A Rochester organization has received a $200,000 grant to help address a major employment barrier facing some people who want to work in the home care field.
HCR Cares, a nonprofit that works to address obstacles to independent living, will use the grant from the Mother Cabrini Health Foundation to provide in-person training to prepare potential employees for their driver's permit test.
“Transportation is one of the major barriers to finding employment in the home care workforce,” Louise Woerner, HCR Cares board president, said in a news release. “We are grateful that the Mother Cabrini Health Foundation is providing this support to enable us to address this issue by helping potential workers get their driver’s license.”
The effort is intended to help eliminate obstacles some people face to taking their permit test or getting a driver's license. Those can include lack of or limited access to a computer and overcoming learning difficulties or language barriers.
The grant funding will also be used to pay for the cost of a driver’s permit and Department of Motor Vehicle fees.
HCR will use a screening process to find participants among potential employees who were ineligible because they didn't have driver's licenses.
