Fairs Offer School-to-Work Transition Resources
The Department of Community and Human Services’ Developmental Disabilities Division recently hosted its annual Transition Resource Fairs. Held every March for the past seven years, the fairs support the School-to-Work program by informing and better equipping students and their families to prepare for a successful transition from school to employment and other community resources. The fairs were at Highline Community College on Saturday, March 1, and at Microsoft on Tuesday, March 4.
The fairs are intentionally held away from high schools—the message is about adult life in the community. Over 900 community attendees were served at these events, and both fairs continue to draw younger students and their families. This is a good indicator of the success of the Division’s efforts when “starting early” is the local motto for preparing for a successful transition.
With over 45 exhibitors at each event, ranging from government organizations to generic community resources and the employment service agencies contracted by School-to-Work, the fairs have evolved to mini-conferences by offering 12-16 one-hour sessions. Many opportunities were available so that students seeking employment and potential employers could meet one another.
The Transition Fairs are another reflection that the School-to-Work Program has really become the community’s program. The events are a growing success because of cross stakeholder collaboration ranging from the state DSHS partners, to school districts, community organizations, individual families and a major local employer who all pitch in the time and resources it takes to make it happen. A big kudos to Richard Wilson for collaborating with the partner organizations to put these fairs together, and thank you to the DDD staff who volunteered at the fairs. (Excerpted from DCHS’ Touching Base newsletter.)
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Kudos! Housing Repair Program, Community and Human Services
The Community Services Division’s Housing Repair Program (HRP) provides interest-free loan and emergency grant services directly to low- and moderate-income home owners in King County, outside the city of Seattle, to repair their homes and help preserve our region’s stock of affordable housing. This program also provides grants to individual low-income renters with a disability to help make their housing more accessible.
The City of Snoqualmie has expressed appreciation for HRP for helping a Snoqualmie home owner obtain the required matching funds for his FEMA grant to elevate his family’s home out of harm’s way from future flood disasters. City of Snoqualmie staff says that Housing Repair Program’s “quick response to the homeowner’s funding needs is truly amazing! We hope to work together again in the future.”
Way to go, HRP – thank you for the wonderful services you provide! (Excerpted from the Department of Community and Human Services’ Touching Base newsletter.)
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Working with Teens is a Matter of Building Trust
Benjamin Kaplan understands why the kids he works with no longer trust adults. By the time they enter his world, most have been abused, neglected or mistreated countless times by the adults who were supposed to keep them safe.
So if he tells a young offender he’ll call on Tuesday, he makes sure he calls on Tuesday. He doesn’t say “see you later” unless he really means he’ll see that teen later. And he tries to view his young clients for who they are in the moment – a traumatized kid in a bad situation – not for what they’ve done.
“A lot of what I do is simply about building trust,” he said. “I try to establish a relationship with them.”
Kaplan works with juvenile offenders as a mitigation specialist for the Department of Public Defense, a position similar to that of a social worker in that he helps his clients get much-needed services. His position is called mitigation specialist, however, because of another important role he plays: He takes a close look at what led that young person into the criminal justice system – the “mitigating circumstances” the attorney presents to the court to secure the best legal outcome for the client.
Many of his clients, for instance, have been charged with a sexual offense – from indecent exposure to molestation to rape. He ferrets out the teen’s history, discovers a troubled past and then uses that information to advocate for treatment rather than incarceration.
“The majority of these kids are not criminally inclined. They’re poorly socialized and don’t know how to express themselves,” Kaplan said. Labeling them a sex offender at a young age is tantamount to marking them with a scarlet letter for life. “And if we throw someone away at 13, what does that say about us as a society?” he asked. Read more.
(Reprinted from the Department of Public Defense’s For The Defense newsletter.)
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Regional Travel Study Coming Soon
The Puget Sound Regional Council is conducting a regional travel study to better understand the transportation needs and preferences of the region’s residents. Beginning in April 2014, thousands of homes throughout King, Kitsap, Pierce, and Snohomish Counties will receive postcard invitations to participate in the online or telephone study.
