Teens, young adults with developmental disabilities get opportunities in the workforce

GILBERT, Ariz. - One Valley woman who owns three different businesses has changed dozens of lives. 

What they're saying:

Meet Latasha Singleton. She's one of the hardest working, most dedicated employees at Crave Protein Cafe.

"I clean the tables and mop," she said.

Crave Protein Cafe in Gilbert is a popular spot for a coffee, a protein shake, maybe even a sweet treat. What's even sweeter is that it serves a very special purpose.

"We have students actively working, Hot Workx was the first business we integrated them in and then Crave Protein Cafe, and now, they're just getting started at the Olive Branch Boutique," said Laura Newcomb.

Newcomb is the owner of Crave Protein Cafe, Hot Workx and the Olive Branch Boutique.

Laura Newcomb

Before she became a businesswoman, she was in education – first a teacher, then a principal, and finally a special education director. In 2013, she started the Autism Academy.

"As our students were aging out of our program, there was a need because they were trying to go out and find jobs," she said." We went out trying to partner with businesses, and we weren't always successful in getting a lot of businesses to partner with us, so, hence, came the idea of opening businesses where we could do our own real life training with the students, and they could come out, and they can get the training that they need, and we would send job coaches from our school with them."

Newcomb says students are provided with a certain amount of training at the academy, like you see here, but hands-on proves to be the most effective.

"I opened Hot Workx last year and I opened it in the spring, and that was to provide the kids with an opportunity to come do inventory and to do cleaning and things like that," Newcomb explained. "With that, the cafe beside us went out of business, so I said we are just going to open this cafe because we had one in the school, we opened that, so now the kids, they have their food handlers cards, so now they go in there and do food prep, and they do the front end stuff. We opened the boutique then in November and that was to provide opportunity where they can do… we have fresh flowers, they can learn some of the floral skills, they can also do inventory and just customer service."

"We just started building our job-coaching program," Leslie Dillie said.

Dillie is one of those job coaches sho helps promote independence and confidence through the Empowered Adults Services Program.

Leslie Dillie

"They don't necessarily need more training, they just need more support and understanding," she said. "It's not necessarily that they're not able to do it, it's just that we need to continue to set the bar high for them, continue to have high expectations, but essentially we just need to build the confidence in them that they are able to do things that most people haven't given them credit for."

For example, in Singleton's situation, Dillie says it just took patience.

"When she first started working with us, she was really shy, kind of only started talking to certain people and was very hesitant to do things independently, but as we continue to bring out that personality in her, and she continued to get more confident in her skills, her personality came out and so now she has inside jokes with people, she's able to do things independently," said Dillie.

Each business Newton owns provides different opportunities and different job skills. Currently, there are just over a dozen students from the Autism Academy working at any given time.

"I just like working here," said Singleton.

Latasha Singleton