Unemployment is not for the faint of heart

The anguish and frustration that Five Towns resident Sara feels is evident as she spoke about her family’s tribulations through the past five years as she lost and gained a job and her husband has battled the unemployment blues.

Currently working for a local nonprofit organization, Sara, who spoke to the Herald on the condition of anonymity, said it has been a turbulent time for her family that includes a young son, as the inability to pay bills and needing to ask for help makes her angry.

“There shouldn’t be all these problems, we want to pay our rent, it has been a seesaw,” said Sara, who is in her 40s. “First you deal with it, roll with the punches, but after five years you say this has got to end.”

Her husband was self-employed in the financial end of the real estate industry and first felt the effects of the current recession five years ago, then in 2009, she was let go after nine years from a solid Long Island company that downsized.

To their credit Sara said, the company provided assistance with resume writing and job interviewing seminars. And during this time, with her husband still unemployed and so depressed he didn’t get off the couch, she said, Sara found help through Connect-to-Care, a United Jewish Appeal-Federation funded program that is run locally through the JCC of the Greater Five Towns.

Judy Goldberg is the Connect-to-Care coordinator that helped Sara with applying for food stamps (her family didn’t qualify; a few hundred dollars in income over the limit), applying for money through HEAP (Heat Energy Assistance Program), a federally funded program that supplements a household’s energy costs, along with applying for assistance through the Plainview-based HATZILU (Hebrew for rescue) organization that provides help to seniors, the poor and those in financial need due to a setback like unemployment.

“It was awful, terrible, [my husband] was depressed and couldn’t get off the couch,” said Sara, who went from delivering food to people to needing the food pantry. “It made me angry. I was doing everything.”

Those emotions are what the social workers from Connect-to-Care at the JCC deal with as they counsel not only those who are unemployed, but their spouses who have to deal with the fall out.

Through the past few weeks, social worker Talia Rapps has run a support group for the unemployed. It runs the gamut of professions, including attorneys, accountants, individuals in real estate and business, jewelers and hair stylists and the generations from those in their late 20s to people on the cusp of retirement age.

“The main concern is isolation and lack of community, there is no support and they are not connecting with their friends,” Rapps said. “They have had to alter their lifestyles.”

Initially that means looking for a new job; something some have not done in nearly 30 years as they remained with the same company, Goldberg noted. “They need career counseling, seminars on how to write a resume, negotiate for a salary and conduct effective interviews,” she said. “They ask ‘are there other people going through this’? Is it ever going to get better?”

That is where Connect-To-Care comes in with the program’s myriad workshops on a wide array of topics, including the interview and job application process, foreclosure prevention, health insurance options, debt and money collection and bankruptcy presented by experts in the field the program seeks to be the bridge that reconnects those left jobless with a semblance of a life.

“The purpose of the support group is to buildup their ego, reinvent who they are and use their skills in a different way,” Rapps said.

To avoid mental burn out from the relentless job search, social worker Cathy Byrne said that they encourage the unemployed to volunteer so their skills are used and they have “a sense of fulfillment.”

“[The unemployed] need direction and motivation, volunteering with different groups provides a reason to get dressed and get out among people,” she said.

To find that next job using skills in a different way is also recommended by Al Lazrus, a 27-year human resources consultant, who runs JD Lake Corporate Resources, Inc. in Oceanside.

Lazrus, who also has felt the effects of a down economy, said if you were layed off, there is a good chance you will not “find that same exact job.” Instead, you need to market yourself to an industry that is hiring and transfer your skills.

“The biggest problem is quantity of competition, there are hundreds of applicants,” Lazrus said. “Number one, you need to find a differential and that’s how you market yourself.”

One differential Lazrus said is don’t stop with the human resources person to whom all the resumes are going but, “Find a person inside, higher up, who will read the resume, people love to help people and you need people to help you.”

That is how Sara found her current position and she reached out to others to help get her husband a job. He is presently working again, however it is sporadic. But, since this can happen to anyone this is what Sara wants people to know.

“When you see me at the store, you’ll never know what I look like, I look like you,” she said. “I live in your community. My child goes to your [child’s] school.”