A new Employability Skills/Career Development Program for Spanish speaking clients.
The Institute created a Spanish language version of the Adkins Life Skills Program to help meet the needs of the growing number of Spanish speaking people in the country who, by many indicators, have problems which prevent them from accessing the economic and educational resources in this country.
Research indicates that there are many new immigrants who are poor and unemployed. They have high drop-out rates from school and their lack of language skills limits the number of choices available to them.
The Adkins Program in Spanish is an important resource to strengthen an agency's capacity to motivate Latino/Hispanic clients to obtain employment, to get further training and to learn English.
The Program helps Spanish speaking persons understand how they can make it in the American culture by de-mystifying the process by which people get jobs and build careers. It helps them explore their own abilities and interests and find new combinations of skills that suggest different kinds of occupations. It also helps them explore the world of work.
The group setting of the Adkins Program is also a place where some of the frustrations they have and the barriers they encounter can be discussed. The small group provides emotional support while they are going through the training and job-getting process and It also helps them sort out cultural differences and values and make their own decisions about the kind of life that different occupational alternatives will enable them to have for themselves and their families
Program Characteristics
- Helps people think through issues of career choice and development in the context of family and cultural values, immigration status and acculturation levels.
- Helps clients identify existing skills and interests and explore occupations in depth in order to make an informed occupational choice
- Includes a wide variety of videotapes, audio CD's and print materials all in Spanish
- Designed specifically for adults and youth who may be unemployed, underemployed or at-risk
- Introduces people to the twelve fields and multiple levels of the occupational structure of the United States and helps them learn how to access it
- Increases enrollment and retention in English-as-a-Second Language and literacy classes
- People learn to deal with barriers to employment and successfully move into the workforce
Program Unit Titles :
Unit 1 "Explorando Quien Soy Yo y Adonde Quieri Ir" (Exploring Who I Am and Where I Want to Go)
Unit 2 "Explorando el Mundo del Trabajo" (Exploring the World of Work)
Unit 3 "Como Decidirse por una Profesion Adecuada" ( Making Good Career Choices)
Unit 4 "Como Desarrollar un Plan Alcanzar Metas Profesionales" (Developing a Career Plan)
Sistema Adkins has been used successfully with Head Start and Even Start Centers. As one director commented:
"Providing the Adkins Program in Spanish has been a wonderful, positive and rewarding experience. It has enhanced the self-development and employability of low-income parents in our community and it addresses the need to provide culturally appropriate materials to help families overcome challenges to employment "
Supporting Research
In one Head Start study, 18 parents from the Dominican Republic completed an Adkins Life Skills Program with results indicating that:
- Participants' Career Efficacy greatly increased, 80 % reported being
very certain of their ability to obtain a job as compared to only 40% on the pretest
- 73% made specific plans to pursue future education and training
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Call us to see how the Adkins Program can be customized for your agency.
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