“Project SEARCH is international. It’s typically through the hospital. But sometimes it’s the banks, it’s the schools, it can be through other places too. There are steps to the whole process–you have to go to an orientation, take a tour of the hospital. They do get instruction in the day. It is a one year… his last year in school. In Project SEARCH, you will accept your diploma at the end. It’s a collaboration between OVR, Goodwill, UPMC, and the school district. So UPMC’s like the corporate sponsor. The OVR counselor was there–there was job coaching that was there. The kids go through three rotations throughout the hospital. He was in ER, which he loved. And it wasn’t like people being loaded in and he was like giving them paddles or anything. He would take the carts that are in every ER room and fill them, and make sure they were filled. And he even came up with a new way of doing it, and now they implement that way in the hospital, so he was proud of that.”

Transition-age youth