(Washington, DC)  The Department of Employment Services (DOES) Veterans One-Stop Career Center was selected as the 2006 winner of the National Association of State Workforce Agencies (NASWA) Mark Sanders Award for Exceptional Service to Disabled Veterans. The award will be presented to Director Gregg Irish at the NASWA Annual Conference in Boise, Idaho on Wednesday, September 6, 2006.  

The Mark Sanders Award recognizes a state one-stop center that has demonstrated exceptional service to disabled veteran seeking employment assistance. The award was named in honor of Mark Sanders, for his distinguished career with the California Employment Development Department and NASWA. The award notification stated that the District’s Veterans One-Stop Career Center was selected because it is a “dedicated establishment” solely for veterans – the first and only one of its kind in the United States, and for its “innovative services to disabled veterans” in the District, as well as “its performance statistics” throughout the award year.

In 2005, approximately 3,000 veterans received employment-related services through the DOES Veterans One-Stop Career Center. Of that number, 65% of the disabled veterans seeking assistance obtained employment, exceeding the federal performance goals. More than sixty percent (60.5%) entered employment after receiving intensive services by the center and 64% retained employment after staff assistance or intervention. In total, 85% of the disabled veterans retained employment beyond six months.   

Gregg Irish, Director of the Department of Employment Services was elated at the news of the award.  “We are very pleased about this honor,“ said Irish. “Our Veterans One-Stop Career Center places a high priority on helping fellow citizens who have served in this country’s armed forces gain access to employment. We realize that they are a vital part of this city’s economy.”

The DOES Veterans One-Stop Career Center, a US Department of Labor-funded workforce development program, has realized several accomplishments since its inception in 2003. Most notably, the US Department of Labor, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Department of Defense collaborated to launch the Veterans Center’s intensive employment assistance program, which offers support to service members and their families transitioning to the civilian workforce, into a national program model entitled ReaLifeline. To date, ReaLifeline has been replicated in five military hospitals throughout the United States.