A service of Schenectady County Community College, the Bridge Program is an occupational-based program that provides comprehensive services to address the needs of low-income families in Schenectady County. For the past 6 years, the Bridge Program has been providing students and community members with valuable services including one-on-one career and employment counseling, general education development and extensive case management services.

The transition into 2005, however, has brought with it challenging changes for the program. As a way to encourage local departments of social services statewide to fully utilize programs such as Bridge, the eligibility requirements for acceptance into the program were drastically increased. With this change, the Bridge Program at SCCC was looking at losing up to 80% of our current participants.

With the realization that changing times necessitate changing programs, a new endeavor was born. In collaboration with the Schenectady County Department of Social Services and the Schenectady Job Training Agency, a core need was recognized to provide better support for families transitioning off of welfare and into the working world. A three month, intensive services plan was developed in which participants will attend workshops, classes and meetings designed to address individual needs. Participants will also receive one-to-one assistance obtaining supportive services as well as intensive case management and supportive mediation with their employers; participants will have access to on-call support from the Bridge Program staff 24 hours a day 7 days a week.

While this is a massive and challenging change to the way our program operates, it has brought with it a new group of community members in need of services and has expanded upon our existing community partnerships. We are happy to bring our new Bridge participants into the halls of SCCC and are confident that we will all succeed in our new endeavors.