Realizing Employment Potential with Project SEARCH
Photo credit: Jacob Robinson/ Simcoe Reformer
“Kids like me, when they graduate high school, not many companies give them a chance and I’m glad they gave me one,” says Alex, a Project SEARCH graduate who was recently hired full-time at Toyotetsu, a car part manufacturer in Simcoe, Ontario.
Through Project SEARCH, youth with disabilities like Alex spend their last year of high school training at a host business. They also receive in-class instruction from skills trainers on participating in the workforce. For many participants, the program results in game-changing employment opportunities.
“I had no words. I was very happy I got the job,” Alex adds.
Project SEARCH builds employment pathways across the province
With 19 different Project SEARCH sites in Ontario in 2024-2025, Alex is just one of many gainfully employed program graduates.
Frank, who graduated Project SEARCH in 2024, currently works in environmental services at Health Sciences North Sudbury.
Project SEARCH is an international school-to-work transition model program first introduced in Ontario at two locations in 2019: Halton Healthcare and Holland Bloorview with the University Health Network. Each Project SEARCH site is a collaboration between a host organization (hospital or other industry), an educational institution and an employment service provider.
Across the province, programs like Project SEARCH help fill a critical gap in access to employment for people with disabilities and boost employment outcomes. In a recent Canadian Survey on Disability, only 30% of individuals with significant disabilities were employed in 2022. In a typical year for Project SEARCH, that number can double, with the employment rate of graduates around 65-70%.
To help open pathways to meaningful employment, Holland Bloorview supports Project SEARCH sites in Ontario to learn and grow together. This is made possible by the generosity of donors like the Azrieli Foundation, who committed $3 million to Holland Bloorview in 2022.
Recently, a transformational gift from The Slaight Family Foundation to Holland Bloorview and the Ontario Disability Employment Network (ODEN) is helping to grow the Project SEARCH model even more.
The Slaight Family Foundation’s generosity funds Realizing Employment Potential, a five-year capacity-building initiative focused on improving employment outcomes by expanding the network of employers who hire program graduates.
“If we make great contacts with a grocery store chain, for example, we hope that they would want to share Project SEARCH with their stores in other communities and spread and scale that way,” says Carolyn McDougall, Manager of Employment Pathways at Holland Bloorview and the Ontario/Canada Coordinator for Project SEARCH.
Jordan, 2024 Project SEARCH graduate, does health equity surveys with clients and families at Holland Bloorview.
Data-driven collaboration with ODEN
The expansion of the Project SEARCH model also relies on the ability of the different sites to work together to share information about labour market needs.
“The more we understand what kind of role a particular place might have, then we can make sure that we have mechanisms to train for those types of jobs,” explains Carolyn.
As well as knowledge-sharing, funding from The Slaight Family Foundation means that Project SEARCH sites can develop new methods using the data they collect about program outcomes to drive strategy.
“By leveraging program data, we can track the employment outcomes of program graduates and tailor the training they receive to gaps across industries,” says Ingrid Muschta, director, Special Projects and Innovation at ODEN. “And with this data-driven approach, we can help businesses build talent pipelines of youth who have a disability looking to enter the workforce.”
2023 Project SEARCH graduate Marshall works at Halton Healthcare as an Environmental Services Assistant.
Expanding employment supports
Realizing Employment Potential also involves establishing quality standards for post-Project SEARCH employment supports such as recruitment consultation, disability confidence training and coaching during onboarding and training. These kinds of supports help to ensure that graduates and their employers have a positive job experience so that employers continue to hire people with disabilities. Co-designing and piloting these employment support best practices are three organizations involved in Project SEARCH: Community Living Oakville, March of Dimes Canada and Norfolk Association for Community Living.
“The idea of the pilots is thinking, ‘How can we expand from the methods and materials that made hiring possible?’ and then making that information available to the other Project SEARCH sites so that more locations have a hiring pathway,” explains Carolyn.
By collaborating in this way, Project SEARCH sites are creating a culture of inclusive hiring across the province, dismantling barriers to employment for youth with disabilities.
Shaad graduated Project SEARCH in 2024, and now works at UHN as a patient transporter.
