Looking For Work

Vocational Profiling

This is an informal process looking at your qualifications and previous work experience, also looking at your career aspirations and the possible impact on your finances. We will discuss your current health, what support systems you have in place and what support systems could be available during your participation. We will also explore any non accredited skills you have that could be utilised in any vocational training or career opportunity. With your permission we may contact individuals or organisations to get to getter a bigger picture of your skills and aspirations. All these different activities will support in helping you create an achievable action plan to further your journey into the work you aspire to.

Careers Advice & Guidance

We can help you decide upon your career path, whether as a volunteer, part time, occasional or full time worker. We can help by looking at the different options available and how they may impact positively on your life. We will also look at difficulties and barriers you may face in achieving your aspirations and try to find ways to remove these barriers. We aim to provide you with information to enable you to identify your chosen career and then support you in putting mechanisms in place to achieve this.

Action Planning

Action Plans are detailed lists which not only lay out the main things to do in order to carry out a specific task, but also explain in detail how to carry out each individual action. We use these them to plan tasks and guide you through your programme with us. We will support you in creating your own action plan based on your identified vocational and career aspirations. We will try to ensure the objectives in your action plan are specific to your needs, that there are systems in place to measure whether you are meeting your goals, that these goals are achievable and that there are resources available to support you. Your action plan will be timetabled to reflect the time commitment you can give to your programme and will take in account all the previous factors.

Identifying additional support

We will endeavour to help you identify other supporting agencies within the community that can provide the best support for you to achieve your goals. We will provide you with up to date information regarding different services and how to access them. We will also support you in contacting and attending activities within these other agencies.

Supporting Independence

All our services are committed to helping you move towards greater independence. Activities promoting lifelong learning and life skills will be provided as part of the programme. These activities are usually provided in a group setting, however, if required and the resources are available to do so, individual sessions can be timetabled into your action plan. Sessions will include self advocacy, employment legislation, independent job seeking skills, confidence and motivational skills. There will also be training provided on ways of dealing with the stresses of not working, looking for work or working itself. We will also engage with other organisations to provide training on work and life skills to support your goals.

Further Education

If you're looking for a career change then accessing further education facilities may give you a chance to gain new qualifications to equip you for work. There are a range of options, including community education through the Lifelong Learning Service. Additional support is available on some courses and we can put you in touch with the right people to best support you.

Access to Welfare Benefits Advice

You want to work but don't want to be worse off financially. We can guide you through the maze of welfare benefits and liaise with Jobcentre Plus on your behalf. We'll do our best to help you to maximise your income. This service is only available to clients seeking employment as we don't have the resources to provide a general benefits advice service. We may refer you on to specialist advisors where claims become more complex. We will also provide information and support regarding claiming the grants and in work benefits available to you when you start work. We will also support any return to benefit if work proves not right for you.

Job searching skills

Once you're ready to seek work, we can help you to maximise the chances of getting the right job for you. We can help with producing an up to date CV to present your skills and abilities to prospective employers. We can help you to look in the right places for job vacancies, whether it's through the papers, via the internet, the jobcentre or by word of mouth.

We can also help you to rehearse interview skills with practice sessions. We can offer you interview strategies and advice on presentation skills. We can also accompany you to interviews if you want and provide travel training to access a wider range of job opportunities. We will also help you gain the skills to maintain your job seeking independently. This could be by teaching you how to identify jobs on the internet, how to maintain email accounts or just basic computer skills. We will give advice on approaching employers and how to sell your skills to them and how to identify vocational training courses that could further increase your employability.

Brokerage Services

Our service is all about finding the right job for the right person. About matching your skills to employer requirements and enabling you both to make the most of your employment.

We take care to get a good profile of both you and the job. We will make sure that the workplace is a safe you and that the support will be there for you as a new employee. We will try to get the most out of your potential within the work place and support your personal and job development.

We identify potential employers through fact-finding exercises that identify their recruitment needs. We will try to address any concerns or worries that a potential employer may feel when trying something new like employing someone with a disability for the first time.

We will carry out a Health & Safety check on the company to ensure that it knows it's responsibilities to its employees. We check insurance details; safety policies etc to make sure those legal requirements are followed and carry out a risk assessment before the job goes ahead. We will clarify conditions of service like holiday entitlement and sickness policies as well as checking that wages are acceptable. We try to minimise the paperwork for employers but some of it is inevitable and we like to think that the time spent on this builds a rapport between ourselves and the employer.

Finally we check that you and your employer are clear about each other's role and expectations. We will agree levels of training support, quality and productivity requirements etc. We can provide workplace support if required and supplement the training offered by employers.

Workplace Support & Training

The first few weeks in a job are critical. A recent research showed that 50% of disabled employees lost their jobs within a year. We aim to provide the right levels of support so that you maintain your job and develop within it. It is important that both you and employer get off on the right track and our job is to help that happen.

You may well be nervous about starting work for the first time or returning after a long break from work, you may be worried about what others think and may lack confidence and require reassurance and focus. We can provide ongoing job coaching in the workplace and we will structure training programmes where necessary. We will keep in regular touch to make sure everything's going OK and can help to refresh skills as needed. As the needs of the job change, we can come back to support the learning of new job duties. And we're always at the end of a phone if either you or the employer requires additional support.

Workplace Advocacy

There may be times when you feel unable to stand up for yourself in the workplace - either with colleagues or your employer. We can help by negotiating with the employer on your behalf. We want to encourage both you and employer to take your responsibilities seriously. We can't persuade an employer to keep you on if you're not turning up for work but we can help you to make sure that you're not treated unfairly.

We aim to solve any difficulties or disputes amicably and to everyone's satisfaction. Where necessary, we'll remind employers of their duties under the Disability Discrimination Act and help clients to access legal advice.