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Providing employment opportunities for
individuals with mental disabilities and mental illness is the tradition of
the Elm City Center.
Located at 1314 West Walnut in Jacksonville,
the Elm City Center has been in operation for more than 40 years as a
community social service agency.
"We provide vocational services, residential
services and a social center for people with some forms of disabilities,"
said Thomas Frederick, the Elm City Center director.On the vocational
side, we have a large production site and do work for companies in
Jacksonville and other corporations on products they
out-source.
"Locally, we work with a wide variety of
companies in Jacksonville on projects that come along. We bid on them, and
sometime we get them, and sometime we don't," Frederick said.
Elm
City Center includes EMI in packaging
special CD sets and Pactiv in the distribution of plastic bags. The Elm City
workforce also has repacked CDs for Caroline Records based in Memphis,
TN.
Frederick said" "business is very good.
Pactiv and EMI are having good years, and we're staying busy". Frederick
said the workforce ranges between 125 to 150 people per day, along with 47
Elm City Center staff members. The production site has eight shrink wrap
machines, seven docks and 80,000 square feet
of workspace.
"We have people ready and willing to work,"
Frederick said."We allow people to come to us that an employer may not to
look at, but it is important for them to work. We can pay them a salary and
pay them fairly."
The workers have a wide variety of skill
levels, ranging from those who can manage a one or two step process, to
others who require minimal supervision.
"We
break jobs down to the level they can
do," Frederick said. "Some can work '
eight hours, some struggle for three hours with their physical capacity."
Frederick said depending on the tasks performed and an individual's status
in the workshop, the Elm City Center is exempt from the wage rates of the
United States Department of Labor of Wage and Hours/
and are paid commensurate wages.
Frederick said workers at the Elm City Center have a combination of mental
retardation, mental illness and a variety of physical ailments that are
symptomatic of those disabilities, but they are "terrific" workers.
"They
come every day and work hard," Frederick said. "They do the jobs we have.
The difference is they can't work as fast or do other things in their lives
that other employees are able to handle."
"Part
of our job is to adjust to the people we work with and their capability
levels," Frederick said, with the goals of customer satisfaction for
clients, and self-esteem for the worker.
"We
do quality work on time and get items out by the shipping date," Frederick
said. "If we don't, EMI and Pactiv will
go to others. We hope they come back to us. If we don't do a good job, and
they don't come back, we don't blame them. They are good customers and we
are proud to work with them."
Mark
Antle, who oversees outside re-packaging
for Pactiv, said the Elm City Center is a reliable outsourcing vendor.
"They've always been pretty flexible, from counting individual bags, packing
and re-labeling," Antle said. "I haven't had any problem with them. They do
good work on time."
In
addition to its vocational program, Elm City Center offers residential
programs in Jacksonville ranging from 24 hour care to helping people to live
independently.
Frederick said the trend is to have people with disabilities to be in
independent living situations, and at the Elm City Center, "we help them
manage their money, make good choices on food and live at the level they are
at. Our preference is for people to live as independently as they possibly
can."
The social service agency also operates the York Social
Center in Jacksonville that provides
social activities ranging from watching TV to taking trips.
While the
not-for-profit agency does earn money from it’s commercial contracts,
Frederick said those profits are rolled back into the Elm City Center.
"One half of
our funding comes from the Illinois Department of Human Services, “
Frederick said, “The other half comes from ourselves. We put our profits
back into our organization so we can continue to help people with
disabilities.” |
Illinois
