Page 32 2023 Hometown HEROES Magazine LINCOLN DAILY NEWS May 2023 Some of the rooms included areas for reading, clients read books and practice their comprehension. Some read aloud, practicing their language skills as they read. Deany said that each client comes into the program at a different level of capability and the program design permits the clients to advance or maintain that level through daily skill exercises. The programs are individualized to each client. Another room is set up for life skills development including cooking and cleaning. Deany said that the clients learn to make food and clean up afterward. The skills developed give them a greater level of independence, but also enable some of the clients to enter the workforce outside the LCDR. Other rooms are designated for crafting which gives clients the opportunity to exercise their imagination but also visualize an end product and follow instruction in order to achieve that end product. Another area the students are fond of is the art room where they can draw and create according to their own ability. Deany said there are three or more instructors in each room that work with the group and one-on-one with clients as needed. Then there is the assembly room where clients work for Eaton. Deany and Ross-Jones both emphasized that Eaton Corporation has been a wonderful partner with LCDR. Each morning the plant delivers bins of parts that require assembly or need to be sorted and packaged into cartons. There are two lines that the clients work with. The first is the creation of what is called an Amp Strap. The clients take a thin metal strap and place a plastic tube around the center of the strap. The straps are dropped into a carton and then taken to a machine at the back of the room where the individual straps are run through an oven. The straps pass through the oven conveyor style and on the other end come out and are placed into another carton for return to Eaton. The clients who work on the Amp Straps are paid by the number of pieces they put together each day. At the end of the day, those who have had a good productive day can earn more than minimum wage, but regardless of how many they get done, everyone who works on this line earns some money. The other part of the work in the assembly room is an hourly position where each client collects the correct number of breakers in a variety of sizes and boxes them into kits. Continued --
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