WARREN — Howland High School senior Jakob Campbell, 17, spends two school days per week in the hospital. He’s not a patient. Campbell is there to work.

“I mop the floors, wipe down the elevators with stainless steel wipes, vacuum the floors and also wipe down chairs, tables — all that kind of stuff. I’ll also pull trash bags from the trash,” Campbell said.

He is one of the students in a new partnership between the Trumbull County Educational Service Center Essential Skills program and Mercy Health St. Joseph Warren Hospital.

The Essential Skills program provides on-the-job training to some of the TESC’s special needs students to help them transition from high school to adulthood and into the job market.

“I was chosen for this program because they (his teachers) knew I can do hands-on work and would be able to interact with people,” Campbell said.

The cooperative between an educational institute and the business world not only prepares the students for the competitive job market, it makes that process easier by hiring some of them after they graduate. Campbell said he is grateful for it because the hospital plans to hire him after he graduates.

“I actually have hired probably three or four of the students right out of high school and they’ve turned out to be exemplary employees,” said Sue Ambrose, St. Joseph nutrition director. “So there’s hiring potential, down the road, if we see that they’re performing well and it kind of works out ideally because they already know a lot of the staff that they’re working with so it makes it an easy transition for them.”

Gigi Strata, transition coordinator and teacher with the Trumbull County Educational Service Center, said the Essential Skills program is fortunate to have a business partner like St. Joseph for its students.

“They have a history of community outreach and helping with student training, job training, employability training and essential skills training,” Strata said. “I have to say that I couldn’t ask for a better partnership.”

The hospital has a similar program with the Trumbull Career and Technical Center in Champion, but this is the first year that the hospital is partnering with the TCESC. The program began in late September and has six students.

“Most of my information and the guidance and the support comes from the hospital staff,” Strata said. “They (the students) are here for the entire school day twice a week. We work on basic employability skills, along with social adaptive skills that would be appropriate and necessary to gain competitive employment once they graduate from high school.”

“A lot of times their general work habits are very satisfactory. But when you get into the social skills realm and dealing with the public or dealing with certain situations that are uncommon, their social and adaptive skills are, I think, areas that need most improvement,” she said.

Laura Revetti, TCESC supervisor of Emotionally Disturbed Programs, said teachers and administrators look at the student’s academic, social emotional and goals progress to make sure they would be a good fit for the program.

Ambrose and Mike Tomko of environmental services at the hospital work with the students in two groups.

“I’d pair them up with our housekeepers, who clean all of the patient rooms and floors. We did that for a few weeks, and now we’re getting to where they’re able to complete different duties on their own,” Tomko said. “The social skills, the basic work-level entry, social interaction — that’s things we’ve been focusing on, along with just overcoming different things that come up.”

Ambrose has them work in the kitchen and cafeteria where they are exposed to cold prep, dishwashing, sanitation.

“We kind of have them in different areas of the kitchen. We also have them out in the cafeteria occasionally for training, to teach them how to interact with the public or with customers, being on the front line, and developing those social skills and customer service skills as well. There’s a variety of things that they learn from us,” Ambrose said.

Kayse Metlicka, 14, from the Learning Center at Liberty, enjoys working in the dietary area but says it’s not easy work. She wants to be a veterinarian and believes that some of the skills she’s learning will benefit her when she moves onto that field.

bshiller@tribtoday.com