- Good afternoon.
My name is Bill Korrer,
and I'm going to be your moderator for the next session,
which is the employer workforce panel.
I'm with the Wisconsin Counties Association,
and while our office is in Madison
overlooking the capitol right on the square,
I have the luxury or pleasure,
whichever way you want to look at it of
working out of a home office up in Minocqua,
in northern Oneida county,
which is one of the more rural counties in Wisconsin,
not as rural some, but,
we have a composition of urban counties,
urban rural, and rural counties across Wisconsin
and as my colleague John Hokmer said this morning,
our mission is to look out for the interests
of the 72 counties across the state,
no matter what their size or their population,
or the diversified interests that they all have.
On our panel today,
we have Lori Katcher from Rice Lake Weighing Systems,
Margaret Bau with Home Health Care Cooperative,
and Ray Woodruff from the Department of Corrections.
The way we're going to run this afternoon session is that
the speakers are going to have roughly 15 minutes
to give their thoughts, and then at the end of that
we'll have somewhere around 10 minutes for questions,
I ask you to hold your questions 'til the end.
I'm going to go out on a limb and make the assumption
that since everybody's been here for about five hours,
they've had a chance to look at ahead at the bios,
and have a rough idea of what the,
who the speakers are, but in case you haven't,
the speakers will give a snapshot of who they are
and where they come from.
And because Lori's the top one on the agenda,
I guess we'll start with her.
- Lori: Good afternoon everyone, can you hear me okay?
All right, sounds good.
So just to introduce myself, my name is Lori Katcher
and I'm the human resource supervisor
for Rice Lake Weighing Systems.
I moved here back in 1991, and planned to be here for a year
and move to Minneapolis.
And so I've been here now 28 years,
and so yes, small towns are cool.
So, yay!
So how many of you in the room
know about Rice Lake Weighing Systems?
All right, I've got some hands.
So that's going to be a refresher for some of you.
Others, I'm going to let you know about us.
So we are established in 1946.
Right here in Rice Lake, so 73 year old company.
We came here because of the dairy industry.
We came here because of rural.
And that's what we needed to do is, we are making scales.
We're actually a family owned and operated
third generation organization.
We make scales in the weighing industry.
So everything from a big truck scale, to a deli scale,
and agricultural scales.
So anything that you can think of in the weighing industry
or test weights, that's what we're manufacturing.
And we're located just two blocks east, northeast of here.
So.
We have over 900 employees worldwide.
And we have multiple locations.
We're both in the US and have international presence now.
Our founder was Donald B. Johnson,
first generation founder for the organization.
He said if we take care of the customer,
the rest of the business will take care of itself.
And that is embedded in every single job
that we have at Rice Lake Weighing Systems.
Our growth, our vision was to grow.
But in order to grow, we also needed to improve.
In 1946, Donald B. had one employee.
That's Lester B. Gunderson
that's sitting next to him on the scale.
In the 1980s, we were close to 100 employees.
And today, in Rice Lake Weighing,
or at Rice Lake, Wisconsin's facility,
we're over 500 employees here.
And again, over 900 worldwide.
Our location, our headquarters is in Rice Lake.
We also have facilities in Alabama,
which I visited last week.
Nevada.
We're in Washington, in Connecticut.
The Netherlands, Mexico, India, and Italy.
All but two of these, we have either acquired
or developed in the last 10 years.
That's how quickly we've grown.
So, in the time that I've been with Rice Lake Weighing,
we've actually tripled in size.
So we have common concerns.
I've heard them today.
I've heard so many things that I can connect to.
We have rising health care costs,
and a lack of availability sometimes, to get into a doctor.
We have a skills gap with technical careers.
We have a lot of welders, machinists, maintenance.
That's what we do, we need to manufacture things.
We need these positions, but a lot of them are retiring.
So we have a skills gap here.
We have a competitive labor market.
Everybody's hiring.
You see signs all over the place.
We have a low unemployment rate.
Dave Armstrong was talking about that earlier.
So in order to get new results,
we have to have a new mindset.
You've heard of think outside the box.
A new mindset is think like there is no box.
So we need to start looking for solutions,
that's what we do at Rice Lake Weighing,
the vision is there.
We want to be the best by every measure.
And so what we need to do is not only look at the concerns,
think about the concerns,
but try to come up with solutions.
