The United Cambodian Community (UCC) in Long Beach is providing a free program to certify local underserved youth as nursing assistants.
“With this program what we started to notice was there’s a lot of need and support, especially for our younger population, to get the resources and the skill set to start their first job,” said Jaimie Heng, program coordinator for UCC.
The program was founded by UCC in 2015 for Long Beach youth between the ages of 17 and 24 who are either parents, high school dropouts, former foster youth, experiencing homelessness or have low-income status.
“What we’ve seen is that a lot of the youth, especially the ones who are parents, they end up going through the program mostly to support their family and support themselves,” Heng said.
According to Heng, UCC’s program is for “out-of-school youth” who are not enrolled in any other school or educational program. Oftentimes, Heng said, the financial burden is what is keeping these youth from furthering their education.
“What we noticed is that a lot of youths tend to not go into these programs because usually it’s expensive,” Heng said. “So being able to have a training program that’s paid for them and also us being a support system was a way for us to elevate the youth in our community.”
In comparison to UCC’s completely free program, the Long Beach School for Adults has partnered with Los Angeles Skills Academy to provide certified nursing assistant courses that cost over $1,500.
According to Heng, many of the program’s graduates use their time as a certified nursing assistant (CNA) as a stepping stone to other roles in the medical field.
The course takes around two months to complete, with the upcoming class set to begin at the end of January and end in March. The course will be held two more times this year, with one class starting in February and the other in March.
According to Heng, as of Jan. 5, seven students had already signed up for the upcoming course.
The program’s classes transitioned to online during 2020. UCC planned to begin in-person classes this year, but due to the recent spike in COVID-19 will be starting the next session online.
According to Heng, a hybrid model of both online and in-person classes is also being considered.
“We’re going to play it on the safer side and we’re going back online for the time being,” Heng said. “But really [we’re] just gauging it around what it looks like regarding COVID.”
When applying, students will have to provide two forms of legal identification that prove they live in Long Beach, such as an ID or utility bill. For more information about applying to UCC’s nursing assistant certificate program email Jaimie Heng at jaimie.heng@ucclb.org.
