Joe Leddy founded the company in 1982 as Work Opportunities Unlimited. This organization was established to provide direct community employment opportunities for people of varying backgrounds and skill sets.

Work Opportunities Unlimited – Adult Career Services

We have been providing career services to adults since our founding in 1982. Our team members in this Career Services Division provide service to adults requesting both supported employment and competitive employment.

Supported Employment Programs ("SEP"): These are perpetual, annual programs designed to serve people with disabilities who need long term support in the community. The services provided are person-centered and customized to meet the needs of each individual. Our competency is in helping these individuals be successful and independent at work. Our team members help each person get ready for employment, find employment that fits their likes and career goals, maintain their jobs, and make periodic career changes. An important part of our core competency is matching individual needs with the needs of employers. Our staff is trained to serve individuals, businesses, and agencies.

Competitive Employment Programs: These services help individuals secure employment in competitive positions in the community. Unlike SEP long-term funding described above, the services of VR are dedicated to securing community-based employment and short-term training, not long-term support. Vocational counselors employed by government agencies refer these individuals, who quite often have experienced physical or mental setbacks, to Work Opportunities Unlimited. Usually these professional services are short-term in nature and are paid on a fee-for-service basis. Our first VR program accepted referrals from the New Hampshire Division of Vocational Rehabilitation. We have since developed relationships with the Maine Department of Vocational Rehabilitation, Massachusetts Rehabilitation Commission (MRC), Massachusetts Commission for the Blind (MCB), the Office of Rehabilitation Services in Rhode Island, the Maine Department of Health and Human Services-ASPIRE program, and the Veteran’s Administration.
 

Work Opportunities Unlimited – Youth Career Services

We began offering community-based youth career services in January of 1995 in Nashua, NH. The first program worked with court adjudicated and "at risk" youth between the ages of 14 and 21. In 2000 we started offering customized “School-to-Work” programs to youth in high schools.
 

Community-based Youth Career Services: These individualized career services help at-risk youth be successful in life and become assets to their communities. Each youth works on achieving 12 outcomes (including career exploration and/or work experience), which assists them with personal development. We prepare youth for work by teaching them how to engage in constructive social behavior that helps them develop positive identities as workers and community members. When a referred-youth is court involved we can provide an alternative to removing the youth from their families and communities. We work directly with families, social workers, juvenile officers, employers, schools and other community members to help participants secure jobs with a future. We have developed relationships with the several state and local agencies.

School-To-Work Programs: We work together with local school districts to customize vocational-career/transition services that meet the needs of each district and their students. Utilizing resources within school districts as well as facilitating the access of adult service agencies are crucial aspects of creating transition programs that work. Through collaborating with school administration and faculty we hope to give each student the best opportunity for a successful transition that not only links school to work, but students to careers.
 

One of our many customized service models is Career Links, which was created through a collaborative effort involving school administration, faculty, and adult service agencies. The Career Links model is being utilized by school districts to help serve students who are in need of work experience in the community. The goal of Career Links is to help students make a seamless transition from school to work and the objective to achieve this goal is to link those students to community employers. The Career Links model of service focuses on three key aspects of service delivery: 1. Customized services using a menu. 2. Active employer participation 3. Appointment scheduled services. Some of the services in Career Links are career planning, functional work assessments, student portfolio development, and direct job placement. Employer involvement is essential to the success of the students; therefore assessments are completed by the employers themselves. The features of Career Links have been built into the program in order to mitigate possible pitfalls and maximize opportunities for student success.
 

Leddy Group

In 1993 Leddy Group was spun off as a division of Work Opportunities Unlimited, and is recognized as a quality-oriented staffing service for a wide range of industries. For more information about Leddy Group, please visit www.leddygroup.com.
 

In 2000 Leddy Group added human resource, strategic planning, and organizational development consulting services to its service mix. For more information about these services, please visit www.leddygroup.com or www.consultleddy.com.