So with health care costs.
We came up with a no cost health care option
for our employees.
And I'll talk about that in a little bit here.
With the skills gaps,
we talked about what can we do
to train and develop our employees?
Both new employees coming in,
as well as incumbent workers.
We have a competitive labor market,
so we need to look at career pathways.
There's a lot of talk about engaging the youth.
We do that at Rice Lake Weighing.
We really focus on that,
and it's extremely important for all of us
to get engaged in that.
Labor shortage.
We need to come up with new programs.
With those solutions it makes a smile.
And as my director says, if we have concerns,
the answers exist.
So we just have to look for those answers.
So Cedar Ridge Health Center was established
by Rice Lake Weighing in 2017.
It is actually a health care
for Rice Lake Weighing employees and their family members.
It's a near site clinic, less than a mile from our facility.
They offer physicals, HRAs, sickness, exams,
just for acute illness, lab testing, referrals,
preventative health and wellness,
chronic disease management, and prescriptions.
And again, the benefit is, there's no cost to the employees
and dependents of Rice Lake Weighing Systems.
We also focus on TeleHealth.
We heard earlier today
about the shortage of behavioral health.
That's a major concern in our markets, a major concern.
So our employees now have 24/7 access to physician services.
They have convenient and alternative no cost options,
to be able to call in.
They have behavioral health that they can call,
and coordinate with.
Even on a weekend, even at night.
And in turn, it saves us as employer
that urgent care cost or emergency cost.
So it is a win-win for everyone.
So what did we do with training and development?
We look at a robust internship program, every summer.
We host high school job shadows on a regular basis.
I'm talking to the local high schools
and setting up pathways for each of the students
that are in a career class.
Plant tours for students of all ages.
We do occasionally have grade schoolers come in.
They like to touch a lot.
Middle schoolers are a little unruly, but it's great.
We plant the seed.
We try to keep it interesting for them.
And high schoolers are very interested,
we can talk about what their pathway is after school,
or even during school.
So we present to local high schools and colleges,
we're members on the advisory committees.
We sponsor manufacturing and industry events.
Actually there's one coming up in a few weeks here at WITC.
And we partner with Wisconsin Youth Apprenticeships,
which has been huge.
So the internship programs we have every summer.
We actually host up to 50 college interns.
Some of them actually might be just graduating
from high school and know that they are going
to go into a field in college.
They might work on the manufacturing floor
to understand manufacturing.
And then the next year,
move into a college level internship.
These are just a few pictures of our past interns.
We also, 2015, we actually were awarded
a Fast Forward grant from the state of Wisconsin
for training and development.
We created our own on-site weld development program.
We love coordinating and working closely
with the local colleges.
We work closely with WITC,
that's one of the advisory boards.
We hire from WITC.
We also look at other weld development programs
and training programs.
But the truth is, everybody wants welders.
Everybody wants machine operators.
So what do we do to fill that gap?
So by creating these programs on site.
And it might be an incumbent worker
that just can't possibly leave a full time employment
to go back to school at that point.
So we've also added recently
the on-site CNC development program.
We actually used the model from the weld development program
to create that CNC development.
These programs have been a pipeline
to keep skilled positions filled.
So it isn't just the only pipeline, again I mentioned,
we work very closely with the technical campuses,
because we rely on them.
But this is an additional piece.
We work with the Youth Apprenticeship Program.
Very connected with that.
Statewide school to work initiative
for high school students who want to learn hands-on.
A lot of students need to learn, tactically.
They need to actually do to be able to learn.
So the Youth Apprenticeship has helped us attract students,
retain them from an early age.
We talk to the schools, we work with the local high schools,
people that are interested in coming in,
and coordinating with this program.
So this is an example of the weld training program,
this is Tony, he actually started
in the weld development program
while he was still in high school.
And now he works for us.
And he's very proud.
He takes pride in his work.
We have career advancement opportunities.
Luke went from a senior in high school
to a senior robotics technician.
"If you have a good work ethic and do the right job,
"the opportunities are limitless."
So how many of you have heard of Project SEARCH?
All right.
So we have 21 Project SEARCH sites in Wisconsin,
and over 500 worldwide, and Rice Lake Weighing is a host
for one of the Project SEARCH,
and there's a quick video here.
[pleasant music]
- Project SEARCH.
