Sussex Consortium has many students with disabilities, and a vocational program gears them up to land a paying job in the workforce.
A 21-year old student with disabilities that require a wheelchair has secured a career in hospital work, and she’s giving all the credit to a unique vocational program at Cape Henlopen School District ’s Sussex Consortium .
“I’m so grateful because I feel like this program has given me so many opportunities, and if I wasn’t in this program, I don’t think I would be able to succeed right now,” said Annmarie Perrotta.
Perotta is one of 147 students enrolled in the Sussex Consortium Vocational Program.
The K-12 school, located at in Lewes, has 465 students, all of whom are on an Individualized Education Program (IEP).
IEPs are written plans developed for students with disabilities in the U.S. who are eligible for special education services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act .
They typically include a lot of collaboration between a teacher and parents, and they outline the student’s specific learning needs, set educational goals and detail services and accommodations the school will provide to help the student succeed academically and socially.
An example would be a student with ADHD who is afforded extra time to take a test.
In the vocational program, students can choose a slew of paths, including custodial, food service, animal care, clerical work and more.
“It’s pretty much anything that’s needed by an employer,” said Pamela Graves, the vocational coordinator for the Sussex Consortium. “We have students from Delmar, Seaford, Laurel, all over Sussex County, and the students’ primary disability is autism, but we also have students with a variety of disabilities like cerebral palsy, Down syndrome and more.”
The school accepts students who are as young as 18-months-old and students up to 22-years-old.
The vocational students practice tasks that they would need to complete once they graduate and find a job.
For example, Graves said those in food service are taken to complete grocery shopping, and then the students come back to the school and cook in the model apartments.
“They’ve learned some of the basic skills here at school, and then they’re able to also transfer that then into some of the restaurants in the community,” she said. “We have students doing food prep in kitchens in some of our local restaurants.”
For Perrotta, her skill-development was mainly online training and hospital etiquette.
She recently got a paid job at Beebe Healthcare .
“With her, it was learning, especially being in a wheelchair, being a little more cognizant of the patients and her surroundings,” Graves said. “If there’s somebody coming on a gurney, she needs to make sure she’s out of their way. If somebody’s waiting for the elevator, they get to go on first. There’s those kinds of little hospital etiquettes she had to learn.”
Perrotta said she’s always been interested in hospital work because she’s a people-person and wants to help as many people as she can.
Marcus Carreno, who graduated from the Sussex Consortium last year, started as a substitute service aid at Cape Henlopen High School in November 2023.
He said the vocational program has given him opportunities to work hard and build his work ethic.
The students can start that track once they turn 14.
“Once they both turned 14, we started them out on vocational sites, trying to get an idea of where their strengths were, what their weaknesses were,” Graves said. “Did they like working in a busy environment? Did they like working with people? Do they like being able to talk to people? Or do they like being in somewhere where they don’t have to interact as much.”
She said since the two are both very outgoing, she thought a hospital and school setting would both be perfect for them, respectively, because they can be around a multitude of different individuals.
Part of the program’s success, Graves said, is being located in the Lewes/Rehoboth area.
“This area is absolutely amazing,” she said. “The acceptance that they [employers] have for our students, the generosity, the welcoming. If I call a business and say I have a student that really wants to work with pets or really wants to do this, rarely, if ever, am I told no.”
She said she receives emails from local businesses asking if the school has any students or graduates that can work with them.
“That’s what we want,” she said. “We want what we call ‘natural supports,’ like if Annmarie is at work and she has a question, we want her to go to an employee, not a job coach, just like you or I would, and that’s what we see.”
She said the businesses that the Sussex Consortium has sent students to make them comfortable and make them feel as part of the team.
“So I think it’s a win-win on both sides,” Graves said. “It’s giving our students an amazing opportunity, but also, at the same time, it benefits the business as well, because I think it makes everyone’s day a little bit brighter, you know, when Annmarie comes in and she’s greeting everybody at the hospital.”
Perrotta said just because she’s in a wheelchair does not mean she can’t do anything, and she’s happy to educate the many people that ask her about her disability.
“I try my very best and work to try to accomplish the hard things,” she said, “and I do that every single day.”
Most Popular
Comments / 0