC of Jackson County. The county school system provides job coaches to supervise students on the job. Job coaches stay with students until they become skilled enough to work independently. Students were selected from DAR, Albertville, Brindlee Mountain, Asbury and Douglas high schools.