Exceeding expectations: Resident climbs career ladder through Opportunity Chicago

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“I got a job yesterday!"

So reported Denise Banks when she was interviewed for this story.

“My intention was not to go out and get a job yesterday,” she said. “Actually I went to Central States SER for them to help update my resume, and I told them I was going to this agency, so they wrote me a letter of recommendation and I brought it over with my resume.”

To Banks’ surprise, a director at American Staffing Agency (ASI), a licensed home health agency, hired her on the spot for a position more advanced than Banks had aspired to. “I was shocked,” she said, still basking in the glow of the news.

Today Banks is a new field supervisor for ASI, a role that sends her into clients’ homes to see how the company’s home health care staff is doing with its patients.

Banks became a certified nursing assistant (CNA) last summer and earned her patient care technician (PCT) certification in mid-October after working with nonprofit Central States SER in an Opportunity Chicago program. Opportunity Chicago is a five-year effort to help 5,000 public-housing residents prepare for and find quality employment over five years. The Partnership is a lead funder and strategist for the initiative.

Since its inception in 2006, the initiative, now winding down, has placed more than 6,000 individuals in employment and helped strengthen the public workforce system’s ability to serve public-housing residents.

SER’s Healthcare Bridge program prepares low-income jobseekers for employment while helping to meet area healthcare employers’ need for skilled workers. The bridge program builds participants’ competency in reading and math by putting the subjects in a healthcare context. This approach, called contextualized literacy, also can be applied to other industry sectors and has proved a successful model for Opportunity Chicago participants.

Banks learned of SER’s program when she saw a flyer during a regular visit to her FamilyWorks provider as part of Chicago Housing Authority’s (CHA) resident services. Having earned a certificate as a home healthcare aide in 1987, Banks had a history in the field and decided she wanted a change from her more recent experience in customer service. “The customer service field is very broad now, and you have more people looking for work. Everybody’s applying for the same job,” she said. “So I figured let’s go back to the nursing field so I can help people feel better.”

The Partnership has funded SER through Opportunity Chicago since 2007 with grants totaling over $900,000. An experienced service provider for low-income, lower-skilled jobseekers, SER adapted its established healthcare bridge program to better support public-housing residents who were matriculating through Opportunity Chicago. After completing SER’s bridge program, participants train at City Colleges of Chicago, where they earn their industry certifications. The CHA picks up residents’ tuition beyond what is covered by financial aid.

“The idea of meeting people where they are is very important,” said Maria Hibbs, The Partnership’s executive director. “Great partners like Central States SER have designed programs that helped residents pick up wherever they’d left off and take them from there to quality employment.”

SER helps its clients navigate obstacles to successfully completing the programs, as well as find work when it’s time to enter the job market. On the day she got her job, Banks relates, “It was so funny, because the young lady [at SER] who was helping with my resume, I was getting impatient with her because I was trying to get to this appointment at the agency. I was putting my hand on the desk like you’re taking too long. But it paid off for me to be patient, because that resume convinced the director [to hire me].”

Of her new position, Banks says, “I’m generally good with people. I like to have fun. I think I’ll do a good job.”  “I like the sense you have when you’re going to help somebody,” she adds. “If you make somebody feel better, you’ll feel better.”

Before being hired by ASI, Banks, who lives in a CHA development near the United Center on the Near West Side, planned to work toward earning yet another certification by beginning an LPN (licensed practical nurse) program in January. She’s not giving up that goal because, as she points out, in healthcare the more advanced certification you possess the more choice you have in what you can do.

“I’m hoping I can fit the schooling in in the evening. I don’t have any kids, nothing to hold me back. Just me applying myself,” she says. “Betterment and better days and higher pay.”

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