More than 100 children sent home — with pay
The D.C. Department of Employment Services has abruptly canceled its agreement with a summer youth jobs placement agency, directing more than 100 kids to go home and await new instructions — while still collecting paychecks.
Program Director Joseph Walsh terminated the so-called “Host Site agreement” with Job Force, part of the David Hoffman Agency, and moved to reassign 130 youth that the firm had already placed in jobs. It was unclear how many have already been moved.
Hoffman, who was in the office of Ward 8 D.C. Councilman Marion Barry after the announcement, was at a loss. He said supervisors at many of the firm’s placement sites, including the Office of Veterans Affairs’ congressional liaison office, wanted their workers back.
“[The Department of Employment Services] has lost the trust of the business community,” Hoffman said. “All kids that were connected to us were called up and told to leave their jobs, that the jobs were not available.”
The fight between Hoffman and DOES is the first major public hiccup for the 2009 Summer Youth Employment Program. Walsh was hired in the wake of last summer’s chaos — the most embarrassing flub of Mayor Adrian Fenty’s administration.
Walsh accused Hoffman of “improperly and unlawfully misrepresenting” that the youth he placed with city government contractors would count toward a first-source agreement, which requires a contractor to hire a certain number of D.C. residents.
“Even more distressing, you have callously used Summer Youth Employment Program participants to unwittingly assist in perpetrating this deception on vendors,” Walsh wrote in a letter to Hoffman sent Wednesday.
The agency first contracted with Job Force to place 50 youth, Hoffman said. Last Friday the agency asked his firm to take 500 more who were still without jobs, he said, but the contract was never received. Hoffman said he placed 138 youth before DOES shut him down.
Bruce Johnson said his 16-year-old daughter Raven, who was working at Veterans Affairs, was shocked when she was called Tuesday evening and told not to appear for work the next day.
“You don’t send these kids to work, give them jobs and then take it away from them,” Johnson said. “Last night she was just blown away.”