Participation in the study can help answer questions about how the can region maintain and improve mobility, accessibility, and connectivity for residents as population grows and travel patterns evolve. The Puget Sound regional travel study will be conducted through June 2014.
The study will help planners understand the travel behavior of real households, such as the trips people make to work, school, or shopping centers, to help decision makers prioritize transportation projects.
The survey will involve questions about general household information as well as travel details for a given weekday. All individual and household information collected in this study will remain strictly confidential. The aggregated data will be used for analysis and modeling purposes. Learn more.
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Taking the Stairs to Raise Money to Fight Leukemia and Lymphoma
The King County International Airport Aircraft Rescue & Firefighting (ARFF) Unit responds to all fire, police, and EMT calls at the airport. This unit is truly unique: everyone in the unit is a King County Sheriff’s deputy, a trained firefighter and an EMT.
On March
9, 2014, two members of the Airport’s ARFF unit, Chief Donald Davis, and Deputy Graydon Matheson, participated in the 23rd Annual Scott Firefighter Stairclimb of Seattle’s Columbia Tower. Participants climb 788 feet of vertical elevation, 69 flights of stairs and 1,311 steps in full firefighting gear as a fundraising effort for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. Since 2009, the ARFF unit has raised over $14,000. This year 1,653 firefighters from around the world participated.
Deputy Matheson has made the climb five times. “The camaraderie between the firefighters participating in the climb is a feeling that we have a responsibility to give back to the community,” Deputy Matheson said. “I challenge myself to use my skills to help the Leukemia & Lymphoma cause”.
Matheson said that photos of children and adults fighting leukemia and lymphoma line the walls inside the stairwell all the way up the climb, providing inspiration to him and other participants. “When I feel my strength start to sap, those photos remind me that if they can keep on fighting, so can I.”
(By Leslie Barstow, King County International Airport/Boeing Field, Department of Transportation. Photo: MyEPevents.com)
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Nonprofit Applications for inclusion in 2014 Employee Giving Program due April 25
Didn’t see your favorite nonprofit in last year’s Annual Giving Drive? Now is the time to get them in for 2014!
Check out the Employee Giving Program Website or call 206-263-9405 for more information. Email the link to your favorite nonprofit today. Even if they have been in before, nonprofits must reapply every year. Applications are due April 25.
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Five Questions with Deborah Kennedy, Manager for Archives, Records Management, and Mail Services, Dept. of Executive Services
1. What was your first role with King County? I came to King County in the fall of 2000 as the County Archivist. As Archivist I was responsible for the day-to-day operations of the Archives including caring for and building the County historical records collection. Records become eligible for disposition when they reach the end of their retention period. If records are determined to have archival value, transfer to the Archives is one of the possible dispositions. In general, records are considered archival if they have a research use beyond the use for which they were created. Determining if records had archival value and locating the records in the archival collection were the two things I enjoyed most about my position as County Archivist. In the Archives there were always new questions to answer and mysteries to solve.
2. What does ARMMS do? The Archives, Records Management and Mail Services Section is composed of four distinct work groups that are responsible for the management of current, inactive and historic records and information assets. Mail Services processes and distributes interoffice and USPS mail. The mail is one source of the multitude of current records received by County agencies every day. The Records Management Program provides the tools and education necessary to implement records management best practices throughout the County. Just one year ago, in March of 2013, the Records Management Program embarked on an ambitious endeavor to teach all County employees about their records management responsibilities and provide them with the tools to manage their records. Those tools are records retention schedules, file plans and the King County Electronic Records Management System (KC ERMS). The Records Center is the County’s designated storage facility for inactive records. Records are sent to inactive storage in the Records Center when they are no longer needed by the agency that created them for their daily work but before they have reached the end of their required retention period. If an agency needs access to records they have sent to inactive storage the Records Center staff pulls the records and returns them to the agency. The Records Center staff uses the KC ERMS to manage and track the Records Center inventory including circulation and disposition. The Archives collects, preserves and makes the County’s records of enduring historical value available for research purposes. Once records have been transferred to the Archives the Archives staff arranges and describes them to make it easier for anyone who wants to research the County’s history to find the records that will inform that research.
