The Open Door Group is gearing up to provide more employment services in the Downtown Eastside while at least two other area non-profits look at closing shop.
The Ministry of Social Development chose Open Door Social Services Society to run the province's new employment program in the Downtown Eastside. The 35-year-old non-profit and charity with experience serving people with disabilities, addictions and mental illnesses will open an employment services centre on West Hastings Street near Abbott in April.
"We try and balance being professional and being well-run businesses, essentially, with the whole philosophy of being client-centered and working with the community," said Tom Burnell, executive director of Open Door.
Open Door will work with agencies including the United Chinese Community Enrichment Services Society (S.U.C.C.E.S.S.), Immigrant Services Society of B.C. and Aboriginal Community Career Employment Services Society (ACCESS) to help its clients.
It will receive $6.7 million each year for five years to operate the employment services centre. Burnell said the province will delay establishing employment targets for two years.
The province's new administration model for employment programs made news in October when the Pathways Information Centre, which helps people who are chronically unemployed, announced it might have to close in March because it wasn't chosen to run the employment services centre for the Downtown Eastside.
PEERS Vancouver, a non-profit that readies sex trade workers for other employment, announced it would close its doors in April because it couldn't afford to operate under the new fee-per-service model. PEERS was started by sex workers. Open Door hopes PEERS can train Open Door's staff.
Burnell says Open Door has run with fee for service-type contracts for eight years so the province's new model was less "daunting" than it is for smaller organizations like PEERS. Open Door holds five contracts worth $19 million in B.C., whereas PEERS runs on $450,000 a year.
Beginning in April, 72 organizations will provide employment services throughout the province at 85 storefront locations, 114 satellite offices and mobile services and outreach for "specialized" groups including immigrants, youth, aboriginal people, people with disabilities and survivors of violence. The change comes after the provincial government reviewed its employment programs after it inherited federal programs delivered by hundreds of contractors and subcontractors in 2009.
The Ministry of Social Development says it determined one-stop employment service centres would better serve clients.
Burnell said clients are classified according to their level of need. The neediest clients receive additional counseling sessions.
A group of unemployed teachers started Open Door in 1976 to provide woodworking and sewing classes to people with disabilities in Vancouver. It was one of a number of local organizations spawned in response to downsizing at Riverview Hospital.
Open Door serves 4,700 people across the province each year.
It creates specific jobs with employers and provides job coaches who offer training and support for some of its neediest clients.
Twitter: @Cheryl_Rossi
