Shasta Scout: Shasta County Work Training Changed His Life. When His Program Lost Funding, He Lost Hope.

https://shastascout.org/shasta-county-work-training-changed-his-life-when-his-program-lost-funding-he-lost-hope/

Travis Gregorio poses for a photo during an interview at the Redding Library on January 25.

2.11.2023 5:25 pm: This story has been updated to correct a few biographical details as well as specifics related to communication between Gregorio’s family and the County.

Editor’s Note: This story includes references to attempted suicide. Please read with care. If you need mental health support or are feeling hopeless or suicidal, text or call 988 for help. Significant time and care were taken to ensure our sources informed consent in the reporting and publication of this complex and personal story.

For the last three years, Travis Gregorio, age 24, held a job at Shasta County’s Opportunity Center, a government-funded work training program that has been run by the County since 1964. 

Under a client contract with the Opportunity Center (OC), Gregorio was paid minimum wage to provide janitorial services, including emptying the trash and cleaning bathrooms and floors, as part of a program designed to allow him and others with disabilities to gain job experience in a supervised setting.

Diagnosed at a young age with autism and ADHD as well as other mental health challenges, Gregorio spent much of his youth in and out of group treatment homes. His behavior, he says, is often difficult to predict, even for himself.  When angry, he sometimes acts out with aggression, likely because his executive function disorders cause a significant lack of impulse control. 

That aggressive behavior was what led Gregorio to leave home at age 18, because he feared that his unpredictable behaviors could harm his family. His mental health disabilities also made finding and keeping employment impossible, his mother Susan Power says, leaving him homeless on and off over the next three years.

At twenty-one, Gregorio’s parents were able to help him apply for a job through the Department of Rehabilitation (DOR), which referred him to the work training program at the Opportunity Center. As a client there, Gregorio wasn’t traditionally employed; instead mental health funding allowed him to be paid minimum wage while working under staff supervision that included feedback about his behaviors. 

That supervision and feedback have been crucially important for him, Gregorio says, because he has trouble anticipating his own behaviors early enough to stop them.

“I just do things unexpectedly,” he said, “like I might just kick a door open. I’m not even mad when I do it, I just don’t think about it. But it’s not good for keeping a job.”

Gregorio says he had hoped to work at the Opportunity Center for two more years, but on Tuesday, January 25, just before starting work, Gregorio says he was pulled into one of the Center’s offices along with several of his coworkers.

There, he recounts, the Acting Director of the Opportunity Center, Jacob Lingle, told him and the others that funding for the specific program that paid for his services was running out, and that he would only have three more days in the program before losing his services.

Gregorio said staff helped him apply online with Department of Rehabilitation, which had referred him to the Opportunity Center three years earlier and told to call frequently to follow up.