Less than four years ago, the big push to employ adults with disabilities was to gather them together in facilities previously called sheltered workshops, teach them some marketable skills, then attempt to find employment for them.


Thats changing in Spokane, especially at Skilskin, a Spokane-based nonprofit organization that helps adults with disabilities find work and that until 2004 was called the Pre-Vocational Training Center.


An evolving trend here is to first send job-placement professionals into the business community seeking job openings for the disabled, mostly for part-time work, says Glen Grussaute, CEO of Skilskin. If a job isnt immediately forthcoming, those disabled adults, with help from Skilskins professionals, often enter the work force as volunteers or in job-shadowing arrangements, which often lead to jobs.


If we started today, we wouldnt even have a sheltered workshop, an outdated term for whats now called specialized industry workshops, Grussaute says.


Paula Morgan, Skilskins director of employment services, says, We want people out in the community. To put all of them together in our shop is not a means to an end.


The vast majority of Skilskins clients today arent trained at its headquarters, but rather are trained and employed at either Fairchild Air Force Base or at F. E. Warren Air Force Base, in Cheyenne, Wyo., where Skilskin has a second office, Grussaute says. At the two air bases combined, about 200 Skilskin workers are employed. At Fairchild, as many as 140 Skilskin workers provide grounds maintenance, janitorial, and postal services, and at Warren about 60 workers are employed seasonally in grounds-maintenance work, says Morgan.


Still, contracts with Kaiser Aluminum Corp.s Trentwood mill, in Spokane Valley, and two local automotive paint-chip companies, to supply labor for repetitive tasks, keep Skilskins specialized industry workshop here busy as well. Although workers come and go at different times each day, Morgan estimates that about 40 people work daily at the organizations 22,000-square-foot facility here.


Skilskin also employs about 60 workers who provide round-the-clock services to 24 disabled adults who live together in groups in homes they either rent or own.


In yet another service to disabled adults, Skilskin provides budgeting and bill-paying expertise for about 300 people who receive about $550 a month from Social Security as an entitlement because of their disabilities, Grussaute says. Skilskin receives $35 a month from Social Security for providing those services to each recipient, he says.


Skilskins employees are diagnosed as disabled long before theyre referred to that organization by neurologists, other medical professionals, or organizations that have worked with them previously.


Most of the people we work with have a form of mental retardation, says Morgan. Most of them have more than one challenge, such as cognitive, vision, hearing, seizures, or even lack the ability to walk.


Teresa Antosyn, associate director of Career Connections, of Spokane Valley, another organization that focuses on finding employment for disabled adults, says the Washington Legislature in June adopted a new pathway to employment policy. She says the policy requires that every publicly supported disabled person between the ages of 21 and 62 be placed on an individualized plan to get them into the work force.


For some disabled adults, that pathway to employment policy can be very good and helpful, she says. But for some with a higher level of disability, they would need too much support to be placed in an independent employment situation.


Antosyn has firsthand knowledge of the value of the new policy. Her disabled sister, long immersed in other employment-seeking programs, secured a job through the new employment policy. Although her sisters job is only for a few hours a week, Antosyn says, It means a lot to her, and it means a lot to me.


Employing disabled adults, whether their disability is physical or cognitive, can be beneficial to both the disabled person and the employer, Grussaute says. Among other things, disabled persons have the ability to stick with and enjoy mundane tasks that often prove trying to others. Antosyn adds that those who employ disabled individuals are eligible for tax benefits.


Grussaute says, Testimonies from employers are the most powerful marketing tool we have.


Nancy Creighton, manager of Michaels Arts & Crafts Spokane Valley store, at 15521 E. Broadway, says that store employs eight disabled adults, three of them from Skilskin. Jobs performed at Michaels by disabled workers include customer service, inventory and accounting, computer work, stocking shelves, and unloading freight, she says.


All of these people, whether their disabilities are physical, mental, or stress related, want to work, says Creighton. They are thrilled to be here and are hardly ever sick. They are awesome people to work with.


Grussaute says when he and Morgan inherited the job-placement program at Skilskin in 2003, only one disabled adult was working in a job arranged through that program. Now that number is up to 36, he says.


Morgan says about 40 other disabled adults under the tutelage of Skilskin are out in the work force daily doing volunteer tasks, exploring job possibilities, or doing job shadowing.


Contracts that Skilskin has with the U.S. Department of Defense for work done at the two Air Force bases provide two-thirds of the organizations $9 million budget. The second largest funding source for Skilskin is the Washington state Department of Social and Health Services, says Grussaute.


When we place someone, we prefer employers pay at least the minimum wage, Grussaute says. Wages start at $8.17 an hour for federal-service contract jobs on air bases, and can reach up to $14 an hour.


Kaiser, meanwhile, has contracted with Skilskin for the past eight years to measure, wrap, strip, and attach thermo couplers to wire. The wire and couplers are used by Kaiser to measure the temperature of aluminum when its being heated, and only can be used once, he says.


Skilskin also contracts with Langka Corp. and IMAC Licensing Corp., both of Spokane, to assemble auto paint chip-repair kits, and do invoicing and shipping.


The name Skilskin comes from a joint language, called Salish, used years ago by some North American tribes, Grussaute says. He says the term describes a place where young Native Americans went to learn about themselves.


Contact Rocky Wilson at (509) 344-1264 or via e-mail at rockyw@spokanejournal.com.