Skill Up Rhode Island

Providence

, Rhode Island

SkillUp Funders Collaborative of Rhode Island

SkillUp Rhode Island helps participating workers realize significant progress toward individual or family-sustaining wages and helps employers attain the workforce they need to succeed and compete in the 21st century. The initiative also aims to assist entry-level and incumbent workers advance in their careers by providing them with a career pathway that leads to higher employment levels.

Funding Collaborative Accomplishments

• One of Skill Up’s workforce partnerships, Building Futures, launched an effort to promote the use of apprentices by contractors and construction project owners. This effort, the Apprenticeship Utilization Program or AUP, encourages organizations that initiate, finance, and contract out construction projects, as well as individual contractors, to commit to utilizing apprentices for at least 15% of the total construction labor hours.

• TEAMhealth2, a workforce partnership in long term healthcare. created a new curriculum, Certified Nursing Assistant II which is aimed at incumbent CNAs and is part of the TEAMhealth2 career laddering effort. CNA IIs take on a mentoring role on the floor alongside CNAs. CNA IIs earn more than CNAs. St. Antoine’s Residence (the lead organization in TEAMhealth2) is working with their partner nursing homes to build support for creating CNA II positions at their facilities. TEAMhealth2 is also advocating with the state to secure independent licensure for the CNA II position.

• Stepping Up, a hospital based workforce partnership, has expanded beyond its Providence area partner hospitals to hospitals and healthcare centers in Northern and Southern Rhode Island. Their goal is to make the Stepping Up partnership model the method that all hospitals in Rhode Island use to hire and upskill lower income, lower skilled workers.