Jobs found despite brain injuries

BY MARY OWEN
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

December 2, 2004

Sue Ellen Jurcak sees an untapped work force, and in November she opened a Warren business to help those people.

The company, Unique Options, employs individuals with brain injuries who might otherwise have difficulty finding jobs because of memory loss, seizures or loss of balance caused by an accident.

"For years, we'd say there needs to be an alternative," Jurcak said. "A better place for these people."

Unique Options serves two types of clients:

•Local businesses that need services like envelope stuffing, labeling, brochure folding, data entry and maintenance.

•People with traumatic brain injuries who lost the skills to continue with the job they had before their accident.

About 200,000 Michigan residents live with disabilities from brain injuries, and 1.5 million Americans sustain a traumatic brain injury every year, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Forty-four percent of brain injuries result from motor vehicle accidents, 26 percent from falls, 17 percent from assaults and firearms and 13 percent from sports-related accidents.

Jurcak also owns Roseville-based Medical Care Coordinators, which was started in 1983 by her mother, Caroline Haine, a nurse, now retired, who worked with brain-injury patients.

For more than 20 years, Medical Care Coordinators helped people with brain injuries and their families navigate the recovery process. Part of that transition was returning to work, often through workshops that employed people with any mental disability, including autism and Down syndrome.

Jurcak said the brain-injury patients, whose disabilities often were not as severe as some, would get frustrated with the work environment.

"We'd take people in these workshops and they didn't want to be there," Jurcak said.

So she developed Unique Options. It provides close direction, with sometimes just three employees per supervisor, plus music therapy and breaks for exercise.

Each work routine is tailored to the individual because each brain injury's effects are unique.

Currently, Unique Options has three clients. They worked last week to stuff Christmas cards for Medical Care Coordinators.

Jurcak is looking for more. It was a leap of faith for her to open up shop without a guarantee of clients.

Lindsey Burton, Unique Options marketing coordinator, said last week he made cold calls to companies to pitch services. He offers lower costs without lower quality. He says working with Unique Options is a community service.

Burton said, "You have to be able to make what they need in the quality that they need in the time that they need it, or it doesn't matter."

Unique Options hopes to fill its 80-person capacity with full-time and part-time employees. Some will eventually move into traditional work settings based on their progress. Employees are paid through contracts. The program costs are covered by insurance companies because the program qualifies as vocational rehabilitation, Jurcak said.

Salary is determined on a formula that factors the task and the time it takes to do it. For example, if an individual without a brain injury gets $10 an hour for stuffing 200 envelopes, then a Unique Options employee who stuffs 100 envelopes in an hour will receive $5. The incentive-based formula adjusts the hourly salary based on performance.

Jurcak said the income is often a bonus for individuals who need a productive and positive outlet.

Last week, Sam Westry helped stuff and label Christmas cards. A 1986 motorcycle accident left him in a coma for six months and hospitalized for more than two years.

He had worked for 16 years at Ford Motor Co. at the truck assembly plant in Dearborn. But after the accident, he couldn't return because he had lost sight in his left eye.

"This is fine," Westry, 57, said of his work at Unique Options. "This is my second week and I'm doing very well, they tell me. I come in and do what they ask me to do. I do my best at what I can."

Unique Options is located at 14461 E. Eleven Mile Road, just west of Groesbeck in Warren. For more information, call 586-774-6200.

For more information about traumatic brain injuries, visit the Michigan Brain Injury Association Web site at www.biausa.org/Michigan.

Contact MARY OWEN at 586-469-1827.

Copyright © 2004 Detroit Free Press Inc.