Values Into Action Scotland
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The document discusses VIAS's vision of supporting people with learning disabilities and autism to have equal opportunities. It outlines VIAS's mission to enable organizations to support independence, choice, and control through evaluation, training and consultancy services. It then describes the stages of VIAS's supported employment process which includes engagement, vocational profiling, job finding, employer engagement, on/off the job support, and aftercare to help those furthest from employment make informed work choices.
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Values Into Action Scotland
- 1. Employment 1
- 3. About VIAS VISION “A Scotland where people with learning disabilities and/or autism have the same opportunities as everyone else and are supported to achieve their goals.” MISSION “VIAS enables organisations to support people to achieve maximum independence, choice and control. We do this through offering quality improvement services including evaluation, training and consultancy to organisations who work with people with learning disabilities and/or autism.”
- 4. The supported employment process Supported Employment Stages - supporting the aspiration towards 16+ hours of work Engagement by SE Service Vocational Profiling Job Finding Employer Engagement On/Off the Job Support and Aftercare Helping disabled people most distanced from the labour market to make informed choices on their own future. Identifying skills and preferences for work, giving work experiences that will help the individual make their own vocational choices. Identifying the preferred job through employer engagement, also providing support to the employer. Finding out about the workplace environment, co-workers and the 'supports' a person might need. Providing backup to the employee and their employer, developing independence in the workplace and addressing career progression in due course.
- 5. Project SEARCH Forth Valley NHS What is Project SEARCH
- 6. Our history on employment
- 7. Our recent and current work-related activity
- 8. Liam’s story
Editor's Notes
- Norma Curran I have around 28 years experience in employability. My introduction to supported employment was in my first role as a job coach in 1994. I quickly moved into a development managers role at Unity Enterprise with the responsibility to advance Supported Employment within the organization. Around this time I trained in and became a TSI trainer. For nine years I ran one of the first and most successful supported employment agencies in Scotland. By the time I left we had a significant presence in Renfrewshire. I developed a recruitment consultancy service that successfully helped 500+ people to gain meaningful paid employment. As part of Equal Access, I developed an employment strategy for people with learning disabilities living in Glasgow. I recruited, trained and line managed a team of staff across Renfrewshire who supported people with significant learning disabilities in employment. We achieved a 50% job retention rate for all those that the project engaged with. I generated a wide range of service funding creating a project budget of £250,000. During this time I was involved in the writing of the Diploma in Supported Employment, achieved an Oxford Facilitator’s Award and became a Development Advisor for the qualification. I moved to France for three years and continued to be a DA for the Diploma during this time. VIAS recruited me in 2009 because of my employment background. They were horrified by the disproportionate unemployment rates for people with learning disabilities and/ or autism and wanted to do something to try to address this. John Brown – Development Lead VIAS Joined VIAS in June 2019 as Development Lead, to develop 1 & 3 year Business Development Plan, with the main aim to develop existing services, secure funding and develop new projects that align with Strategic Plan for the charity. I Project Manage; BOSS – ScotRail and Springfield Let's Get Moving 2020 Triple E – Job Coaching service due to launch in June 2020. YSGT Aberdeen/Shire 2020 – Cancelled due to COVID-19. Online YSGT launching in 2020 in its place. LifeSKILLS Centres – 2010-2019 Princes Trust-Get Into Retail programme) Edinburgh, Glasgow & Lanarkshire. Partners – Princes Trust, House of Fraser, Marks & Spencer, Debenhams, Superdrug, Monsoon, BHS 60 participants each year 2 Year Partership Training for Work/Get Ready For Work LifeSKILLS partnered with Edinburgh Capital Skills Partnership in Edinburgh Lanarkshire delivery Management SDS Employability Fund 14 local authorities over a 3-year period from 2016-2019. Managed 14 Trainers across Scotland Delivering to 300-350 participants per year from Shetland to the Scottish Borders Stage 2, Stage 3 and Stage 4. Contract value of over £500k per year. Modern Apprenticehips Retail, Business Administration and Hospitality from 2016-2019 Manage 3 Assessors Scotland wide ITA/ILA – Construction, hospitality, retail, health & social care, health & safety and security. Awarding bodies - Highfield, City & Guilds, SQA, BIIAB and People 1st. Scotland wide 700-1000 participants per year Aberdeen City/Aberdeenshire- 2016-2019, working together with Skills Development Scotland and DWP Peterhead, Banff, Fraserburgh and Aberdeen City. Participants varied due to each contract, with EF focused on 16-24 year-old for Stage 2 & 3, and Stage 4 aimed at 18+. 60 participants per year across City & Shire Liam Simpson
- VIAS promotes rights, choice and control for people with learning disabilities and individuals on the autistic spectrum. We believe in citizenship. Citizenship means being a real part of a community. It is about everyone having the same rights and responsibilities. Three things that VIAS thinks are important are the right to: a paid working life a home of your own have meaningful relationships Any work that we undertake MUST contribute to achieving these rights. We should also mention that half of our staff team heave learning disabilities and/ or autism and half of our board have learning disabilities and/ or autism.
