Clinic to include mobile job-help program

For the first time, the Central Ohio workforce Incentive Corp.’s JobsMobile Library will set up at the Helping Hands Health and Wellness Center on Friday, Oct. 21, further expanding the social services offerings at the free clinic.

Actually, the portable job-assistance program will set up shop at the Haimerl Center, 1421 Morse Road, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., hours before the clinic opens at 3 p.m.

“It has computers in it and then they have people to help search for jobs for folks,” said Helping Hands volunteer coordinator Tina Scheer, who contacted the Central Ohio Workforce Incentive Corp. to arrange for the Jobs Mobile stop.

COWIC, according to the nonprofit organization’s website, is “central Ohio’s one-stop employment services provider.”

“Our mission is to meet the employment needs of businesses and job-seekers to support economic development in central Ohio,” the site states. “COWIC has partnered with Franklin County Job and Family Services, the state of Ohio Job and Family Services and the city of Columbus to provide assistance to all job-seekers, including, but not limited to, those who are moving from public assistance and those seeking their next job quickly when they have been dislocated from their current employer.”

According to the website, the organization’s “primary focus” is to help people obtain, retain or upgrade employment while also helping employers gain a qualified workforce.

“This will be their first time at Helping Hands and we’re hoping to have them more regularly,” Scheer said.

Helping Hands began operating out of the event center next door to Ascension Lutheran Church more than four years ago to offer medical care to uninsured or underinsured adults whose income is less than 200 percent of federal poverty guidelines.

Since then, the clinic has expanded services to include counseling, health education, medical referrals, medications and Ohio Benefit Bank resources.

Scheer said that she contacted COWIC officials about the JobsMobile Library because “as part of what we do at the clinic, I always try to have the most updated job opportunities.”

“We wanted to offer that as something else at the clinic,” she added.

JobsMobile Library sessions include two orientations, one at 10 a.m. and the other at 1:30 p.m., according to the COWIC website.

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