If you ask anyone on the IPS team to define success for this program, you’d probably get a lot of different kinds of answers. Is it the number of clients who found jobs? Is it hearing a story of a client who’s mental health was improved after starting work? What about a client who overcame a really tough situation while maintaining their job? Or maybe it’s making a strong partnership with an employer in our community?

Luckily, we don’t have to pick just one answer! The IPS Team set goals for 2018 and we’re excited to share our success in each of them!

1. Client Hires – Every year, the IPS team has supported more clients than the year before. This also means that we’ve supported more clients in finding work. In 2016 – 48 clients were hired in new jobs. In 2017 – that number rose to 86! In 2018 – 115 was the number to shoot for! We knew this was going to be a lofty goal, but we were confident that our clients would experience this level of success. The year really started off on the right foot…our first job hire was on January 1st, 2018! And we didn’t slow down from there. The IPS Team supported 130 job hires in total!
2. Employer Partnerships – One of the IPS model’s principles is “Systematic Job Development” which means that Employment Specialists spend time visiting local employers to learn about their hiring needs. We perform job development based on clients’ preferences and the goal is to build relationships with employers that can help to support our clients in their vocational goals. But the IPS team didn’t want to stop there, we had a goal of sitting down with 6 employers that were interested in building a stronger partnership. We certainly succeeded and built relationships with Culinary Creations, The City of Madison and Exact Sciences to name a few! These businesses have not only hired clients, but have offered to perform mock interviews, sat down with staff to give more in depth information on their HR processes, and have continued to be strong partners to our program. We’re excited to see who we’ll connect with this year!
3. Another goal of our team was to increase staff self-care. This is a goal that we plan on having every year as we know it’s that important! Some of the ways we practiced this was to prioritize staff check-ins during meetings, dedicate monthly meetings to evaluating the IPS program, getting out of the office for quarterly breakfasts and enjoying staff lunches together. After working out in the community with our clients, it was great to catch up with other staff, and we enjoyed strengthening our Chrysalis Community!

We can’t wait to see what goals we can tackle in 2019. A few other notable awesomes:

• The IPS team grew by 3! We’re excited to welcome Ashna, Furman and Jenny to the team! Look out for a spotlight on Facebook introducing these new staff.
• The Supported Employment Demonstration enrolled 39 new clients into the IPS program.
• The IPS Team was presented with The Exemplary Fidelity Award at the WI IPS Learning Collaborative Annual Meeting. It was great to be recognized for reaching exemplary status in our last Fidelity Review.

Happy 2019!

The Chrysalis Supported Employment Team