10:00am | So Long Beach has nine new healthcare workers. Why Tuesday’s hoopla of a commencement ceremony with Mayor Bob Foster in attendance?

The big deal is not the nine people who have gone from unemployed to beginning new careers (although for them it certainly is a big deal), but that this small group represents the first of over 300 new positions that will be filled at Long Beach hospitals — along with 400 current employees who will receiving additional training — over the next four years, employment opportunities made possible by way of a $2.8 million grant from the U.S. Department of Labor.

“It’s a great day for Long Beach,” Foster told the assembled crowd. “$2.8 million to put people back to work.”

According to the event press release, the grant was awarded to Pacific Gateway Workforce Investment Network,” to “provide customized training to unemployed job-seekers for 363 new positions within Long Beach Memorial, Miller Children’s [Hospital Long Beach], Community Hospital Long Beach, the MemorialCare Health System, and other healthcare sites. An additional 400 MemorialCare employees will receive updated training and certifications to help them advance in their career pathways.”

Tuesday’s “class” of nine, which graduated from a full-time, seven-week training program, brought the total number of MemorialCare employees acquired by way of Pacific Gateway into triple-digits. But the current H-1B grant brings the public-private partnership to a new level.

“This is a perfect example of what we love to have,” said Foster, his teal tie coming pretty close to matching the MemorialCare graduates’ scrubs. “We know there are 363 jobs that need to be filled at Memorial. So we get a grant from the Labor Department to have Pacific Gateway train people for these jobs. They complete the training, they get hired. […] In addition, you’ve got money for 400 currently-employed people to improve their skills and then hopefully move up the wage scale. It’s a great program.”

Included among the certification/upgrade training for 400 existing staff members is the creation of two new positions within the MemorialCare system: patient home facilitator and advance directive liaisons, both of which will particularly improve the hospitals’ ability to provide care for the elderly. The grant will cover training 50 employees for each of these roles.

Erick Serrato, the Pacific Gateway communications specialist who authored the grant application, explained that patient home facilitators “will follow patients home and ensure that all of that equipment they need is there, that they have enough food in their refrigerator, and that their family is contacted,” a service that will help to prevent “unnecessary return trips to the hospital”; while the role of advance directive liaison “was developed in response to large number of elderly who come to hospital unprepared in terms of what procedures the need to have. […] By going out into the community and working with assisted-living facilities, nursing homes, and community groups to educate [the elderly] population about what they need to have when they enter the hospital, it helps reduce unnecessary costs and [patient] stress.”

One of the ceremony’s speakers was Diego Vargas-Dominguez, a recent alumnus of the Pacific Gateway training program who eight months ago was laid off from his gig as a bus driver.

“So I went to Pacific Gateway, and I got an opportunity to get into this program with a lot of great people who helped me,” the Long Beach native and father of three related. “When I came through the training, I was a little skeptical. But once I began helping people, it was amazing. Now I’m just happy to be here, and I’m looking forward to any advancement opportunities [the grant may provide].”

Foster praised the employment “feeder system” that is Pacific Gateway.

“The most frustrating thing for a person [who is] out of work or working part-time and they want to get more skills is when they’re trained and it doesn’t do any good,” the mayor said. “I can’t imagine how frustrating that is. […] As much as we can do we’re saying: Train people, [but] don’t frustrate them. Train them for jobs that exist. Pacific Gateway is the greatest at that. It’s the model for how you ought to use federal funds for training.”

Larry Rice, a Pacific Gateway boardmember, noted that over the last year his organization has helped to land jobs for 3,100 unemployed individuals.