- The sole definition of a successful outcome is competitive employment for each Project SEARCH intern: Employment in an integrated setting (that is, working alongside coworkers with and without disabilities). Year-round work (not seasonal employment) 16 hours/week or more Paid the prevailing wage The program is based on true collaboration among partner agencies. True collaboration requires a willingness among partner organizations to share resources and adapt policies and procedures. The following are active partners: Businesses Education / Schools Vocational Rehabilitation Community Rehabilitation Providers Intellectual and Developmental Disability Services Workforce Investment Board (where available) Family members Project SEARCH is a business-led program. This means that students learn relevant, marketable skills while immersed in the host business, and that the host businesses are active partners, participating without subsidies. The partners provide dedicated, consistent staffing on-site at the host business. Program focus is on serving young adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities and autism. Braided funding is in place between all partners, except the host business: Funding is a reallocation of existing resources. Funding is sustainable. After start-up, the program operates without a need for grant funding. Class size is sufficient to create cost-effective resource allocation for all partners. There is total immersion of interns at the host business. That is, interns are on site at the business each program day for a minimum of six hours, for an entire academic year. For adult programs that are not tied to the academic calendar, the program operates for a minimum of eight months (academic year less school vacations). A designated representative enters program data into Project SEARCH data base. Project SEARCH graduates receive effective follow-along services to retain employment. Each Project SEARCH program site has a licensing agreement signed with Project SEARCH Cincinnati through Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.
- VIAS history In 2011, VIAS led on the development of a Career Planning Tool that married the best principles of vocational profiling with person-centred planning into one document that a job seeker could use from cradle to grave. Nicola Graham of SDS Aberdeen piloted this and still uses the tool to this day. In 2010 VIAS in partnership with SCLD developed Young Scotland’s Got Talent. The aim was to inspire young people to dream big about their employment options. In the main this is achieved by having a catwalk event where models are young people who have paid jobs and model their work clothes. They are interviewed by the MC who is a comedian and this is always a show stopper. Alongside this there are a series of employment themed workshops and a marketplace for information. The first event was at Hampden and was attended by 350 young people with a waiting list of a further 450. Feedback was that the event was amazing but that what people wanted was good local information. In 2011 we began running Young Scotland’s Got Talent events across the country. To date we have delivered in excess of 20 events. In 2015 we developed My Video CV. The app has been designed to give people information about our training courses, connect them to all of our social media sites and most importantly to help people to make their own video CV. From 2012 – 2015 we had a strong presence in Highland and Islands, Glasgow Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire delivering My Life My Way funded by the Scottish Government SDS capacity building budget. Co-productively, in year one we delivered training on a wide range of topics to people, their families, PAs and support organisations on a wide range of topics including systematic instruction. In 2014/15, as part of DW4U, a programme to build employer capacity to recruit, induct and meaningfully include individuals on the autistic spectrum, VIAS delivered diversity and autism awareness training to staff at SDS Aberdeen, Highlands and Islands and West of Scotland. We are currently anticipating doing some work with SUSE post lock down piloting an early action to sustain employment tool and recently worked alongside Carol Balcombe in developing quality standards in supported employment.