- Project SEARCH
- Is a nine month
- Internship - program.
- And we learn - All kinds of different
- Jobs, - Skills,
- With the goal
- To obtain the job
- In the end.
[pleasant music]
- Female narrator: Project SEARCH was developed in 1996
by nurse J. Erin Riehle.
At the time, she was the emergency department director
at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center.
Since then, Project SEARCH has grown to include
hundreds of programs across the United States,
and even programs internationally.
Our local Rice Lake area Project SEARCH began in 2016
with eight interns with intellectual disabilities
from area school districts.
Project SEARCH interns who complete the program
have an 88% success rate of procuring gainful employment.
The Rice Lake Area Project SEARCH strives to ensure
all interns who complete the program,
not only gain employment, but learn skills
that will enable them to lead more independent,
and fulfilling lives in the community.
- Paint manufacturing, where I plug in boxes.
- I work in the weight lab at Rice Lake Weighing Systems.
- The garbage.
- Well I make different types of foams
for the electronics department where they can
make the foams to put in the boxes.
- We exercise.
- I like playing Kahoot.
- I have fun and make new friends.
- Narrator: A day in the life of a Project SEARCH intern
includes many different activities.
From stretching and exercising in the morning,
to team building and communication activities,
to on the job training, interns have a full schedule.
To ensure interns have the skills to be successful
in their jobs, they meet every day
in the Project SEARCH classroom,
on-site at Rice Lake Weighing Systems.
- My name is Mary Gruber.
I am the instructor at Project SEARCH
at Rice Lake Weighing System.
I'm a cross-categorical teacher,
and love my job.
At day one, when the interns started Project SEARCH,
we just saw a lot of young people
who were uncomfortable, unsure of themselves.
And we started, they started participating in activities
that made them a team.
And pretty soon they just felt more comfortable
with who they were and what they could do,
and so I've seen a lot of growth from the day one 'til now.
And so there will be days that something will be going wrong
and they'll say, "You know what, that's okay."
And you just see, you know.
It's not like they're kids.
They have become adults who are ready for
the world and being a part of the workplace.
My name is Colleen Strasburg,
I'm a skills trainer for Project SEARCH.
I can only really guess as to how Project SEARCH
has impacted each intern's life.
I can tell you what I see,
and I see pride in each one over a good day's work,
and I can hear the excitement when they talk about
their plans after Project SEARCH.
And I feel they're way more confident in themselves
and in their abilities.
I have watched an intern who was afraid of her own shadow
on day one, blossom into this more confident woman
who is not afraid to start a conversation
in her work environment.
Who has, you can just see the confidence in herself,
I can do this,
and maybe, I think she is even starting to wonder,
I thought I wanted to do this when I got through
Project SEARCH, and I think she's able to look up here
and say, I know I can do this sort of a job.
- I am Jenifer Solie,
I'm a skills trainer for Project SEARCH.
The skills that I've seen the interns all develop
are computer work, learning how to build their resume,
write a cover letter, and to all around be independent
persons in their own life.
- [Lori] I'm going to go ahead and just keep going,
'cause I'm going to run out of time, I'm sorry.
So again, the Project SEARCH program so far,
we've actually had 18 Project SEARCH interns
who have participated in this skills development program.
All program graduates thus far have graduated,
and have been gainfully employed, so that is our goal.
We work with reverse job fairs,
we bring in local employers to come in
and meet the interns, and actually find out
about their abilities and skills.
We also have recognition on any level,
is extremely important.
This is Take Your Legislature to Work Campaign,
and Brent graduated in 2017,
hired by Rice Lake Weighing following graduation,
and received the opportunity to
Take Your Legislature to Work.
And we have Representative Romaine Quinn here actually,
that came to that program.
So, also Dave Armstrong is a huge advocate,
is part of our steering committee, so we do,
it's a collaborative effort for Project SEARCH.
It's a win win, while the interns are gaining the knowledge
and job skills, we're also locating employment opportunities
that will fill openings here locally.
So I'm going to leave you with this,
that one of the greatest talents is to recognize
and to develop talents in others.
Doesn't matter what level.
But we all can learn.
So, thank you.
[applause]
- [Margaret] Well as we're getting the slides set up,
my name is Margaret Bau, and I actually work
for USDA Rural Development.
I'm based out of Stevens Point.
