Work it Out @ Oakland International

Supporting young adults whose lives have been impacted by homelessness and giving them pathways back into the workplace.

Over the past 8 weeks we have been working with participants from Redditch Night stop and the Basement project Bromsgrove at Oakland International to deliver Work it out! A course designed to support young adults affected in some way by homelessness, with the opportunity of an interview at Oakland International at the end of the course if the participants felt that they wanted one.

Our idea was to take a holistic approach to getting back to work, really focusing on the actual needs of our participants and honing the skills that they already have. We worked with Oakland International, Centrepoint and Redditch Nightstop to create a bespoke programme offering transferable skills tailored to the needs of our participants as well as offering site specific workplace skills and work experience at Oakland International.

We had workshops on wellbeing, confidence building, workplace behavior and etiquette, goal setting and skills, CV building and interview techniques. Though the wellbeing of our participants was at the heart of our training and maintaining a strong relationship with each participant meant that support workers and staff were alert to their needs and situations. Putting wellbeing first meant that things didn’t always go perfectly to plan but ensured that everybody was supported and felt comfortable enough to carry on with the rest of the day.

Oakland provided lots of site-specific knowledge like health and safety, food hygiene, supply chain information as well as lots of work experience opportunities tailored specifically to each participant.

Some of the participants have gone on to find jobs that suit them, some have joined new training courses and we are currently working with Redditch Nightstop and Oakland International to offer more work experience at Oakland International to some participants that would like more experience. Overall Work it out! was a very valuable experience for both staff and participants.