- Norma and Elaine Adams (formerly of SCLD) wrote the systematic instruction unit of the PDA in Supported Employment and Norma sat on the validation panel for the qualification. Norma was invited to sit on the SCLD Employment Task Group that was created in response to Mapping the Employability Landscape for People with Learning Disabilities in Scotland, research carried out by Cambridge Policy Consultants and published in August 2016. We evolved DW4U and developed a model to ensure that young people with autism could access and succeed in the modern apprenticeship scheme. This project ran successfully with us working in partnership with West College Scotland until June 2019 and 22 young people successfully gaining access to the Modern Apprenticeship scheme. Furthermore and more importantly we changed hearts and minds of employers; the educational establishment and training providers about what is possible for this group. The Life I Want Project – Person led public social partnership with 22 partner organisations. Project Workstreams – Employment, Housing, Relationships, Transition and Health Funder – National Lottery funded until 2022 Employment Workstream - We ran a series of innovative employer engagement events to help young people to market themselves to prospective businesses. They planned, organized and delivered these events. Little did the employers attending realise that the person that invited them, the person that talked to them on the phone, the person that greeted them on the day, the people who served them at the event were all young disabled job seekers and employers were blown away by the skills and professionalism. Young people actually left the events each time with job offers in the bag. This was done in partnership with Glasgow City Council Supported Employment Service who are also a Project SEARCH site. Our evaluation service also grew out of TLIW although this is now a stand alone service. We have had the opportunity to evaluate four SE services. As a direct result of our evaluation recommendations GCCSES recruited their Access To Work funded job coach and East Ayrshire SES managed to make the business case for an additional job coach for their team. Last year we did some work with Renfrewshire Council Project SEARCH in training/ building the capacity of their new job coach. YSGT Aberdeen, Glasgow and Renfrewshire Partners –Skills Development Scotland and Aberdeenshire Council Date - June 2020 Steering group meeting – Scheduled for 7th April – Nicola Graham (SDS) and Carol Balcombe (Aberdeenshire Council) Venue - Marriot Hotel in Dyce Postponed until further notice. BOSS- Building Organisations to Succeed & Shine Funder – Workplace Equality Fund – Managed by Impact Funding Partners Partners – ScotRail & Springfield Delivery - Autism & Learning Disability Awareness, Easy Read Training and HR, Interview, Selection & Retention. Evaluation & 1 year ongoing Consultancy. Staff – 140-160 staff members including CEO, Senior Management. Areas – Aberdeen, Glasgow, Inverness, Dundee, Edinburgh, Elgin, Perth. Triple E - Elevate, Equality & Excellence (Job Coaching Service) Launch - June 2020. Funders - The Robertson Trust, Agnes Hunter Trust and Henry Smith Charity – Self Sustainable within 4 years through income generation through Access To Work and other local and national funded projects – DWP DPS T&L. Area - Greater Glasgow and surrounding areas at the beginning with a view to expanding this service upon securing further contracts across Scotland. What is the need? This was developed as a result of discussions with local Project SEARCH sites who identified that the lack of good quality job coaching is one of the key factors that hinders their success. Let's Get Moving; Let's Get Going – 2017 – 4 Support workers Let's Get Moving 2019 – 27 Support Workers (1-2 Individuals supported per worker) Funded by Transport Scotland Let's Get Moving 2020 – 20 Support Workers 91-2 Individuals supported per worker) Funded by Paths or All on the Smarter Choices, Smarter Places fund. Finally in February we delivered a two day TSI refresher course for all Scottish Project SEARCH sites commissioned and funded by DFN Project SEARCH. We will also be picking up some work with North Lanarkshire SES post Covid 19 lockdown.