Employment is one part of the immigrant Settlement process, yes. We work with all issues that a client is facing, including employment. In many cases a newcomer to Canada is facing many issues and barriers to full participation in Canadian life. Lack of employment or underemployment is a significant barrier that can lead to, create or exacerbate other problems that someone is facing.
Our role as a Settlement agency is to help our clients with all of the issues they are faced with. Employment is an issue that many of our clients ask us about and that they need assistance with. Since we have offered resume writing and other basic employment counselling services in the past we have seen a huge demand for employment services from our clients.
In our community there are many employment and training programs available to members of the K-W community. However, these organizations specialize in employment and have fairly strict requirements for whom they will take into their programs.
The reality tends to be that we are all faced with many "issues". Settlement work recognizes that reality and so puts employment into a broader context. We will work with our clients with all of their needs and desires. Our ability to offer some in-house employment expertise only makes us more effective service providers. When we and our client determine that another program may be more suitable or specific to their needs we can help them access that program while ensuring that they know that there is another place, the Centre, where all of their needs will continue to be met.
We make appropriate referrals to whatever services are best offered outside of our Centre, making sure that our clients know they can always come back to us for assistance, advocacy, to give us feedback about other services and to simply let us know how they are doing.
Our ability to meet many needs ensures that a client will be able to: