Since its founding in 2021, Dwyer Workforce Development has trained and placed almost 6,000 individuals in healthcare careers across Maryland, Texas and Florida. Now the organization has expanded its footprint to Kansas.
In addition to free healthcare training, the organization offers wraparound services tailored to individual needs, such as financial assistance for housing, childcare and transportation. The organization’s efforts have resulted in almost $80 million in annual earnings for its Dwyer program graduates.
“We are a workforce development program that helps people who lack opportunity and train people to be certified nursing assistants. But the difference is, when I started this nonprofit on behalf of Jack Dwyer, we talked about the fact that just giving somebody a job doesn’t work,” CEO Barb Clapp told the McKnight’s Business Daily. “So we take a holistic approach to training our individuals who lack opportunity and then we give them a path to nursing school or anywhere they want to go after a period of time.”
“Our mission is to help people who lack opportunity to improve the healthcare staffing crisis and then, therefore, improve the community at large,” she added.
The latest initiative is a collaboration between Kansas WorkforceONE and Dwyer Workforce Development. The program will be tested this year, with the goal of helping train and place at least 25 individuals in senior healthcare jobs in Douglas County, KS. The organization has plans to expand into 16 other Kansas counties as well.