CAMH partners with George Brown College to offer Construction Craft Worker program

While the national unemployment rate has inched up to about eight percent and the figures for those out of work in the struggling construction sector are well into double-digit territory, they are a far cry from the 80 percent unemployment rate endured by those with a history of mental health or addiction issues.

Centre for Addiction and Mental Health

Now in its third year, George Brown College in association with the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health has operated a unique program to educate, train and hopefully employ this long-neglected group in the construction industry.

George Brown’s Construction Craft Worker Extended Training program has been developed as a basic skills course designed to funnel students into entry-level construction jobs and in retail settings such as building centres and superstores.

George Brown has found success placing the graduates of the annual crop of 30 students not through pity or calls for compassion on the part of employers, but by touting the merits of the students themselves.

“When we try and sell the employer, we are actually trying to sell the skills,” said Tony Priolo, the school’s project manager of Augmented Education. “Here’s what they have learned, here’s what they have done with us and here are the skills they have.’

“I think employers tend to respond to that,” said Priolo. “We have had very positive responses from employers.” And while the prevailing view of those with mental health or addiction issues is linked with violence, the program manager noted with pride that there has not been one workplace issue with the predominately male graduates placed from the first two semesters.

Laying the proper groundwork with an employer is one of the keys to creating a successful placement, said Priolo. “We really try to work with the fit with an employer because more often than not if they are patient and see the strengths of the person, it tends to be more successful. If it is just ‘Do what everybody else does’ without a learning curve, that is where our guys might tend to fade away a little bit.”

A major selling point of the construction craft worker program for employers is the presence of job coaches or job developers who advise students when they are in the classroom, but also continue to mentor and advise graduates after they find a job in the workplace.

“Sometimes we will even go on site and spend a day with them,” said Priolo. “So I think that employers find a little comfort in that too.”

Understanding and a willingness to give an individual a second chance are important attributes for a prospective employer. They were certainly in abundance when concrete street furniture maker Knetcht & Birchtold Inc. agreed to interview and in the end hire one of the program’s first-year graduates.

“[Priolo] approached me and said he had a kid who had shown an aptitude in concrete work,” said Ron Birchtold, the Brampton, Ont. company’s owner and manager. “I said bring him on down and it worked out fine. No issues, absolutely no issues.”

Birchtold said most of the adjustment happened at his end: his mostly ethnic workforce had to be told that it could not treat their newest coworker with their customary rough camaraderie. Knecht & Birchtold, for its part, had to make allowances for the limitations of its newest employee.

“[He] can’t drive,” said Birchtold. “It’s a mental disability. He cannot drive a forklift. I can’t put him on any equipment. I have put him on a crane, he has managed to learn that a little bit but even then very limited.”

Knecht & Birchtold’s George Brown graduate is currently on layoff after more than a year of full-time employment because of the economic slowdown. “Unfortunately he was the last one in, he’s the first one to go,” said Birchtold. “Hopefully things do pick up again and he will be back.”

A long recognized weakness of the George Brown program is the time of the year in which it graduates its students. The semester starts in April and runs until August or September, placing graduates in jobs just before the seasonal slowdown in the construction industry. The school currently cannot change the timing of the program because the spring-summer semester is the only period when instructors and students have access to the necessary labs and equipment. (Students are not charged a fee to take the Construction Craft Worker Extended Training program).

Although the calendar and society’s attitude to those with mental health or addiction problems are against them, the graduates show that they not only need, but deserve a second chance, say both Priolo and Birchtold.

“These kids, they do need second chances,” said Birchtold. “They may have screwed up before. So what? They are young, move on.”