But the program is running short on participating employers and hoping Evanston businesses will step up
By Bob Seidenberg
Henry Testard has been on the job roughly a half hour at the Thermal Laminating Corporation at 2220 Greenwood Ave., carefully lining up cardboard pieces on a wood frame to make into the boxes used to stabilize parts that go into the company’s laminator kits.
“You don’t want to bend them too much or they’ll fall off,” he instructs a visitor who came over to watch.
Across the factory floor, Caleb Jensen, a fellow intern from Evanston’s Have Dreams Academy’s workforce training program, is similarly locked in on his work, assembling the rollers used to press sheets together to form the laminated productThe two workers have proved a valuable resource to the company, which has had to cut back on its full time workforce in recent years while facing stiff competition from overseas.
“I think it’s fantastic, especially for us because we’re not busy enough to hire full time people,” said President Debbie Levitan. “And the help that these people give us is fantastic.”
Have Dreams Academy operates the unique training program for young adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) looking for competitive employment.
To date, the organization has produced close to 200 graduates who have moved on to other jobs in the working world, said Andrea Franckowiak, the agency’s program director.
But with the program seeing a slowdown in participation from local businesses recently, Have Dreams officials have emphasized the need for community support and business partnerships to sustain the program.
“We can’t do this program without internships,” Franckowiak said.
Soft skills, but lessons in self-advocacy too
Autism Spectrum Disorder is regarded as a development disability caused by differences in the brain, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In some cases, people with ASD may have problems with social communication and interaction and restricted or repetitive behaviors or interests, the CDC says.
The academy’s 24-week workforce program starts with a two-week orientation course on professionalism and employability at the Have Dreams training room in the organization’s 2020 Dempster St. building, explained Celia Mooradian, a supervisor in the program.
On Wednesdays, participants work on developing a resume, cover letter and interview script, she said, “but we also do lessons like self-advocacy — disclosing your disability at work. What do you go to HR for? What are health insurance benefits?”
Learning to problem solve on the job
The training makes use of a structured teaching approach, according to Mooradian.
“It breaks down complex tasks into smaller micro-sets, right?” she said, “and then sets up a left-to-right work structure. So it’s very easy, when you look at it, to kind of process — ‘All right, here’s where I start; here’s where I end; here’s how much I have to do.’ And it really reduces the mental overload that autistic people sometimes experience in less-structured environments. So before any of our interns start at their work sites, we’ve got a number of different tasks or job skills that we’ve created to kind of mimic or prepare them for the actual task that they’ll do — before they get to that work environment. So they get to practice and prepare before they even step into their internship.”
A large storage closet includes labeling cards and wiring — some of the materials used in past work assignments.
Any task interns are going to be working on “we want to introduce at Have Dreams and get them comfortable doing,” Franckowiak explained, “and have them generalize that in the work setting.
In retail, it might be stocking or facing (arranging products on shelves so they are visible and appealing to customers), but also doing some mock customer service, “preparing them for the social interactions they’re going to have to deal with, and that can always be unpredictable,” Franckowiak said.
”We want them to at least be introduced to it so that they have some problem-solving techniques, so if they run into an angry customer, what are things that you can do? Who do you go to first? What do you say to them?”
The Have Dreams team also assesses participants’ sensory needs, “because we don’t want to put them in a situation that would be setting them up for failure,” Franckowiak said.
Some students, for instance, might struggle with sitting, she said. In those cases, Have Dreams pairs the participant with an internship “where they can actually get up and move.”
Franckowiak also explained that the Have Dreams program is helpful because it’s specifically for people with ASD, while employment services for people with disabilities are typically broader and may not be tailored to particular diagnoses.
“Have Dreams workforce training program is unique because not only are we teaching the crucial social skills needed to be successful in any work environment, such as problem-solving on the job, appropriate conversation topics, how and when to ask for help, coping with stress and frustration and executive functioning skills,” she said, “but our students are then able to generalize these skills through their internship experience.”
The importance of coping skills
Sabrina Sacks, a member of the Have Dreams program, has already participated in several internships.
She said the cover letter and resume writing classes, and learning to follow up on emails sent to employers, essentially “is everything you need to apply for competitive employment.”
Her internships included one last fall with the Northwestern Neurodevelopmental Disabilities Lab, where she helped the lab, which researches autism, with a literature review.
She is currently interning at the WasteShed, a thrift store for used arts and educational supplies that supports sustainability located around the corner from Have Dreams. “There are a lot of different tasks there that [are] pretty neat,” she said.
Ultimately, she’d like to land something closer to her field; she graduated from the University of Tulsa with a degree in biology.
The Have Dreams program has helped a lot, she said, not only with employment skills but also coping skills for dealing with a workplace environment.
“Those are very important skills that can really help avoid burnout,” she said, “and help us maintain a job after we get it.”
Program grew out of ‘new wave of need’
Have Dreams’ beginnings date back to 1996, when a group of parents and their children’s special education teacher sat around a kitchen table in Park Ridge and came up with a plan to start the organization as an after-school skills program for children with autism.
