Clarion CareerLink Closing April 30; Options Evaluated for Continuing Services

Ron Wilshire

Ron Wilshire

Published January 26, 2017 5:31 am
Image

CLARION, Pa. (EYT) — The Clarion office of CareerLink is still planning to close as of April 30, but career link services will continue with the different delivery approach.

“The staff will be moved to new locations,” said Janet Anderson, Executive Director of the Northwest Pa. Workforce Development Board.

“We’re not eliminating service; we are just delivering service in a different manner. It will be a more mobile method of service.”

The Northwest Board serves five counties, including Clarion County, Venango County, Crawford County, Warren County, and Erie County.

Reasons for the change were both costs and better serving needs,” said Anderson. “Initially, it was focused on better delivering services because we were finding that the number of people walking into the CareerLink is small.  You need clients.” 

“We’re seeing people in Clarion an average of 2.9 times over a three-month period.  A total of 86 percent of our people are only coming in one or two times…ever.  We started to wonder how can we really help people, and our partners told us that we’re not making good referrals; some of our people don’t want to come there, and if CareerLink could come to the partners, they could help us with that.”

(* See use research below.)

The review of the financial picture solidified the need to find a new solution for delivery of services.

“We realized we couldn’t afford all of these bricks and mortar. The lease was coming up, and it made sense to move to the mobile concept of taking the services to the clients.”

“Over the longer term, the services could take on a different look of a mobile center going out to the counties not covered by a mobile center or the smaller sites with partners.  We won’t know until we really get into it a little deeper.  We’re open to all ideas.  We’re moving from five sites to just two comprehensive sites in our five counties.”

While CareerLink continues to develop its new delivery system and identify partners, Anderson pointed out that some of the services now offered at the Clarion office are through Unemployment and are not part of the Career Link, with Unemployment leasing space.

“The Career Link Services will continue and move to various locations.  We’ve been in touch with the libraries.  Instead of just having services in Clarion, we may be in Rimersburg; we may be in Knox, or anywhere.  We are trying to determine things, so actually people may have to travel less than more.”

“We have been in talks with the Clarion Free Library. Janet Dixon and I met with Library Director Dan Parker. and they are very interested in working with us on various things that help them and help us.  If you look at the new law for workforce development, it talks about partnerships, and we are required to have one one-stop in our workforce area.  The plan is to have two one-stops and service the rest of the counties with what we are calling “mobile career links” — for lack of a better term.”

“We’re moving to various locations where people are — we might be at a literacy council — we might be at a housing authority.  We also have to think about those people who are dislocated workers that need our career services.  There are a couple of likely locations to meet with them, libraries being one of them, United Way might be another. Chambers of Commerce might be a third.  We’re looking at all of those different opportunities, so we can get closer to our clients.”

* Preliminary Assessment of Mobile Implementation in Clarion County

Job Seeker Engagement in Clarion County

On average, the 425 customers who engaged with the PA CareerLink received 6.1 services over the course of 3 months (September through November, 2015).   Each of these customers visited the PA CareerLink in Clarion County, on average, 2.31 times over the course of 3 months (less than once per month).  This average number of visits is misleading, however, and is largely a function of less than 10 customers who visited the site at a pace well above average.  By aggregating clients according to frequency of visits, a clearer picture emerges: the majority of all clients served at the PA CareerLink® in Clarion County only visit the site once in a 3-month period.  A full breakout of visit frequency appears in the table below.

Frequency of Client Visits to PA CareerLink Clarion

Count of Clients Percentage of All Clients
More than 20 visits

2

0.47%

15-20 visits

2

0.47%

10-14 visits

4

0.94%

6-10 visits

19

4.48%

4-5 visits

33

7.78%

2-3 visits

146

34.43%

1 visit

218

51.42%

TOTAL

424

100.00%

 

Recent Articles

Community Partner