ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, March 31, 1997 TAG: 9703310014
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: NORFOLK
SOURCE: ELIZABETH SIMPSON THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
MEMO: NOTE: Shorter version ran in Metro edition.
It costs an average of $2,200 for Virginia to move a person from welfare to work. A company hired by Norfolk has been succeeding for $1,500.
Fifteen dressed-for-success students sit quietly around a table in an office concentrating on the intricacies of a resume.
The curriculum at this institute ranges from job applications to interviews to work attitude. But for these students, the goal is something loftier than enlightenment: It's getting a job.
This is the Norfolk Education, Employment and Training Center, a nonprofit business that opened in 1993 to help the Norfolk Division of Social Services move people from welfare to work.
The results have been documented: 84 percent of its students during the past year have gotten jobs.
Social services agencies often see these companies as a way to inject efficiency, technology and private sector performance into welfare departments swamped with caseloads. ``The trend is to try and decentralize, to get closer to the people,'' said Demetra Nightingale, director of a welfare and training research project at The Urban Institute. ``It's too soon to say whether these private companies will do better than public agencies in the long run.''
Before the center existed, Norfolk caseworkers cobbled together a hodgepodge of training, education and job skills for their clients.
``We felt we needed a soup-to-nuts approach, someone who could track job trends, who knew how to work with the welfare population, who could assess clients, train them and track them,'' said Suzanne Puryear, director of Human Services in Norfolk.
NEET fit the bill. The company's contract with Norfolk Social Services has been renewed every year since 1993 and recently expanded from teaching job readiness skills to placing students in jobs.
While the average cost to move a person from welfare to work in Virginia is $2,200, NEET's average has been $1,500, according to Puryear.
The NEET course lasts seven weeks and trains students in resume writing, job interviews and computer skills. Students must set up child-care arrangements and make sure they have reliable transportation before they can apply for a job.
``I want them to come every day as if they might be interviewed for a job,'' instructor Sylvia Powell said. ``Some have been resistant to that, but most have come to me and said they felt better about themselves once they started dressing this way.''
The center's staff helps students get identification cards, set up job interviews and apply for driver's licenses. They've helped students practice driving and helped those who don't have cars work out a bus route to possible job locations.
They've also helped women work through situations at home that have kept them from jobs - linking them with drug prevention help, helping them find places to live or helping them out of situations such as being stalked by former boyfriends.
The students also learn skills that will help them keep jobs once they get them. In class, the students go over a worksheet of situations that would improve their work conditions - greeting co-workers when arriving, asking co-workers to lunch, offering to take on more duties.
Etta Smith, 39, is finishing her fourth week at the center.
``It's a big help for people in transition like I am,'' said Smith, a former a clerk who hasn't worked for 10 years. She says NEET helped her brush up on job and computer skills.
``They make you feel like you are somebody,'' Smith said. ``They teach you the things that will help you succeed.''
LENGTH: Medium: 72 linesby CNB