Mary Wade Home Photo
Freeman and Tracy Gilbert, MWH’s director of home and community based services, have the interview.
Kearra Freeman is currently serving in the U.S. Army reserves but is contemplating a career shift to become an occupational therapist.
How to go about that?
She found a stepping stone toward that goal when she was among 110 participants in a job fair convened at the Mary Wade Home in Fair Haven.
They were there because the Mary Wade Home, an anchoring and standard-setting institution in Fair Haven not only in care of the elderly but in providing local folks with employment, recently received a Connecticut state grant to provide services to keep more older people in their homes as they age.
The grant derives from a fund for nursing facilities diversification through the state’s Department of Housing.
The resulting program, called “Mary Wade At Home,” is designed to augment an adult day care program—a busy program serving live-at-home elderly who are vanned in to Mary Wade’s sunny and activity-filled rooms for cultural, therapeutic, socializing, and, when necessary, medical attention.
To keep even more folks at home and out of Mary Wade’s live-in health care and nursing home wings, a new crew of personal care assistants, homemakers, and companions needs to be recruited.
That’s what the job fair was about.
Word also had apparently gotten around of the local job opportunities because of the 110 attendees, like Freeman, 100 had pre-registered.
In a post-fair email, MWH Director of Development Joy DeMarchis described the event as a “packed house.”
Applicants who are accepted into the new program are to receive notice within two weeks.
Freeman said she hopes she’ll be one of them. “I want to be an occupational therapist one day and it would be good to become accustomed to the healthcare field in this [a home aid] position [at Mary Wade],” she said.
Those who did not attend the fair but are still interested in future opportunities can be in touch with DeMarchis at 203 – 672-7812
