Developing a Future Workforce
A strong focus on youth programs and innovative solutions key to Triangle workforce initiatives.
Last up in our series on our Five-Year Strategic Growth Plan is a preview of what’s in store for our Workforce Development team. This dedicated team helps people with many kinds of disabilities build employment skills, while providing assistance in finding, obtaining, and maintaining jobs. Over the course of the past four years, this team has dramatically increased the number of people served while becoming a thought leader in the field.
Triangle’s Pre-Employment Transition Services (Pre-ETS) offerings to students with disabilities has created new models that are now being emulated by other service providers. Despite the challenges of the pandemic, this program delivered innovative remote learning opportunities to students on a wide variety of subjects through a matrixed approach that offers beginning, intermediate, and advanced levels of offerings on five different Pre-ETS topics related to employment. Throughout the next five years, Triangle will continue to take on new school relationships and harness the positive momentum in this area.
As our local employment market continues a turbulent stretch, the Workforce Development team has seen an influx in referrals from the Massachusetts Rehabilitation Council (MRC) and the Department of Transitional Assistance (DTA). Due to our organization’s strong standing with both of these agencies, we are well positioned for future growth in this area as well.
New in 2020, Triangle’s Testing Centers in Malden and Salem have thrived since opening. Triangle leads the state in the number of HiSET tests proctored since opening its test centers and has continued to diversify its offerings to meet local demand. Both of these locations fill crucial gaps in testing center markets, offering services that no longer require lengthy travel to those in need of crucial educational or vocational certification exams.
Triangle will also continue to refine its Career Pathways models that have offered intensive, short-term training programs that provide industry-recognized certification to job seekers for entry in a variety of growth industries. In the past five years, Triangle has offered Career Pathway programs for both students and adults with disabilities to enter the culinary arts profession, begin health careers, and gain a foothold in environmental services. As new trends emerge in the ever-changing employment landscape, Triangle will explore new, efficient models for this important aspect of our work as part of our growth.
Do you want to support the 2,000 people we serve each year while investing in our plan to reach another 1,000 people with disabilities in the next five years? Consider investing in our current services and our future growth with a gift to our end of year fundraising efforts by clicking here.