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By Amy Geiszler-Jones

When Ruth Hays first started working at WSU a couple of years ago, she was a single mom raising two kids and helping her mother care for her dying father.

And she was scared. Scared about entering the work force after a six-year absence.

"My confidence in myself was next to none," she recalled.

But she had no choice. Because of welfare reform, she needed to enter a job skills program so that she could eventually leave the welfare roll.

Hays, a full-time receptionist at Student Health Services, is one of several people who have been placed in jobs at WSU through the community work experience program, or CWEP, run by the state’s Social and Rehabilitation Services.

Ruth Hays first worked at WSU two years ago as part of the community work experience program. The skills she learned in the Office of Human Resources led to a full-time job at the local Social and Rehabilitation Services office and now a job in Student Health Services.

The skills Hays gained as a receptionist in WSU’s human resources office two years ago paid off when she got a full-time job at SRS.

"My seven months at human resources did a lot more for me than going back to school for computer skills," said Hays, who had taken classes through another program before trying CWEP. In April, she returned to WSU in her current job.

CWEP is one of several SRS employment preparation programs, according to Donna Lampkin, CWEP coordinator at the local SRS office. It falls under the umbrella of what was formerly called KANWORK.

Through CWEP, welfare recipients are placed for a maximum of six months at one of about 40 nonprofit or government agencies in the Wichita area. Some, like Hays, are allowed to extend beyond the six months. To figure out how many hours a participant needs to work, SRS divides their cash and food stamp benefits by minimum wage.

"What the participants often work for are new skills and a job reference," said Cyndy Hodge, who coordinates CWEP placement at WSU. "Some people in the program haven’t worked in years, some have never worked. Some are voluntarily in the program; most are not."

A number of CWEP participants, including several placed with the Physical Plant, have gotten permanent jobs at WSU.

WSU has been participating in the program since 1995, and currently about 12 participants are working in six departments.

Ray Swenson, who was placed with the finance, real estate and decision sciences department in August, intends to be one of CWEP’s success stories at WSU. After a bad back and worn-out knees forced him out of the construction business, Swenson is turning his fascination with computers into a marketable skill. He’d like to turn the office and computer skills he’s learning into a permanent job at WSU.

Brenda Lehman, secretary in the finance, real estate and decision sciences department, has been helping Wichitan Ray Swenson gain new job skills. Swenson was placed at WSU in August as part of a six-month community work experience program, which is part of welfare-to-work reform.

Hodge would like to see the program grow, with more departments willing to invest time and training to help those down on their luck lead more productive lives.

"I’d like to see 50 CWEP people here on campus, making a difference," she says.

Hodge is an ideal champion for the program — she was the first former CWEP participant hired by WSU in 1995 after she finished a six-month training stint at SRS.

"It changed my life," she said. "It made things good again." It gave her skills she hadn’t acquired working as a drugstore manager for five years.

Hodge has been applying her first-hand experiences into enhancing the CWEP program at WSU.

"One of my concerns was that we need to get these people off on the best foot that we can," she said. That’s why she started an orientation program, teaching participants such things as dressing for success or the importance of being a responsible employee.

Both Hays and Hodge said having supportive co-workers is important for CWEP participants. So now Hodge is starting a mentoring program for those placed at WSU.

"We don’t expect mentors to be their sole source of support, or to be their psychologist, but simply to give them a tour of campus and help them fit in," she says. "This is a very large work community and it can be intimidating to some."