I worked for the state rural development for 17 years,
and for the last three years
I've been on the national office team,
but still remain based in Stevens Point,
which is a real blessing.
So anyhow, I would like to talk to you
about a novel idea for recruiting and retaining a workforce,
and that's where you actually allow
the work force to co-own the business together,
in the form of a worker cooperative.
And I'm going to talk specifically
about the home care industry,
and how we hope to form more home care worker co-ops.
And not only in Wisconsin but across the country.
So just a little bit of background
about the home care industry.
As we know, we're getting a little bit older in our country,
the senior population will double.
And in rural areas, we are the future.
We are needing that, we have older populations,
as compared to urban areas.
And plus, people with disabilities,
we have more people with disabilities.
People are surviving injuries and illnesses
that before would have been fatal.
So we have a larger population of folks
that need a little bit of help in order to meet their needs.
So what exactly is home care?
It's anything that helps a person stay healthy, happy,
in a safe and sanitary place of their own choosing.
So it can be activities of daily living,
anything that touches a person, bathing, grooming,
toileting, et cetera.
Or the home care, to keep the home safe and sanitary,
which would include medication reminders.
Home care is the fastest growing job occupation
in the United States.
But as I believe it was, Fortune magazine observed,
home care is the worst paying, fastest growing
job category in America.
So you would think with all this growing demand,
that supply, that wages would go up
and there would be a greater supply.
But that has not been the case.
We have some pretty dismal labor force conditions
in the home care industry.
The median wage is $11.03 an hour.
That's 2018 statistics.
The most current statistics I have for Wisconsin is 2017
at $10.47 an hour.
But because of inconsistent hours,
the average wage is about $15,100 a year, annually.
So it's a case of the working poor
caring for the hidden poor.
One of two caregivers have to rely
on some form of public assistance,
it's primarily a female work force.
And the Fair Labor Standards Act was finally extended
to caregivers, 75 years after implementation.
So, not surprising with those low wages,
we have a labor force crisis, and it hit rural Wisconsin
about four years ago.
The average annual turnover of caregivers
across the country is 67%.
Imagine that.
This is providing the most intimate of care imaginable
in people's own homes, and you don't know
who's going to show up at the door,
if anyone's going to show up at the door
to provide that care.
67% annual turnover.
So, what would happen if caregivers,
people providing that direct care,
would actually own and democratically control
their livelihoods through the form of worker cooperatives?
The very first home care worker cooperative
was formed as a welfare to work project
in the south Bronx of New York City back in the mid 1980s.
And that particular co-op had a few spinoffs
in urban areas in the Northeast,
but then it inspired the very first home care worker co-op
right here in Wisconsin, in Wautoma, Wisconsin,
and which actually, a 2003
top Rural Initiatives Award winner.
A while ago.
So, that's something quite exciting, to share.
And what's exciting, why this is of interest to all of us,
is that the average annual turnover rate
at the home care worker co-ops is 30%.
For the more well-established home care worker co-ops
it's about 20 to 25%.
When people own their businesses,
they have a vested interest in it,
and they make different decisions
that keep them grounded in what they're doing.
On average, home care worker co-ops offer
an additional $1.84 an hour more in wages.
Then you have additional benefits,
plus something called patronage refunds,
which is profit sharing
in the talk about co-ops.
And what we're also seeing is that there's reduced reliance
on public supports, and caregivers also report
that they have more control
over their schedules and working conditions
when they co-own their businesses together.
So, co-ops, and especially worker co-ops, can create,
we've heard of vicious cycles.
Well it can create a virtuous cycle,
in which the worker centered business
increases job satisfaction, enhance job satisfaction,
reduces that turnover rate,
and then that reduced turnover
results in higher quality, more consistent client care.
So, as this map shows, the very first home care worker co-op
was in the south Bronx, back in the mid 1980s.
There were a few replications in the Northeast.
Cooperative Care came along in 2001.
And then there wasn't much activity,
until the last two to three years.
So a fair question would be,
if home care worker co-ops are such a great idea,
why aren't there hundreds of these co-ops
across the country?
Fair question, I've asked it many times myself
as I'm laboring in doing this.
And a major reason for this is the,
this isn't a true free market situation.
75% of all care is paid for publicly.
Primarily Medicaid.
Some Veterans Administration and some cases of Medicare.
There is long term care insurance.
