Connect

Like many young girls with a talent for singing and dancing, Shakira Turner, 28, dreamed of being the next Beyoncé. Her parents supported her dream and took her to auditions, but when reality set in, she turned to a more practical career path after high school. She took online classes to become a paralegal — all while working several different jobs in the food service, retail, correctional, and other fields to help make ends meet, especially after becoming a single mother of twins with special needs. But last spring when Turner joined UVA Health System, she finally found her true calling.

“I love being on 4 Central. They are great people. A great team. I love working with the nurses, PCAs [patient care assistants] and PCTs [patient care technicians]. It’s really awesome. You’re learning something new every day and you’re given the opportunity to grow,” says Turner, a patient care assistant for the cardiovascular unit at University Hospital.

Turner is one of many Charlottesville area residents who have found their way to a fulfilling career through a partnership between UVA Health System and Piedmont Virginia Community College (PVCC). The partnership began in 2015 as a pilot project with the Charlottesville Works Initiative to prepare several local residents to fill much-needed patient care assistant positions. The pilot was made possible through a two-year grant from the DuPont Foundation. Now known as Network2Work@PVCC, the program has grown to serve 600 job seekers and dozens of employers in various fields.

“As with many great partnerships, it started with two different parties expressing a need: UVA Health System had a need for quality employees and the Charlottesville Works Initiative saw incredible people with incredible potential but, for whatever reason, we’re overlooked by our economy. By teaming up, we could solve a problem for both parties,” says Ridge Schuyler, former director of the Charlottesville Works Initiative and now Dean of PVCC’s Community Self-Sufficiency Programs.

He adds, “Building off what we started through the UVA Health System pilot, we now have 75 different employers and 91 different jobs that we’re actively recruiting for in the Charlottesville area. One of the most sought-after careers is working at UVA Health System,” he adds. “This is because not only does the University of Virginia Health System have lots of career-ladder opportunities but it is a preeminent place in the community to work.”

More than Training
Network2Work@PVCC goes well beyond job training. “What we recognized early on and what the pilot really illuminated is that it’s the whole person who shows up at the job — not just the trained person, but the trained person who needs child care or who may need car repairs … UVA Health System has been an excellent partner, not just in having job opportunities, but in helping us think through what job seekers need in order to be successful employees.”

He adds, “For whatever reasons, there are people who live within blocks of the hospital who would have never dreamed of getting a job there. By creating an intentional pathway, we’ve been able to find those folks and connect them to the opportunities and support systems they need to become quality employees.”

Getting to UVA Health System was not an easy path for Shakira Turner. She was working at Target when she got pregnant, and she needed to drop out of the workforce in 2014 to care for a sick family member. When she went back into the workforce as a single mom, she found a job as an administrative assistant for a tax-preparer firm and started taking accounting classes at PVCC but soon realized it wasn’t the right fit. She asked a former coworker about nursing and the coworker pointed her to PVCC’s Network2Work program. She enrolled in May 2017 and found teachers who gave her the confidence and know-how to be ready for a demanding field. While training to become a nursing assistant and preparing for her certification exam, Turner practiced her healthcare skills by working for home-health agencies. “I wanted to gain more experience before working at UVA. I knew that this wasn’t a job to just play around with. All jobs are serious but working in an actual hospital, I knew there were certain procedures in place and you’d have to be able to follow them.”

Realizing her Dreams
Landing in the healthcare field was in many ways a natural fit for Turner. She always knew she wanted to help people, and when she was just out of high school, she got an inside view of direct patient care: Turner’s baby sister spent a few months at then UVA Kluge Children’s Rehabilitation Center after a serious accident. “When my sister was at Kluge, I just wanted to help — from cleaning my sister to helping her with her speech. The nurses there were telling me I needed to come to UVA to go through their program. But I told them I didn’t want to be a nurse. I was pursuing my legal career.”

Today, Turner loves making sure patients are safe and comfortable — doing everything from monitoring blood pressure, elevating arms after a pacemaker implant, or getting ice chips for someone not allowed to eat before a procedure.

Other than singing to her 4-year-old twins, she hasn’t performed in front of an audience since high school. But Turner has big dreams. After just a few months under her belt on 4 Central, she was already planning to advance in her field. “My goal right now is between 2021 and 2022, going into the RN program through UVA. They have a great nursing program. Hopefully by the time I’m 36, I’ll reach my ultimate goal to become a physician assistant.”

Learn more about how the Network2Work@PVCC program has helped more than 600 job seekers find employment that pays family-sustaining wages and doesn’t require a college degree. Go here for more information.

DID YOU KNOW …?

The Harsh Reality
12,024 families in Central Virginia* do not make enough money to afford the essentials of life — food, shelter, clothing and utilities — and the added costs associated with working — childcare and transportation.

The Solution: 8 Key Ingredients
This is how to help families overcome poverty:

• Jobs
• Job Information
• Peer Network
• Job-Seeker Assessment
• Ongoing Support
• Resource Providers
• Coordination & Quality Control
  According to the 2018 Orange Dot 3.0 report by Ridge Schuyler, director of the Network2Work Program, a partnership between Piedmont Virginia Community College and Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce

*comprising Charlottesville and counties of Albemarle, Green, Louisa, Fluvanna, Buckingham & Nelson

(By Kelly Casey.)