Hello all, I’m John Ellert. I’m the Intake and Case Management Coordinator at ACE and I thought I’d take this opportunity to show you some of the blood and guts of our program’s daily operations.
Most of our clients come to us from shelters, transitional housing, and outpatient rehabilitation centers. To complete the Project Comeback application process, each incoming consumer (we use this industry term often in the place of “client” because it gives the individual the credit and agency he or she deserves for choosing to complete our challenging program) must be referred by a Case Manager and must have been clean and sober for at least 30 days.
In the last month, 58 consumers applied to Project Comeback. 24 (or 48%) of those applicants were accepted and started the program. We have a total of 50 men and women on our street sweeping crew as of July 9th.
A participant’s journey through Project Comeback begins in my office, with the intake process, and concludes when they have completed the program and found a full time job (with the assistance of our incredibly hardworking Job Developer, Harvey Semler). In the intervening four to six months, there are a series of milestones and pre-vocational tasks that must be completed.
We recently initiated a new program structure, devised to better assist these men and women to reach their ultimate goal of finding full-time employment. This structure consists of four phases, culminating in graduation. We are pleased to announce that 20 of our program participants will be graduating at our upcoming ceremony on Friday, July 16th.
