The CEA-W News Review and Parenting Connection newsletters are printed and folded at the Wisconsin Resource Center. Inmates who work in the Vocational Workshop at WRC are instrumental in preparing the newsletters for CEA-W members.

The Vocational Workshop is one of WRC’s Multi-Disciplinary Treatment Programs. It is designed to teach hands-on job skills to a select group of inmates at WRC. The Vocational Workshop focuses on involving three types of inmates; developmentally disabled, mentally ill and those within six months of release to the community who are in general population status. Currently, teachers and Recreation Therapists facilitate the project.

It is the ambition of the Vocational Workshop Program to provide the inmate worker with hands on skills to ensure a better opportunity to receive gainful employment upon leaving WRC, and also to improve their work behaviors, safety, interpersonal skills and communication. These skills include: staying on task, performing repetitive tasks, multi-tasking, maintaining professional attitudes towards peers and supervisors, being punctual, demonstrating good hygiene and appearance, working independently, seeking assistance, appropriately responding to feedback and criticism, maintaining a positive attitude toward work activities, completing work accurately and timely, following instructions, completing tasks in a deadline period, demonstrating knowledge of safety and policies and demonstrating safe judgment with equipment and materials.

In addition to learning a variety of job skills in this program, the workers are given a real sense of having a job as they would in the community. They complete an application, participate in an interview, receive a tour and participate in a two week trial period prior to beginning their training in the workshop. They use real time sheets and are responsible for recording their own hours of work. Some are given leadership opportunities to mentor other workers. They earn pay raises and need to attend as their schedules indicate. The inmates work 5 to 20 hours per week

There are several different projects that the inmates work on. One is a long time community service project that works with local schools. The workers prepare General Mills box tops, soup labels and milk caps for area schools. School representatives drop off the box tops and labels to be cut and sorted, and the milk caps to be washed and sorted. The schools then pick up their items. The schools are grateful for the help and the workers have an opportunity to contribute back to the community.

The workers also perform in house services such as laminating projects, preparing booklets, preparing various paper projects for classrooms, stuffing and sealing envelopes, folding the CEA-W newsletters, hanging posters, shredding paper, cleaning yoga mats, and making popcorn. They also do laundry, washing and drying cleaning rags for the fitness rooms and Leisure Center, and laundering the drying towels for the Therapeutic Services kitchen.

The Vocational Workshop is a partnership with Goodwill Industries of North Central Wisconsin. In the past, the Goodwill Books Project and the GoodWipers project were a big part of the Vocational Workshop. These projects are not running at this time due to a lack of community donations to Goodwill, but the partnership still exists and Goodwill is exploring new opportunities for the WRC Vocational Workshop. Goodwill delivered as much as 3000 pounds of donated books per week to WRC. The inmate workers sorted the books dividing them among trash, salvage, children’s books, novels, fiction, and non-fiction, textbooks, reference books, cooking and craft books, etc.

To begin, each individual book was wiped clean. Next, the worker determined what the appropriate price was for a book and priced it accordingly. Books were then packaged according to categories. Each full shipment was tallied by the inmates recording how many books were completed and what the price was. When the process was completed, Goodwill picked up the books, and put them on their store shelves. It was an amazing process, and the inmate workers had a lot of enthusiasm for the project. Throughout the process, they had the opportunity to work with a variety of machinery.

Good Wipers was another training of the Vocational workshop. The inmate workers prepared donated terry cloth products by utilizing washers and dryers. Wipers were then folded and packaged for return to Goodwill, The final process of the GoodWipers involved Goodwill cutting them to size and selling them to stores and various companies.

At WRC, the inmates have been given a great opportunity to gain meaningful work experience and positive reinforcement while they receive treatment and prepare for community reintegration.

by: Mary Stierna, WRC