ECHO delivers the mail – and more

Randy Kelley, chief executive officer at Inova Loudoun Hospital, contracted with ECHO – Every Citizen Has Opportunities – for in-house mail service in 2008. He says today he would recommend the program to anyone.

“Anybody who has ever talked to me, including [Inova] Fair Oaks folks, knows it’s a great service. Anyone considering an ECHO contract has to see how it fits into their organization, but certainly in health care it makes great sense,” Kelley said.

Private, non-profit ECHO, headquartered on Sycolin Road in Leesburg, has been providing community-based training, supported employment and transportation services for adult citizens with disabilities since 1975. A typical work team consists of four to eight employees who assemble products, fill orders, prepare and deliver mail, maintain grounds, shred paper, assist administrators, assemble computer parts, scan documents – and just about anything else the host company wants.

A supervisor accompanies each team to its work site every day.

Shaun Bevan has been supervising the hospital work team for two years – he volunteered at ECHO while a student at Loudoun Valley High School. Four years and a degree in biology later, he graduated into the worst job market in a generation. He got started at ECHO while he was looking for work, enjoyed it and stayed.

ECHO fields an extensive bus fleet to get its program participants to their job sites. Bevan picks his crew up at Wal-Mart and gets them to the mailroom just around the corner from the executive office at the hospital a little after 9 a.m. The workers – Debi Plascencia, Kathy Himes, Lauren Oakley, Bill Emley, Megan Giusti and Ashle Bre Chapman --  pair off and walk laps around the hallway, a routine they repeat in the afternoon.

Then to work: They sort intra-hospital and U.S mail into standing folders lined up on color coded carts and set off on their rounds. Every office in the hospital gets mail delivered and picked up three times a day.

It was not always so. When Kelley moved into the top office in August 2006, mail service had succumbed to budget cuts. Staff from all over the hospital juggled other duties to make time at least once a day to run past the mail room.

“This seemed like the perfect marriage of our need and their abilities,” Kelley said.

And the hospital staff has become accustomed to getting mail three times a day: “We could turn the electricity off in the building and get less grief than if these guys went away.”

Karen Russell, marketing manger at ECHO, said she felt very comfortable setting up the mail room work site at the hospital because an ECHO team had been running the mail room for several hundred engineers at the U.S. Department of Transportation on Ridgetop Circle since 2007. “We were on board there, succeeding, and had procedures in place.”

And, Kelley said, it makes economic sense for the hospital. He executes a single contract, ECHO provides the service and cuts the paychecks. The on-site supervisor makes sure the workers get to the job site and solves any problems that arise.

“If we did it on our own, it would be more  expensive and vulnerable to cost cutting.”

Kelley calls the ECHO contract “a good service from the standpoint of helping ECHO, but a great service for us. If it went away tomorrow, we’d have pitchforks and torches in the hallways.”

ECHO trains, transports and supervises  citizens with disabilities in the work place, and helps companies in Loudoun and Fairfax meet their goals. Organizations that have contracted with ECHO include Loudoun County Government (mail delivery, paper shredding), EIT (circuit board and product assembly), Federal Aviation Administration (grounds maintenance), REHAU (product samples and binder assembly), Target (stock shelves, prepare displays), U.S. Geological Survey (fill orders, manage the stockroom), Good Shepherd Thrift Shops (stockroom management), Prototype Productions (remove metal burrs and packaging), Dynamic Details (recycle fixtures, scan documents), Loudoun Public Schools (assist administrative and personnel departments),Telos (production assembly), and the U.S. Department of Transportation (mail center, receptionist and document scanning). Inova Fair Oaks Hospital has contracted with ECHO and a team will start there later this year.

The business, Russell says, gets a dependable, motivated work crew that completes quality work on time, and the daily on-site support of an ECHO supervisor/trainer. Individuals with disabilities earn wages and make contributions to their community. Call Russell at 703-779-2100 to see what ECHO can offer. Visit ECHO at www.echoworks.org .