3. What do you like most about your job? The people I work with and the sense of providing a valuable service to the public. I am an historian by training and it is my sincere belief that records are an invaluable resource for King County, its employees and the public at large. As the Archivist of the United States put it, records are the backbone of an open government.
4. What is the biggest challenge in your job? Teaching my colleagues—all County employees—about the importance of records and records management. Helping them to understand that KC ERMS isn’t just about managing email, although that is an important part, but is about managing all records created and received in the course of doing the County’s business.
5. What is your main goal for 2014? My main goal for 2014 is to continue to move the Countywide Records Management Initiative forward. The goal of the RMI is to provide the tools and training necessary for all County employees and agencies to manage the records they create to document the work they do in the most efficient and cost effective manner.
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Protecting Our Waters: New Look, Same Great Program
Wastewater Treatment Division’s (WTD) Combined Sewer Overflow Control (CSO) Program is sporting a new look and feel, with the goal of helping the public and people outside WTD better understand their work.
“Protecting Our Waters” is the new name of a program to prevent pollution caused by excess stormwater in the sewer system on rainy days. Through 2030, WTD will be building nine pollution control projects to keep stormwater mixed with small amounts of sewage out of the Duwamish River, Lake Washington Ship Canal and Puget Sound. These projects complete the program started in 1979.
The tagline, “Doing Our Part on Rainy Days”, sets expectations about WTD’s role to protect waterways by controlling CSOs without overpromising. It’s a great, quick way to tell the story of why WTD does CSO projects.
Why such a big change? It’s not to “sell” something; it’s about good communication that helps busy people better understand (and hopefully appreciate) the value of WTD’s work. It’s also because people outside WTD and workgroups struggle with the term “CSO”, which requires a detailed explanation almost every time the topic is discussed – even with other County staff.
Finally, it’s because good messaging and strong visual cues (pictures speak a thousand words!) can help increase awareness of WTD’s work and public support for the rate structure needed to fund it.
The new message and image platform was developed by an internal WTD team of communicators, planners, capital project staff, graphic designers and management over the course of several months which reviewed market research and opinion polls, conducted internal brainstorming exercises and eventually presented the new concept for review and approval by division and department directors, as well as the Executive’s Office.
WTD will make a transition over the coming months, incorporating the look and messaging into newly produced materials and website updates.
Special thanks to: Susan Kaufman-Una, Erika Peterson, Doug Marsano, Michael Popiwny, Jessie Israel, John Phillips, Heidi Sowell, Sandy Kilroy, Jamie Foulk, Rachael Dillman, and Annie Kolb-Nelson for their efforts!
(Original article written by Annie Kolb-Nelson for WTD’s The Watermark newsletter).
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What Does Respect Mean to You?
We recently asked King County employees to tell us what respect in the workplace means to them in one word. The way we treat one another is just as important as the way we treat our customers, and helps define the type of workplace that we want.
Some of the words that resonated the most with employees were Consideration, Kindness, Communication, Trust, Listening, Value, Acknowledgement, Dignity, Acceptance and Appreciation.
You can see all the results displayed in a Word Cloud below.
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New Video: What does it mean to be a King County Employee?
What does being a King County employee mean to you? What values do we embrace as an organization? What do we want new and prospective employees to know about working at King County?
A new video featuring employees from across the County highlights five key elements of King County culture – Outstanding Customer Service, Continuous Improvement, Equity and Social Justice, Healthy Employees, and Teamwork and Collaboration.
The employees featured in the new video discuss what it means to them to work at King County, and how they incorporate the County’s core values into their everyday work.
All new King County employees will watch the video as part of their New Employee Orientation to introduce them to our key values as an organization.
Thank you to all the employees who participated in the video, including employees from the Departments of Adult and Juvenile Detention, Community and Human Services, Executive Services, Judicial Administration, Natural Resources and Parks, and Transportation, the Executive’s Office, King County Council, King County Elections, King County Information Technology, King County Sheriff’s Office, Public Health, and King County Executive Dow Constantine.
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