Sophie

Sophie is Autistic so has difficulty communicating and building social relationships. She also suffers with anxiety. It took two months of maintaining regular contact with Sophie before she began to regularly attend the Ideal for All job club.

With limited work experience, Sophie had made very little progress in the two years she had been signing on at the job centre. Sophie became familiar with delivery staff to then attend our ‘Coffee and Chat’ sessions to build confidence around others and develop social skills.

From this Sophie has also accessed food hygiene training, health and wellbeing and crafts sessions. Sophie has also found it beneficial to attend an anxiety management course and counselling sessions run in partnership with another organisation.

Since working with a disability aware team she has come on leaps and bounds. In addition to regularly attending activities, she also volunteered at Ideal for All’s Christmas Fayre serving refreshments. Sophie has completed Ideal for All’s six-week ‘Grow for Work’ programme and as her confidence is growing, the next step is for Sophie to develop her work based skills through volunteering with mentoring support. This will enhance Sophie’s CV and will hopefully result in her finding permanent paid employment.

“Done my job search down at Burberry Court with Ideal for All and been to coffee afternoons as well. Absolutely love it.”

“Staff are very supportive and I feel comfortable around them.”