“Historically, there was a need of kids not having after-school programs to go to, and so that was our focus,” Franckowiak said.
As the prevalence of autism in society grew, “our students have aged and gotten older,” she said. “There was a huge need then for adult services specific for people with autism.”
“There are many disability organizations, and many that have adult services and also employment services,” she pointed out, “but it is not specific to somebody who’s on the spectrum. Autism is incredibly unique. It’s incredibly specific. It’s the programming that needs to be individualized.”
Around the time the workforce internship progra started, the agency was fielding a lot of calls, she said, from people “who said, you know, ‘I just got a diagnosis of autism, and I don’t know what to do. I’m in my 20s. I’m in my 30s,’ and we were like, ‘Wow, we knew that this was coming [but] this was a new kind of wave of need.’”
High unemployment and underemployment rates
“Parents were calling, ‘Hey, my child was in college and really had to drop out for a variety of reasons, and now he’s just sitting at home. We don’t know what to do. He’s trying to get a job. He just can’t.’ And we realized that the barrier was the social skills,” Franckowiak said.
“No other place was focusing on that. They were getting fired because they didn’t know certain social cues of, ‘Oh, you know, this person doesn’t want to talk to me anymore. They’re just walking away, but I still want to finish what I have to say, and so I’m going to follow them.’ They were getting fired for things that they didn’t know, and wasn’t taught to them.’’
Mooradian, who holds a degree in library science, added that “there are a lot of autism-specific sheltered workshops where they only hire autistic people but below minimum wage. There are lots of programs like that out there now. But even still, the unemployment and underemployment rate for competitive, fairly paid employment is 85%.”
A change in the organization’s trajectory
Around 2002 or 2003, the organization already had a waitlist for its services in Park Ridge, but help came from an unlikely source. In March 2004, Northwestern University Dance Marathon, at that time one of the world’s largest collegiate philanthropies, made Have Dreams its primary beneficiary of the fundraising event. An estimated $400,000-$500,000 came out of the benefit.
“It was amazing,” said Franckowiak. “It changed Have Dreams’ trajectory.”
The money made possible the organization’s move into its current building in Evanston, which was vacant at the time. Why Evanston? “We wanted to expand to Evanston to be more accessible for families in Chicago and Evanston, which at the time was an underserved area,” Franckowiak said.
The 24-week workforce program, which Have Dreams holds twice a year, is tuition based. But as many as 70% of the participants need scholarships, said Franckowiak, and the program strives not to turn anyone away. The organization has provided more than $700,000 in scholarships since 2006.
Despite promises of state funding dating back to the Rod Blagojevich era, Have Dreams has had to depend on other outlets for support.
As a result, the organization has to heavily fundraise, “and we need grants to support this program and to support scholarships,” Franckowiak explained. One area of increasing need concerns adults who, for various reasons, don’t qualify for state funding themselves, but also haven’t been working, she said.
“So our funding has shifted to again fill that need,” she said. “And these individuals are the ones that we know are the most underserved.”
Business partners needed
The workforce program graduated its first class in 2014, and one of the participants got a job offer at the local bakery where he interned.
Over the years, participating partners include Abt Electronics, Allstate, Northwestern and Walgreens. One graduate now heads up a school library where he interned.
Levitan, of the Thermal Laminating Corporation (TLC), has brought one intern on board full-time at the company. “He is fantastic,” she said. “He is polite. You show him something to do, he picks it up in no time.”
But TLC is an exception, with participation slowing down dramatically in recent years.
“I started here in May, and I’ve probably reached out to 20 local small businesses here in Evanston and I got two responses,” Mooradian said.
“When we talk about neurodiversity, everyone has their strengths and weaknesses, right? Autistic folks, their strengths and weaknesses are going to be in atypical places, but in general, people on the spectrum,” she said, including herself, “we have an ability to hyper focus. We will go 110%. Even if we don’t always get the social cues, we mean well. We’re just eager and earnest.”
600 expiration dates: ‘Everybody stop!’ the manager announced
Franckowiak said Have Dreams has joined many networking groups, including West End manufacturers in Evanston, hoping to attract businesses to participate.
“It’s hard to take on and supervise any intern. I get that — it’s a lot of supervision,” she said. “But the benefit is so substantial. And this is not a charity case. This is an employee or an intern who’s going to come in and do quality work that’s up to par, probably better. They get the hang of it. They don’t want to miss a day; they want to complete their task. They feel such a pride in their work.”
One intern, in their very first day at Walgreens, she said, was given the task of checking expiration dates, finding more than 600 expired items.
The intern and a Have Dreams job coach went to the store manager and requested a bigger bin. “I’m only halfway through the store,” the intern said, according to Franckowiak’s retelling.
“And then the manager goes, ‘Everybody stop!’ to store employees,” she said. “This is more than I’ve seen in months, and he [the intern] was doing this in two hours, and it’s only half.
“That’s the type of stories we hear all the time.”
For more information about Have Dreams, the organization’s programs and how you can help, visit havedreams.org.
