Perspectives on the Standards
Standard #20: The clubhouse offers its own Transitional Employment Program, which provides as a right of membership opportunities for members to work on job placements in business and industry. As a defining characteristic of a clubhouse transitional employment program, the clubhouse guarantees coverage on all placements during member absences. In addition the Transitional Employment program meets the following basic criteria.
At our clubhouses, we are responsible for offering a variety of jobs for people at different levels of experience and for different interests. Specific staff or members who are already trained to do the job ("Placement Managers") go with members to the job site to train them. This makes the transition into a T.E. smoother for us and for the employers, who are not required to train new employees themselves. The Placement Managers will fill in for us if we must miss a day of work. But the Placement Managers also consider it to be part of their responsibilities to strongly encourage us to go to work every day. The fact that the clubhouse guarantees absentee coverage is an important selling point in developing Transitional Employment placements. In clubhouses, the placement management system should be a distinguishing feature of T.E.