September 2006 Vol. 25. No. 9

Published by the Humboldt Senior Resource Center in Eureka, California. HSRC is a non-profit community-based organization offering services for senior citizens, multi-generational families and caregivers.

Senior Community Employment: 30-year program to dissolve and be re-formed
AARP Safe Driving classes set September, October and November
Alzheimer's: Communication skills to make your life easier
What are your skills?: Knitting, cooking, gardening, home repair - come share with others
Fortuna Senior Services:New T'ai Chi class is launched

Pick up a copy today! Better yet, subscribe and never miss an issue!

Brought to you by

So long, it's been good... These unsung heroes of AARP Foundation's Senior Community Service Employment Program represent 70 years of helping seniors find jobs. From left are Rose Schmitt, Norma McCauley, Margaret Neville, Lin McPhillips, Ginger Campbell and Shu Yi Ye. Photo by Barbara Clark

Ginger Campbell's name has appeared in Senior News some 50 times during the six years of this decade. She wrote our lead story last month. She is often writing that her program - the AARP Foundation Senior Community Service  Employment Program - has again won best in the nation for placements of seniors into permanent positions.

      Campbell will be writing a new chapter in coming months - tracking the end of the 30-year employment-training program for seniors in our county. The end as we know it, that is. It will continue, but in a new form and with a different organization and staff.

       "This isn't a retirement," Campbell said. She tried to explain why a program that places 115 percent of its annual allotment of people would be shut down or changed.

   "The Dept. of Labor decided that in order to have better control of the contractors, they needed the sites to be in contiguous counties," she explained. "AARP Foundation came out well nationally and will still have employment training sites in the Central Valley - Sacramento, Fresno, Stockton, Modesto and Visalia." Campbell, who is a national trainer of directors of the SCSEP program, was offered the programs in two of those sites and in two other states, but declined. She wants to stay in Humboldt County.

 Now, she explained, a company called Experience Works will operate the Humboldt/Del Norte Senior Community Service Employment Program beginning Sept. 30, and all the people currently in the program will transition into that organization's structure. They'll all have to be recertified by the new agency.

 The biggest hit that Humboldt County will take is that in previous years we've received slots for 45 people. With Energizer-bunny Campbell and her diligent staff, that number parlayed into many more placements of people older than 55 in permanent employment. This year alone, 49 clients have already found permanent employment. In the new allotment, we will receive from 15 to 20 slots and be operated by an out-of-town agency - an agency with a 21 percent placement rate.

        "The community has always embraced this program," Campbell said of her success. "We have regular employers calling us every time they have an opening. They tell us, 'You do such a good job of screening, just send me someone you know I need.'" And we do. By 2010, one-third of our working force will be age 55 and older," Campbell added.

        SCSEP retrains older workers and helps them get ready to rejoin the work force. During this time workers are placed in training positions in community nonprofits - some 300 of them in this county across the years. "People might need a resume update, an interview outfit, or to learn a new computer program," Campbell explained. People work up to 20 hours a week in the nonprofit, paid by SCSEP, while they are looking for permanent work.

   With fewer people being served and placed, local agencies will feel the pinch of the changing SCSEP service. Local employers will also be affected, with fewer people coming out of training programs ready for work.

   "The sad thing is that the new sponsors won't know this community," Campbell said.

      When the shut-down of the offices in the old Arcata elementary school building is completed at the end of September, Campbell hopes to take some time off. She hasn't had a vacation for four years. Her skills in developing such a successful program were tapped by AARP Foundation, and she is the main trainer for new project directors nationwide. She hopes to stay in the nonprofit world and in Humboldt County.

        "This has been a good ride," she said. "I wish the people well who are taking over, and I hope the community welcomes them with open arms."

The face of SCSEP    

        Leilani Wieselquist and her husband, Jim, are perfect examples of the successful program. The couple retired to Humboldt County six years ago after traveling for a while and wanting to settle where it was green and beautiful. But when the stock market took a dip, they thought they ought to get back into the work force. Knowing no one, they saw an ad for SCSEP on the cable bulletin board.

  They were taken in hand by the capable staff at SCSEP. Leilani learned new computer systems, which had changed since she had last used them. She went to the Humboldt Senior Resource Center, where she is the Senior Services coordinator, handling Dial-A-Ride tickets and Senior Home Repair. Husband Jim went to work for HSU and now heads the electronic data-testing center.

     "It's all because of Ginger and Norma and the people there," Leilani said. "I work now with all the people they send us, and they're all wonderful. We've had people who just need encouragement, and then they all go out and get jobs.

       "We're going to be losing that hands-on, here-in-the-community help. It will never be the same," she said. "Ginger was the spearhead. She was tireless, and the people who work for her are  loyal. We're losing good friends who know this community."

 Barbara Clark is editor of Senior News.

 Editor's note: among the many stories of SCSEP placement successes that Ginger reported in our pages, she also wrote a 12-part series called "Working" that Senior News published from July 2000 through June 2001. She has written about a number of their clients who went on to make good new lives for themselves - Arlene Ghera in the Sequoia Park Zoo shop, miniature artist Pat Carter, and last month singer Lin McPhillips.

   We salute these unsung heroes working to help seniors find jobs and helping jobs find seniors - Ginger Campbell for 31 years, Norma McCauley for 21 years as a job developer and then journeyman employment specialist and Rose Schmitt for 13 years as office manager.

 They have made all the difference.