4 films about Apprenticeships for people with learning disabilities and employers by Newcastle City Learning and The Twisting Ducks Theatre Company. 

As part of developing the online training resource for this project, we conducted a survey of mainstream vocational staff at Ealing, Hammersmith and West London College. It consisted of two components: a series of on-site interviews with staff and an online questionnaire.

The purpose of the survey was to gain a better understanding of current practice around autism and awareness of the condition among managers and tutors. By collecting this information, we would be better placed to design a resource addressing the training needs of mainstream vocational staff across the country. 

Some our key findings were:

One of the most exciting aspects of this project was interviewing staff and learners at the college.  This has really helped inform the training resource that we are close to completing.  The other exciting aspect was the process of developing the one page profiles with learners and sharing them with staff for comment. Looking forward to the disemmination events.

The EmployAble programme is off to a great start. Our aim to create specialist job mentored training in job carved roles for young people with disabilities in order to gain sustainable paid employment.

We have already compiled a ‘Hot List’ of local employers who will engage with the scheme and have started to assemble an employer led project board. We have recruited the Employment^definition Commissioner for the Learning Disabilities Commissioning^definition team for Gloucestershire County Council to work on the project and to engage the county wide network of employers. We have identified and recruited 20 young people with disabilities who will taking placements and we are currently working with them to prepare video CV’s to document their skills and allow them opportunities to talk through their CV’s to potential employers. We have scheduled out first employer engagement event in February. We have had one set back in that we have failed to recruit for a specialist job mentor and are now having to back fill until an appointment can be made in the New Year. But we are still on track!!

As this is my first blog ever I am getting used to the format.

We have advertised for a specialist job mentor who will start at the end of November. Their role will be to lead the Job Mentor team and work with employers to carve the trainee placements.

In the meantime we are working with 4 employers to establsh an employers forum.

We have planned to create video CV's for 20 learners for use at our first employer engagement event in February.

This will be to place learners with employers on specialist job carved placements. The second employer event in April will be showcasing the work learners have been doing and presenting success case studies to a wider group of 20+ employers. We have already secured a place at the national BASE conference in September 2014 to disseminate the EmpoyAble model.

More to follow soon....