The Times of Northwest Indiana - Durbin Tours South Suburban Facility That Puts People to Pork in Medical Careers

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By Gregory Tejeda

Crystal Hernandez was a single mother of four young children with no real plan for her future when, one day while on the Internet, she kept noticing the same pop-up ad cropping up.

At first, she tried ignoring it. Yet it kept coming up. When she finally checked it out, it was an advertisement for the Southland Health Care Forum programs that train people for medical-related careers.

Hernandez is now a student in the program, hoping to some day find work caring for senior citizens. And on Monday, she was one of several current and former students in the program who met U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who is taking an interest in the facility as a way of both reducing unemployment and bolstering health care.

Durbin met with the officials at the forum's satellite office, where he spent about one hour questioning them about what they do in the program and what they hope to accomplish.

The program, originally created by now-former Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr., and continued by U.S. Rep. Robin Kelly, D-Matteson, was designed to help retrain people who are transitioning out of their careers and considering healthcare-related work.

Yet Durbin said he thinks the program can be of help to younger people who are considering college, but don't really know what they want to do. They wind up studying things that don't help them find future employment.

"We have so many young people who go the wrong way; they wind up deeply in debt," Durbin said. "They make bad choices, and wind up with a worthless diploma."

Cory Williams is a graduate of the program who originally was trained to be an accountant, and once worked as an auditor for Illinois state government, until his job was cut several years ago. Attempts to get into real estate were not successful, and he was unsure where he would go until he learned of the program.

"It helped me find direction," Williams said, adding he hopes to eventually find work as a nurse practitioner.

Maria Crews, a chief operating officer for the forum, said prospective students should have at least a high school diploma, although there have been cases when the forum helped students lacking a diploma to fill in the gaps in their education so they could participate.

Durbin said the program will continue to get some federal funding through provisions of the Affordable Care Act. Although he was unsure whether it was something that could be copied in other parts of the country.

"This program works here because of the expertise of the people running it," Durbin said. "Without that expertise, there's no guarantee you could just pick it up and do it elsewhere."

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