‘They’re here doing meaningful work’: CMS program gives adults with special needs a career headstart

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (WBTV) - At project SEARCH, these students are seen not for their disabilities, but for their abilities.

“I think the most important thing is we do see our interns as adults, and we really focus on their abilities,” Paige Henderson, the program instructor, says.

CMS partnered with Project SEARCH back in 2016 as a way to provide special needs students who finished their high school core credits with a way to learn hands-on skills that can help them land full-time jobs as an adult.

“It’s important. We have a job because it gives us an identity, it gives us a purpose, and it gives us a place to go, and it makes us a member of a team. And we all want to be a member of a team,” Henderson says.

This team will be doing a year-long internship at different locations for Novant Health, doing everything from stocking nursing stations to cleaning and helping in the cafeteria, truly becoming a part of the community.

“You don’t really say ‘this is where they begin and where we end, ‘but really seeing us come together and working as one unit,” Robyn Barriffe, the chief nursing officer of Novant Matthews Medical Center, says. “That’s really rewarding.”

Providing value through their work, and finding value from the skills learned and friendships made along the way.

“I think a lot of times in society, people make assumptions about what people are capable of,” Barriffe explains. “And they’re here doing meaningful work. They’re helping us in our mission to take care of this community.”

Henderson has been an instructor with the program since its inception and has a wall of fame with all of her students that have gone on to land jobs after the internship.

“It’s got to do with the fact that you are you, and you have something to offer,” Henderson says.

The hope is that she continues to add pictures as the students continue to show their disabilities won’t stand in their way.

“We all have the same goal,” Henderson says. “We want our interns to graduate and get jobs, and to become contributing members of the community. And there’s no reason why they shouldn’t.”

The program takes students with learning disabilities who have finished their high school credits and

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