Our first work experience participant is about to join Moving Up, to help work on how we can best capture the really valuable feedback from past participants.
I’m really keen to see how our past participants are doing, how they found Moving Up, and to see how Covid-19 has affected their work life (more on this later.)
Along with this, I will start to look at what practical support we can offer to help our participants gain work.
This will include help with creating a top quality CV and cover letter for a job application. When I worked in HR, I would so often see CVs that really didn’t show an applicant’s talents, and as a result they wouldn’t be shortlisted for interview.
Another area Moving Up is targeting for support is how to best prepare for interviews. They can be a daunting process, so I will be working on how participants can give themselves the best chance of success.
The last part of this section will be how to effectively look for jobs. This might sound like something relatively easy and simple, but looking for jobs can be really draining. Where to start looking? What to search for? How much time should be spent on it? I am looking to help answer these questions.
After this, attention will turn to how Moving Up can support participants in building a career. There will be many parts to this area, including coaching/mentoring of participants, guides about self-employment, working with recruitment agencies to get our participants out there and sharing success stories of disabled people in work and how they built their career.
It seems that I’m not the only one that is keen to hear from disabled people about their experience of the last ten months. The government has recently released a survey asking all disabled people about their views and experiences. The results of this survey will develop a National Strategy for Disabled People. I completed the survey from my personal perspective, and I would encourage everyone with a disability to complete it.
The more people who respond to it, the more weight will be behind positive change. Every response received by 13 February will inform the development of the strategy, and any received between then and 23 April will inform the delivery of the strategy. Further details can be found in the link.
If anyone would like to be in touch about Moving Up, you can get in touch with me by emailing J.Mclellan@musculardystrophyuk.org
Moving Up is a project for young people aged 16 – 30, with a disability, living in London.