Project Search at QEH

“A hospital is a perfect environment for a program like ours,” said Chloe Trevors, a job skills coach with Project SEARCH. “It’s such a diverse environment. In a lot of ways, it’s a contained community which requires many kinds of workers, from administrative, to food services, to medical, to custodial and beyond.” 

Project SEARCH PEI is a program for young adults with intellectual or physical disabilities to gain the skills, confidence, and experience to find meaningful work. On Prince Edward Island, the program is run out of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Charlottetown. 

“We ran a short pilot program last year, which showed great promise. We took in our first full cohort of interns this past fall. It’s a 10-month program. For the first three weeks, interns join us for classes. They’re learning important skills about how to do a job interview and how to behave in a workplace. After that, they begin the first of three rotations where they gain experience doing different types of jobs.” 

     – Chloe Trevors, job skills coach with Project SEARCH

Interns' days begin with an hour in the classroom before they head to their job placements around the hospital. They work until 2 p.m. when they return to the classroom to talk about and explore the experiences of their day. 

“We’re really focused on everyone feeling successful,” said Helen Frizzell, the instructor with Project SEARCH. “We don’t want to set up anyone for failure. There’s a serious gap after high school for people with intellectual or physical disabilities. There are just not a lot of opportunities to grow and become part of our communities.” 

“What we’re finding overwhelmingly is that these people absolutely have the abilities and skills to do these jobs,” said Trevors. “What’s holding them back are the social skills of the workplace. They just don’t teach that in school. Most of their lives, people don’t give them critical feedback on their work, so they don’t know how to receive it. They often don’t know how to respond, or they may take it as personal criticism.” 

“We’re teaching them how to take that feedback,” continues Frizzell. “Simple things like saying ‘thank you,’ and understanding they’re just being given information to do the work better. We also find we have to speak with their managers. Managers are often so worried about sparing the interns’ feelings, they’ll let them make the same mistakes over and over again. That just reinforces the error and builds some resentment among co-workers. It just doesn’t have to be that way.” 

The current cohort of six interns have had great feedback from their managers, and several have prospects for full-time work when the program is complete. 

“Some of our pilot cohort went on to find full-time work, including in nutrition services at the QEH and at a nursing home facility in Charlottetown,” said Trevors. “It’s just so gratifying to see. These are people who want to be part of our community, contributing in a meaningful way. And they can!” 

Project SEARCH is looking for applicants for its next cohort. Learn more at projectsearchpei.com.