{"id":16111,"date":"2018-07-11T09:00:34","date_gmt":"2018-07-11T16:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=16111"},"modified":"2018-07-17T09:24:52","modified_gmt":"2018-07-17T16:24:52","slug":"camosun-gets-funding-to-assist-students-with-disabilities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2018\/07\/11\/camosun-gets-funding-to-assist-students-with-disabilities\/","title":{"rendered":"Camosun gets funding to assist students with disabilities"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Thursday, June 14, the provincial government announced $1.5 million in funding to be split between 20 British Columbia post-secondary institutions, including Camosun College. Each institution will use their $75,000 <\/b>to create or expand programs for students with cognitive, mental, or physical disabilities.<\/p>\n

Camosun vice president of student experience Joan Yates says the college is looking at using its share of the money to create a combined pilot program <\/b>teaching basic employment skills with the college\u2019s Centre for Accessible Learning and the Applied Learning Co-op Careers Services department.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to look at developing a job search and job readiness skills that we can do a little research on,\u201d says Yates, \u201cand then for folks with certain cognitive disabilities, be able to work with them on options, but we know that they need a little bit of support to get to that point. This is going to help us develop a specific program aimed to help those students in terms of their own job searching.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The provincial government recently announced that Camosun will get $75,000 for programs for students with disabilities (photo by Katy Weicker\/Nexus<\/em>).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Camosun College Student Society (CCSS) wellness and access director Eleanor Vannan says that she\u2019s very happy with any additional funding that makes education accessible.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope this is a sign that this government intends to continue to invest because we do know that there are a large number of jobs that will be opening in the next 10 years and that around 80 percent of those jobs will require some post-secondary,\u201d says Vannan. \u201cWe need to make sure that we\u2019re setting up young people now to have the skills to go into the workforce, and I think ensuring that there\u2019s access for people of all different abilities and different backgrounds is a really, really important thing to be investing in.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Yates says the $75,000 won\u2019t cover the entire cost of the program, which will teach students how to look for a job, what skills need to be developed to work with employers, and how to dress for work.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSome basic elements around job readiness is what we\u2019re going for,\u201d says Yates.<\/p>\n

Yates wants to give students the knowledge and confidence so that they can go out, with support, and find work.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHow you work with your supervisor, how you get paid, all those kind of job-seeking 101s that, if you\u2019ve had a couple of jobs, you will have learnt them,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Yates says that various Camosun College departments will be working together on the program for now.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll be working with a couple of programs and just a small number of students to begin with. We will be working very carefully with those students to assess how the program works and what we could do better,\u201d says Yates.<\/p>\n

Yates says that she would love for the program to expand if it works out, but for now the college will make sure career servicing and coaching is aligned with existing Camosun programs.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d like to see a program that applied to students across the college that isn\u2019t necessarily discipline specific, but provides some good, high-level \u2018This is what you need to know to get a job,\u2019\u201d says Yates.<\/p>\n

Camosun second-year Practical Nursing student Jeremy Hudson says a job skills training program seems like a good use of the grant money.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know much about how exactly the money\u2019s being spent,\u201d he says, \u201cbut it seems like an effective use of resources.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rachel Chan, who is also a second-year Practical Nursing student, thinks it\u2019s great that Camosun is giving opportunities to people who might not normally get them, although she has some concerns.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do feel like [people with] a mental disability kind of need a separate course to do things than people with a physical disability,\u201d she says. \u201cEspecially people with a learning disability; they might need extra resources; they might need extra instructions about how to do stuff like writing a resume than people who have physical disabilities that don\u2019t\u00a0really need the extra layer of the instructions that people with a learning disability might.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vannan says it would make sense to build on existing programs \u201cand get a larger reach and benefit more people.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAt the end of the day, if you\u2019re creating more programs and you\u2019re increasing the accessibility of the college, there isn\u2019t really a way to go wrong with that,\u201d she says.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The program is still in its early planning stages and will be implemented sometime this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Thursday, June 14, the provincial government announced $1.5 million in funding to be split between 20 British Columbia post-secondary institutions, including Camosun College. Each institution will use their $75,000 to create or expand programs for students with cognitive, mental, or physical disabilities. Camosun vice president of student experience Joan Yates says the college is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16112,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,213],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-july-11-2018"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16111"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16111\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16113,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16111\/revisions\/16113"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}