(The following represents Nigel Fenner's personal views, rather than those of Hertfordshire PASS.)
I have had two recent experiences of projects failing to appreciate the value of their day-to-day work experience to disabled people. The first experience relates to a management group convening for the first time to deliver a European Social Funded programme providing work related skills and opportunities to people with mental health problems. I asked why such people could not be part of the management group, if for no other reason than to experience a meeting and how it is managed, how people behave, how people get heard, how disagreements are resolved, how progress is made etc. There appeared to be agreement to start with, closely followed by a number of obstacles (such as how big the management group would grow to). The outcome is a users reference group, separate from the management group.
The other experience relates to some early plans to explore how best to develop and train an apprentice bookkeeper. When I suggested that the individual (yet to be appointed) might have a day observing the 3 bookkeepers in the department this was met with scepticism. Their understanding was that the apprentice bookkeeper would be trained first before they would be able to get involved and contribute in the office. Whilst I agreed there was a need for technical training, why couldn't the minute by minute bookkeeping experiences such as dealing with customers on the phone, entering data on the computer and exploring issues together as a team, be made available to an apprentice to observe?
Whenever possible I always open up what I am doing to one or more of our apprentices and following a period of observation I might ask for their first impressions and / or provide a context for what is going on etc - taking no more than a few minutes of my time to do so. Not only does it keep me on my toes in terms of being clear about what I do and why, but it gives insight for the apprentice, into how to take up a role ( - which you can never get through a text book or training).
In addition to making the second by second work experiences of staff available to disabled young people ( - as described above), we also have a scheme where ordinary adults visit us to share their work story in response to questions from a group of disabled young people - who lead the discussion. Afterwards the adults who take part are often unsure whether what they said was of value. To test this out we asked our 3 apprentices, who took part in these discussions, what was the most significant story they could recall from the 10 or so visitors we've had. Firstly they recalled one successful manager who left school with no qualifications, then another visitor who said her biggest barrier to starting out in work was her shyness, and the third visitor who said he went out to get his first job because he didn't want to keep asking his mum for pocket money. These may appear trivial but for young disabled people setting out on the 'work trail' they are invaluable.
So why can't we provide opportunity to young disabled people to observe the day to day experiences we all have? There's a lot more value in them than we think.
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