Training scheme helps people with special needs to find work

A training scheme has been launched by the QEH King’s Lynn NHS Foundation Trust to help prepare people with special needs for the working environment.

The Trust has received funding from their Charitable Funds Committee to provide a 12 month internships offering training on the key skills needed for work, including CV writing, completing application forms, presentation skills and how to choose the right job.

Richard Cavell-Clarke, 26, from King’s Lynn, former Prince’s Trust Young Ambassador for the East of England, has been a volunteer at the hospital for five years and started his internship last week.

As part of his training, he works 15 hours a week in Patient Experience and the Stores department, which involves him distributing and collecting feedback forms to gauge their a patient’s experience of the hospital.

He said: “I would like to work in Deliveries and I have found that the internship is a great opportunity to increase my experience in stores and patient experience.”

Mr Cavell-Clarke, who has Aspergers and autism, is currently working 15 hours a week.

The Trust has signed the Learning Disabilities Employment Pledge to employ people with Learning Disabilities and do what we can to make it easy for them to gain employment.

Many of the young people with learning disabilities who work at the hospital in both paid and unpaid roles have graduated from the Pathway Project, a programme devised between the hospital and the College of West Anglia as a year long course combining time at college and three nine-week placements within the hospital.

Alan Brown, Chair of the Charitable Funds Committee, said: “The hospital is a caring organisation that supports those with extra needs to get onto the job ladder and beyond.

“These 12 month internships have been set up in order to support them within our community and give them the extra help that is needed in order to be job ready.”

“I’m confident that this initiative will be a success and look forward to it continuing into the future.”

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