Pre-Vocational

The Prevocational Services program develops habilitation plans and activities directed toward skill development in community settings and center-based, non-work activities.  Activities in prevocational services are designed to teach habilitative goals rather than job-specific skills. The best place to learn job-specific skills is on a job in the community. Our Plan of Care is designed to accomplish a quality-of-life that is similar to that of any other citizen who would like to work in the community-at-large.  Millcreek advocates for an individualized community job for all individuals in our pre-vocational programs. Since a forty-hour week of competitive employment is often not feasible for people with significant disabilities, Millcreek Community Services will utilize pre-vocational services as an adjunct to Support Employment.  The more minimum wage employment a person with significant disabilities receives the less Pre-Vocational services will be utilized. The term Pre-Vocational is then true to its original meaning and persons with significant disabilities are not left in segregated Shelter Workshop environments all their lives.

Personal development for individuals is accomplished in Pre-Vocational Services via a system in which:

All participants will be given a schedule for daily personal development in community settings typically used by persons without disabilities. Goals and objectives will be set using an Ecological system of teaching, which requires personal development to occur in the most natural setting available.

Through the assessment process, activities will be selected for the individual’s daily/weekly schedules that promote the following:

• Community Presence
• Community Participation 
• Dignity
• Choice
• Supporting Contributions

The underlying habilitative goals are those that will allow a person to obtain and sustain a job in a traditional work-setting. The habilitative goals of this style of service are motor skill development or the development of adaptive devices or supports to perform tasks that will contribute to an employer’s overall success. Thus the citizen with significant disabilities will not be excluded or isolated from work-settings that typically employ people without disabilities.

The overall goal of the program is to support the individual so that he/she can participate in work-related activities with as much independence as possible, enhancing the participant’s quality of life.

Millcreek Community Services recognizes that traditional Shelter Workshop work activities are not only ineffective in securing competitive employment in an inclusive environment utilized by persons without disabilities, but actually detrimental to that outcome. Therefore all Pre-Vocational Services will be void of any sub-minimum wage contract work at Millcreek Community Services.

Since severity of disability should not limit access to community, all services will aim to promote personal development in domains that lead to full community inclusion.  Center-based activities will be of the person’s choice and Millcreek will receive no funds from contract-type work from different business entities.

Handicapped-accessible transportation is available to shuttle all participants to programmatic sites throughout the day.

Millcreek will offer pre-vocational services a minimum of 5 days/week and 6 hours/day. The individual will be offered opportunities for exposure to work in community settings. If the individual initially chooses to decline, staff will continue to offer opportunities for community integration and employment. Any community integration activities will take place in groups of three or less. The individual’s desire for community employment will be documented annually and provisions for supported employment will be available to the individual. Millcreek will have an open-door policy for people who wish to return to the pre-vocational program after losing community employment.

There shall be a minimum ratio of one staff to every three individuals during pre-vocational services.