Maine's CHOICES CEO Project
Article published in the Bangor Daily News on April 11, 2008
By Sheila Grant
There are 131,000 adults of working age with disabilities in Maine. Of those, about 40 percent are employed. With the right training, the other 60 percent represent a vast pool of skilled labor for Maine’s employers.
“I would argue that with the right environment and the right training,
all of these folks could be working,” said Mel Clarrage, who chairs
Maine’s Commission on Disability and Employment. “I believe
that everyone, regardless of disability, can make a contribution in the
workplace.”
Clarrage is blind, yet he holds a master’s degree and has worked
with people with disabilities for 20 years. He believes that with the
right attitude and working environment, and the state and federal funds
to provide additional training, every disabled person in Maine could
be successfully employed.
His work with the commission is part of the Choices Comprehensive
Employment Opportunities Project based at the Muskie School of Public
Service at the University of Southern Maine. Choices is funded through
the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services through a grant to Maine’s
Department of Health and Human Services.
The program is dedicated to creating more opportunities for
people with disabilities who want to enter the workplace, and to enhancing
the experience for the disabled who are already in the workplace and
the employers who provide those opportunities.
“We are providing focus for a large and important initiative in Maine
to try and increase employment opportunities for people with disabilities,” said
Larry Glantz, director of the Choices CEO Project. “We want to focus
on doing a lot of work with employers to make sure they have the right information.
Some have a lot of fear about working with the disabled, but those who have
had the experience tend to feel really good about it, so we’ve been setting
up business-to-business communications. We want to make sure each business
has whatever training or orientation to the labor market they might need.”
Choices will have a booth at the 11th Annual Spring Career
and Job Fair, EmployME ’08, on April 16 in Bangor. “One of
the reasons we’re showing up at the job fair is to make sure people
with disabilities, and people who have an interest in the issues around
those with disabilities, can stop by and ask questions and pick up materials,” Glantz
said. Another duty at the booth this year will be to direct those interested
to a public meeting of the Commission on Disability and Employment being
held across the street at the Department of Human Services at 396 Griffin
Road from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. in conjunction with the event.
“Our primary purpose of being in Bangor is to get feedback on the activities
of the commission over the past several years,” Clarrage said. “We
have worked very closely with Choices CEO on Maine’s strategic plan for
increasing employment opportunities for folks with disabilities in Maine. We
encourage folks with disabilities, and anybody with issues around the employment
of folks with disabilities, to come in. We want to see if we’re on the
right track, or if we are missing pieces. This is an opportunity for the general
public to come in and help us figure out our work for the future.”
Input gained at these public meetings will assist the commission
and the Choices CEO Program as they examine the state’s strategic
plan to see if any changes or shifts need to be made.
“It’s really all about opportunity and full community participation,” said
Karen Fraser of the Maine Department of Labor, Bureau of Rehabilitation Services. “A
critical part of that participation is employment.”
Fraser said her department’s role in working with Choices CEO and
the commission is to examine how best to assist in the process of bringing
more disabled folks into the workforce.
“Disabilities really vary from one individual to the next, so finding
the right job and skills and matching those up is really what we do,” Fraser
said. “And we try to identify what kind of support and education they
need to join the workforce and be strong contributors. I strongly believe that
as we look at our workforce shortage, this is an untapped pool that can help
us meet some of those needs, and this is a critical part of the larger economic
development picture”.
For more information about the Choices CEO Program, visit
www.ChoicesCEO.org. For more information on the Commission on Disability
and Employment, visit
http://choices.muskie.usm. maine.edu/partners/cde.html.