10% of the market is out of pocket,
people that can afford to pay for services.
But primarily, this is a public paid situation.
And frankly there hasn't been enough investment in Medicaid.
So, Medicaid rates are insufficient to pay living wages,
so you've got this failing recruitment and retention
and we've got that labor force crisis,
that has really hit the fan here in Wisconsin,
about three to four years ago.
So it's interesting, we've seen an uptick
in the number of home care worker co-ops,
and it's giving us a great hope across the country.
Could we do more of these by market innovation,
totally by accident in Washington state.
The cooperative,
the Northwest Cooperative Development Center there,
was approached by
a woman whose father received care
in Bellingham, Washington.
And she had been a member of the hodag cooperatives
that were tree planters back in the 70s in Washington state.
And she was really concerned about the situation
of the caregivers that were providing care for her father,
and she said, "What about forming a worker co-op?"
And so they did, but Washington state has some of the most
stringent regulations concerning home care.
And that you have to be an agency for at least three years
before you could be eligible
to receive Medicaid reimbursements.
And so they thought, "Well, we'll go ahead
"and we'll form a co-op and we'll do private pay,
"and see how it goes," with the idea that eventually
they would start providing services to low income folks.
Well it turns out, because they were receiving clients
that could pay out of pocket, they were able to charge more
and pay higher wages, and lo and behold,
there wasn't the turnover.
So, what's wrong with this picture?
Why would we go after the public pay market?
Pursue private pay.
And that's why we're seeing home care worker co-ops
popping up across the country.
There's a group of us across the country
that are trying to figure out ways to go to scale with this.
We've had assistance
through the Cooperative Development Foundation,
out of Washington, D.C., along with a lot of
pieced together grants from the agency I work for,
with different co-op development centers,
trying to figure out how to do this.
And we're trying to come up with some strategies.
And it's going to end up being multiple strategies.
Organizing additional co-ops like this from scratch.
That's long, that's time-consuming.
The build and recruit model,
that's being experimented with right now in California,
where a nonprofit organization would actually form
an agency with the idea of converting that business
to worker ownership over time.
And then another interesting aspect would be converting
existing agencies to worker ownership.
Buying out the owner and converting it over time,
training the workers, empowering the workers
to take ownership.
And in order to do that,
we're going to need systemic supports.
I call it the co-op whisperer, of helping out with
governance and operations, to go forward.
So if you want to learn more,
I gave you a really crash course here.
If you would like to learn more,
probably the best description I've heard about the industry
and solutions, including this cooperative solution,
was put together by the Nonprofit Quarterly .
They've got podcasts that are called Tiny Spark .
So if you've got 30 minutes, you're on a treadmill,
or you're driving somewhere across rural Wisconsin,
listen to this post, it's excellent.
They do feature cooperative care out of Wautoma.
And then also there's a resource,
the Cooperative Development Foundation
has some great resources on seniors.coop.
And that's a picture of Stacy Hodge and her client Richard
looking very very lovingly at her [laughing].
And if you'd like to learn more information,
please feel free to contact me.
I've been around for a while
and I'd be happy to talk with you more about it.
[applause]
- Ray: All right, good afternoon.
Sorry I don't have a PowerPoint for you,
I'll just try to tell some exciting prison stories
or something, I don't know.
[laughter]
My name is Ray Woodruff, I'm a policy advisor
in the secretary's office
for the Wisconsin Department of Corrections.
I'm excited about the opportunity to be here today
to talk about some of what we're doing
in the Department of Corrections to prepare people
for their eventual release to the community.
I mean I recognize that I probably represent
one of the most nontraditional populations
when we're talking about workforce development.
But I think the reality is, when we look at
the number of individuals who are coming back
to the community from incarceration,
we're really talking about an untapped population
that we can look at.
In Wisconsin alone, we have around 24,000 people
that are incarcerated in our prisons throughout the state.
That doesn't include county jails,
so just our state facilities.
We have about 65,000 people
that are on community supervision
throughout the state of Wisconsin.
So these are people who are on probation, parole,
extended supervision, things of that nature,
most of whom have actually never been to prison.
They've committed some sort of criminal offense
for which they've put on supervision
and likely that will be the end of it for them,
they'll never go to prison, they'll do their term
of supervision on community supervision
and hopefully one day be off of supervision.
