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Chldren's Hospital Boston feels an important responsibility to support a wide-variety of efforts to ensure a diverse and committed health care workforce now and in the future. Through its comprehensive workforce development initiatives, the hospital:
• introduces youth to health care as a profession and provides them with support to enter the field or in identifying their own career and educational goals
• supports Boston residents to pursue health careers and seek employment at Children's
• helps our own employees, including Boston residents, to advance in their careers.
Since 2007, the COACH Program (Community Opportunities Advancement at Children's Hospital), has provided full-time paid summer jobs to 159 Boston students. Students are exposed to health care careers while having a safe and productive summer. Job and life-skills workshops are offered to students on topics such as business etiquette, financial basics and communication. Students also tour and learn about colleges in the Longwood area.
The Student Career Opportunity Outreach Program (SCOOP) was created by Children's nurses in 2002 to help address the nursing shortage crisis. The goal of the program is to reach out to high school and college students in order to educate and inspire them to pursue a career in the field of nursing. Students from the Boston area are invited to attend a panel presentation of Children's nurses from a variety of settings followed by a tour of the inpatient units. This year, 100 students from Boston Public Schools attended the panels. Since 2003, SCOOP has sponsored a six-week paid summer internship where 15 students are placed to work in clinical areas of the hospital. This summer, eight students from Boston high schools have been selected to participate in the summer program.
Recognizing that there is a wealth of untapped talent among residents living near the hospital, Children's actively works to find, train and employ people from local neighborhoods. Children's also values its own employees as a resource and offers programs to help them advance in their careers. The hospital leads or participates in a number of programs for employees and residents to pursue health careers or seek employment at Children's.
• Year Up is an intensive year-long training program that provides Boston young adults with technical and professional skills, college credits and paid corporate apprenticeships. Children's has partnered with the program since 2004, providing funding for 30 participants and hiring 20 graduates as contractors or permanent employees.
• Fenway Community Development Corporation (CDC) "Walk to Work" Program is a career advancement program that helps Fenway and Boston residents find positions close to home. Children's partners with the CDC and YMCA International providing career skills training to help residents find employment in the medical field.
• Nursing Career Lattice Program provides clinical assistants, food service workers, environmental employees and other racially and ethnically diverse hospital staff who want to purse a career in nursing with academic counseling, mentoring and financial support. The hospital works with employees and area colleges/universities to identify the prerequisite courses and nursing programs that will allow each employee to successfully complete nursing school.
• SkillWorks, an initiative to improve workforce development in Boston and Massachusetts, helps low-income residents attain family-supporting jobs and businesses to find skilled workers. More than 50 Children's employees currently participate in this program where they enroll in pre-college classes to study medical coding, nursing and medical imaging. Children's SkillsWorks participants who want to pursue a career in nursing have the added benefit of applying to the Nursing Career Lattice Program, which helps them to achieve that goal.
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