- Georgia Work$ expands, By Christine Vestal, September 20, 2010, Stateline.org: “When Augusta Roosa lost her accounting job at a restaurant on Jekyll Island, Georgia, she figured it would be just a matter of time before she landed another job in her line of work. But after six months of looking, she decided to go for a long shot. ‘I knew the back of the restaurant so I figured ‘why not learn the front?” says 29-year-old Roosa. The trick was getting a local restaurant owner to give her a chance to prove she could learn everything she needed to know on the job. That’s where a nationally recognized program called Georgia Work$ came in. Started in 2003, it allows jobless workers to become trainees for selected businesses at no cost to the employers. Starting today (Sept. 20), Georgia is more than doubling the number of people who can benefit from the program by opening it up to anyone without a job, not just those collecting unemployment checks, as originally designed…”
- Utah incentive helps put people ‘Back to Work’, By Mike Gorrell, September 20, 2010, Salt Lake Tribune: “Javier Mendez married Marquita Luker on Aug. 18, so it was not a good time for him to be out of work. But he was, laid off a couple of months earlier from a gritty job removing asbestos from older buildings. So the 32-year-old Taylorsville man was eager to take advantage of a new Utah Department of Workforce Services program that offers companies an incentive – worth up to $2,000 – to hire people receiving unemployment insurance benefits. ‘That’s like a gimme,’ Mendez said last week while working among a crisscrossing grid of pipes running in and out of a chiller unit at the $20.5 million JL Sorenson Recreation Center being built in Herriman by Layton Construction. His new company, Thermal West, is one of the first to participate in the state agency’s ‘Back to Work’ program, which began in July. The department has received enough federal funding through the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) program to find work for up to 2,500 recipients of unemployment insurance benefits and 700 out-of-work youth. How? By offering companies the $2,000 subsidy if they hire someone off the active unemployment rolls and put them to work for three months, at a guaranteed minimum wage of $9 an hour…”
Tag: Georgia
Costs of Chronic Homelessness
The high cost of our homeless, By Jenel Few, August 22, 2010, Savannah Morning News: “For the past 12 years, Samuel Wayne Anderson has spent most nights in a shelter, a cheap motel, a makeshift campsite or a cell at the Chatham County jail. The 72-year-old veteran with a long, white beard and penchant for liquor spends most of his days hanging out in downtown Savannah. He’s a regular at the Inner City Night Shelter and the free health clinics downtown. Many know him as the man who totes an open 32-ounce bottle of King Cobra, asks tourists for change and makes it hard for them to enjoy the scenic squares in the Historic District. Anderson is chronically homeless. He has family in Ellabell that love him. His son Stephen Anderson is currently serving with the military in Iraq. But for whatever reason, the old man’s preference for alcohol and a solitary life has drawn him to the street for most of his adult life…”
Recession and Rural Hospitals – Georgia
Rural hospitals face challenges across the state, By Charles Oliver, August 22, 2010, Dalton Daily Citizen: “The economic downturn, cuts in state and federal health care programs, and attempts by private businesses to rein in their own health care costs have combined to create a ‘perfect storm’ that threatens small rural hospitals across the state, according to Jimmy Lewis, CEO of HomeTown Health, which represents 55 rural hospitals in Georgia including Murray Medical Center. ‘We could wake up tomorrow and have 10 hospitals about to close,’ said Lewis. Forty-one Georgia hospitals have closed since 1980, according to the Georgia Hospital Association, many of them small rural hospitals. The problem that rural hospitals face is that their ‘payer mix’ is typically heavy in patients on Medicare and Medicaid and those without insurance…”