But we release around 8,500 to 9,000 people every year,
from incarceration, that's just our prison population
that we're releasing back to the community.
That's a substantial number of people
coming back to the community every year
that are not being counted when we talk about
engaging in the workforce.
That's a lot of people that we can try to
put meaningfully into opportunities
that make sense for them and make sense for the community.
It probably won't surprise you to know
that a lot of those folks go back to southeastern Wisconsin,
which is where they come from.
So there's a substantial number that go back there.
But the reality is people come back
everywhere throughout the state.
Almost nobody goes to prison forever.
That's just not the reality, there are a few.
You know, there's some high profile cases
that have happened recently that we can think of
that people are going to prison forever,
but that's just not the reality for 97% of our population.
97% of our population comes out.
Meaning they come back home.
They're not going to some far off island somewhere
where we never have to think about them again.
They are us.
One in three people in America has a criminal record.
One in three, I don't know how many people are in this room.
But the reality is it touches a lot of people.
The criminal justice system touches a lot of people.
And whether it is your own history,
or somebody that you love and care about,
or somebody that you don't know yet
that you're going to meet.
The criminal justice system impacts a lot of people.
Nationally, one in 38 people
are under active correctional supervision.
That means they're in prison, they're in jail,
or they're on community supervision in the community.
So again, that is us, right?
That's the people that we interact with,
that's the people that we know and love.
So the important thing for us, is to really think about,
you know, I primarily work with our folks
that are incarcerated, but,
for us it's thinking about what do we want to do with them
to prepare them for that eventual release to the community,
because prison, for most people, is a temporary thing.
They're coming back to the community,
and we need to prepare for that.
So a couple of things I just wanted to talk about today
and I know I didn't say my bio,
but hopefully it's in the packet that you can read.
I've worked in corrections around 15 years,
both in the states of Ohio and here in Wisconsin.
And I want to talk about a couple of things
that are pretty innovative and exciting
that we're doing in the state of Wisconsin, I think, to
both give folks skills that are coming back out
of incarceration, as well as benefit the community.
As I mentioned, we have 8,500, 9,000 people
that are coming out of incarceration.
In our prison system, you know, prison is not
typically what people think from watching TV and movies.
I know what Shawshank Redemption 's like,
I've seen that movie, I love the movie, right?
That's not the reality, when we go into our institutions
around the state of Wisconsin.
People are engaged, people are working
on bettering themselves through programming,
through work in the institutions,
through preparation for eventual release, you know,
people aren't just laying around, watching TV,
and soaking up the sun, right?
That's not what it looks like
for people that are incarcerated.
So some of the unique and exciting things
that we've been doing, probably over the last five years,
I'll just touch on, and then I know
we're going to have time for questions.
Over about the last five years, we have recognized,
so the Department of Corrections has
career and technical education programs
throughout our facilities throughout the state.
We have about 17 institutions in which we have some form
of career and technical education.
Welding, masonry.
Carpentry, cabinetmaking, you name it.
We're probably training in it.
But those are in our brick and mortar facilities, right?
And with changing industry demands, we cannot
typically be responsive and just
pluck up one of those programs,
and put something new in its place.
We don't have the funds,
we don't have the ability to do that sort of thing.
So over about the last five years,
we've been pretty innovative in working
with our workforce development partners,
our technical college system partners throughout the state,
to develop short-term training opportunities for our
folks who are incarcerated in minimum security institutions,
in work release facilities,
so that we can take them from a work release facility
to a local technical college, get trained
in the course of three, four months.
A lot of training in the course
of that three or four months.
And then put them out on work release.
We're doing it with Gordon Correctional Center,
which is about 15 miles from here.
Along with WITC Superior,
where we've trained folks in welding.
In this case it's the eight credit gas, metal, arc welding
program with WITC.
And then the hope is to transition them into
work release opportunities.
We've done similar projects in Rhinelander area, in Madison,
all over the state, to really be responsive
to the changing demands of industry.
And when we've done that, we've really worked closely
with workforce development systems,
in whatever area we're in,
the local technical college, and employers.
It's really a partnership between all involved
to say, "What is it that Rice Lake Weighing needs?
"What skill sets are you looking for?
"Well, we can tailor a training for that."
I don't want to, you know,
we don't want Rice Lake to monopolize our entire population
but that's kind of what we're trying to do,
is find employers that are engaged and invested
and want to hire this population.
