Anna's supported employment journey

Anna has been struggling with her health and decided to try to get back into work, but was unsure where her journey should start. She contacted The Kent Supported Employment Service, to find out how they can help her get back into work.

She received great support from the Kent Support Employment Service and was able to help the special educational needs team and even took part in the SEND roadshow meeting parents and young people to promote the SEND Information Hub (Kent's Local Offer).

Watch Anna's video to find out more about her journey to employment.

Anna's video transcript

[Music and TITLE card: Anna’s Work Experience Journey Part 1]

Hi I'm Anna I did six weeks of work experience with the SEN team at the county council.

[TITLE: What were you doing before your work experience?]

I had just gotten signed up with The Education People because I was trying to get back into work.

I had been unemployed for quite a while because I have a lot of health issues and family health issues and yeah so I've been I was struggling with that for a long time and I decided to get in contact with The Education People because I wanted to get back into work.

[TITLE: What did you do on your placement?]

I was shadowing a lot of people, all sorts of teams within the sort of SEN team in the KCC I was doing post 16, I was doing print and post, I was was learning how to do photocopying and how the emails worked and I was I was doing a bit of everything really and I also was part of the SEND roadshow within the Ashford International Hotel so because obviously it's Kent's 'Local Offer' so I was lucky enough to be a part of that as well and attend that.

[TITLE: How has work experience helped you?]

It's helped me a lot it's shown me what my skillset is. I got a couple of qualifications and certificates out of it that I can add to my CV. It has really upped my confidence in knowing sort of what I can and can't do and what I can do moving forwards in the sort of working environment and yes it's helped me feel really a lot better about myself.

[TITLE: Were your team supportive?]

I mean only that I mean everyone I worked with within the SEN team at Kroner House was lovely, Michelle and Kayleigh and you know everyone that I worked with were so lovely and so accommodating of my sort of my disabilities and my challenges they were all so lovely and accommodating and they were you know so much so happy to help me with whatever it was I needed help with.

[TITLE: What are you hoping to do after your placement?]

I mean ideally now I would love to get a job within the KCC, within the SEN team because I really enjoyed it and I loved learning about what they do and how they help people and being able to be a part of that was amazing and I'd love to be able to do that fulltime in the future.

[TITLE: Would you recommend work experience?]

Yeah I would 100% recommend it because I was really nervous about going back to work because I had never done office work before and I had been out of work for a long time and it really helped show me what it was like without that sort of pressure to sort of perform as much because it wasn't so much of sort of paid working environment it was a lot more sort of low stress in a sense it was more it was much more about learning than it was anything and it it really sort of helped me to know what it's going to be like in the future.

[TITLE: How's it been working with The Education People?]

It's been really helpful obviously they got me the work experience and you know they've helped me improve my CV and they've helped me sort of learn what I want to do in the future and you know what I can do workwise and that there are actually a lot of employers that are very sort of disability forward and that won't discriminate and you know I couldn't have I couldn't have done any of it without The Education People you know they they've helped me you know immeasurably.

[TITLE: Contact us for getting back into work]