So we can work directly with employers,
and local technical colleges,
to try to make a match that makes pretty good sense.
And we've been, again, we've done that
throughout the state, we're going to continue to do that,
we got additional funding in the last budget,
to increase those types of training opportunities,
which are totally free to the participant.
But you know, when we think about the 24,000 people
that we have incarcerated,
you have to work your way down to the minimum security
status, so that you can take part in these sorts of things,
so the individuals that we're talking about training
are getting close to coming out.
They're probably already working in the community,
you just might not know it.
They just happen to come back and sleep at night
in one of our facilities.
We hope they come back at night, right,
that's part of the deal. [laughter]
Another quick thing I just want to mention.
There's a lot of initiatives that we have going on
in the Department of Corrections
and I think there's a lot of space
where we can collaborate on meeting the changing demands
of industry and issues that you might have
with recruitment and retention,
in whatever agency you might be a part of.
Recently in Oregon, Wisconsin,
which is just south of Madison.
We created an institution based job center.
The first of its kind, an institution based job center
in one of our facilities.
Oregon...
Oak Hill Correctional Center, Institution,
is a minimum security institution.
About 700 inmates, who, you know, are approaching release,
at some point.
Historically we have not had access
for our inmate population,
to access the Job Center of Wisconsin website.
We had very limited access, right?
It's prison, now, so you could get on a computer,
and you could maybe see jobs
that were available three months ago.
You can't click on anything.
It's like a piece of paper, quite frankly,
giving to an inmate.
But now we have the ability
for inmates to access the internet,
create inmate email accounts that are monitored,
again, it is still prison.
Create resumes, apply for jobs, take job interviews
and potentially accept positions
prior to even coming out of incarceration.
So it's an exciting initiative and partnership
with the Department of Workforce Development,
the local workforce development board,
that we're looking to branch out throughout the state.
In this governor's budget, there's funding
for four additional job centers,
but budget process is one of those interesting things.
But the hope is that we can create additional job centers
throughout the state to serve different areas of the state,
right now, we're focused on south central Wisconsin.
Obviously we're going to look at southeastern Wisconsin.
But the hope is to come to
northwest, western Wisconsin as well.
So really innovative things I think that are happening,
because the reality is, we know that people
are coming back out of prison.
And if somebody was coming out of prison,
they were living next door to me,
I would want to make sure they had all the opportunities
available to them to better their lives before,
you know, before they got out to the community, so,
some really cool innovative things that we're doing
and the hope is that
if you're having difficulties with recruitment, retention,
I think there's some opportunities that we have
that can help you with some of that stuff.
So, I'll leave it there.
Can save exciting stories for later, and take any questions.
- Woman: So when you said this is one from Madison,
what kind of programs are there for youth
that are caught in the middle of corrections?
- Bill: The question is, are there any programs for youth
that are in corrections?
- Ray: Yeah, so, the State of Wisconsin,
as you know probably know, is a county-run system,
and so each county gets to determine what it is
that they wish to do with their, for the most part,
what they wish to do with their adjudicated youth.
A small percentage of those folks
impacted by the justice system actually come
to the Department of Corrections.
But we do obviously have a Lincoln Hills, Copper Lake School
in Irma, in which we have a full range of programs
and initiatives, up to and including education,
substance use, sex offender treatment.
A whole host of interventions for our population.
Really the youth that are at Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake
are involved in some sort of programming
and or intervention throughout the entirety
of their stay there.
One that I'll mention down in Oregon
is called the Grow Academy.
It is sort of one of these experiential sort of environments
where youth who are impacted by the justice system
can learn all sorts of things.
How to grow plants, and how to can,
and actually, on a monthly basis,
they sell the things that they make there
at our, at the central office
for the Wisconsin Department of Corrections.
And I think at the Grow facility
there's probably a dozen youth that are there,
dozen to 15 probably would be an accurate number.
So those are some of the initiatives that are in place.
Obviously we know, with the current landscape,
some things are going to be changing, very likely,
down the line, but we continue to offer
as many opportunities as possible,
particularly to not only youth, but young adults
within our adult system.
We have a youthful offender facility in Racine,
which focuses on youth, on young adults,
that 18 to 25 range.
And again, intensive programming at that age level.
- Bill: I'd like to thank the panel for their contribution.
[applause]