Which is what was said by our visitor Mik Scarlet when he visited on Wednesday 14^th July for our summer job forum, Mik works as a disability access consultant, and used to be a children’s television presenter in the eighties and nineties.

The day started off by the young people thinking about questions that they would like to ask him and lots of productive questions were thought up by the young disabled people.

Mik told us about his work story , which came across as very empowering , inspiring, and passionate about discrimination towards him and other disabled people , and about access to services , shops, and services. Mik then said to us about how he had found it hard to gain access to places, using one example of him crawling down some stairs to get into a nightclub because he wanted to be like any other clubber and another great experience which was something I was shocked at was when he told us about what happened when he was making a pop video and they wanted him to leave and hide his wheelchair , because they didn’t want him to use it in the music video , they wanted him to go to different bits of furniture , but I felt that this was an infringement of him as a disabled person , and losing a part of his identity , which for me I felt empathic about because wheelchairs are part of the disabled person , and that’s who they are.

A great example of a disabled person wanting to be who they are and showing society that they are who they are whether they are in a wheelchair or not and Mik clearly is someone who stands up for what he believes in, and makes a huge difference to society by changing the law and helping employers to think differently about making their company or service accessible so disabled people feel included in society.

I think the session went well and I learnt a lot and felt very empathic with what Mik was saying and I really felt empowered to help disabled people.

Mik and I will be working towards helping Hertfordshire PASS in the future and I really look forward to think up some great plan which hopefully will help Herts PASS to be a better , more user driven and to get the message out there about what we do, and I thank him for sharing his work story  and for having the initiative to think up the afternoon session on the spot , and for being a great role model when I was growing up!

Written by Katie Fraser

A typical day at Hertfordshire PASS was made very enjoyable by the arrival of Mik Scarlet who will be coming on July 14th to be a visitor at the Summer Job Forum.

Hilarity ensued as Mik brought light relief to our afternoon on this sunny day. He listened as we all told him about what our job roles were and lots of interesting discussions came out of it including disability on TV, and disability issues and the right terminology for disabled people.

At some point in this interesting conversation I had to make sure he wasn’t saying too much as he would have said everything that he was going to say in his work story at the summer job forum. I did however laugh when typically him being the hilarious person he is said “I tried to be a contastant on Mastermind but they wouldnt let me have my specialised subject of “Analogue Sythesisers ” Ha! ha!

I shared an experience of how I was treated at a florist’s and also how I feel when my disability can be a barrier to me and Mik was very interested by what I had to say.

All in all, he got very interested by what we were all about and what he will be doing on the 14th, with the media theme , which he said he will be able to show us how to edit video and media skills. Should be really empowering and hope that listening to Mik, young disabled people get a real insight to a man that never lets anything stand in his way and is always positive and a real inspiration to me , and glad to have grown up with him by watching him on his shows and emailing him as I have found a real good friend who understands what I have gone through in my situation.

Katie Fraser, HertsPASS

We are running a Summer Job Forum for young disabled people aged from 16 to 25 year olds with either a physical or learning disability over the summer months of July and August.

This exciting Summer Job Forum will be a fun way of exploring the world of work by using creative media such as forum theatre, arts and crafts etc.

The Summer Job Forum will run on consecutive Wednesdays from the 14th July to 18th August 2010 . In the morning we invite a visitor to share their work story in response to questions from those taking part. We are planning for some of those visitors to be celebrities. In the afternoon we have a chance to explore more about what the visitors have said by using their issues in a fun way either by drawing, singing, or drama. Last year for example we had the well known disabled actor Mat Fraser from Cast Offs come to visit and we asked him about his barriers to work and then in the afternoon he helped us to perform Jack and the Beanstalk, a forum theatre play.

Dates of the Forum

14th July– Mik Scarlet 10.30 to 3.30pm (Theatre)
21st July– Kay Barratt 10.30 to 3.30pm (Singing)
28th July– Ingrid Marson 10.30 to 3.30pm (Newspapers)
4th August– Victoria Wright 10.30 to 1pm (Arts and Crafts until 3.30)
11th August– Visitor: Ian Fraser 10.30 to 1pm. Lance Mphoko (Dance until 2.30)
18th August– Larry Pulley 10.30 to 3.30pm (Graphic Design)

You are welcome to one, two or all 6 of the above dates. For more information and to book your place please contact us.

Download our Summer Job Forum leaflet PDF to find out more!

The Job Forum takes place at our offices in Welwyn Garden City.

Hertfordshire PASS celebrated its 10th birthday on Thursday evening at an event held at the charity’s office in Welwyn Garden City. The event, which was hosted by Neville Reyner CBE DL, the President and Chairman of the British Chambers of Commerce and the Chairman of the Hertfordshire Chamber of Commerce, was attended by representatives of local businesses, councils and disability organisations.

“ The birthday event went fantastically well.”

“It was brilliant to see so many people turn out to support us.”

“I hope the 10 PASS Ten Challenge will give employers an insight into disabilities and will encourage them to employ disabled people.”  “Employers will see that having a disability doesn’t stop you from doing a good job.”

St Albans resident Ed Magee, 21, who has a mild learning disability, recently started working for the charity as a Marketing Apprentice.

“This is my first job that I have enjoyed,” said Ed. “The best thing about being an apprentice is learning about the different job roles you can do within an organisation.”

On 10th June 2010 Hertfordshire PASS celebrated its 10th birthday and officially launched the “10 PASS Ten Challenge” to find apprenticeships for 10 young disabled people during 2010.

Hertfordshire PASS celebrated its 10th birthday on Thursday evening at an event held at the charity’s office in Welwyn Garden City. The event, which was hosted by Neville Reyner CBE DL, the President and Chairman of the British Chambers of Commerce and the Chairman of the Hertfordshire Chamber of Commerce, was attended by representatives of local businesses, councils and disability organisations.

Neville Reyner CBE DL said: “I would like to congratulate Hertfordshire PASS for 10 years of achievement to the community in supporting and enabling disabled people to live independently. I take this opportunity to wish Hertfordshire PASS every success in the years to come.”

The charity officially launched its “10 Pass Ten Challenge” at the event, and is already part-way to achieving its target by arranging an apprenticeship at multinational company Henkel Limited.

Henkel Limited, which has offices in Hatfield and Hemel Hempstead, is a leading provider of adhesive technologies, cosmetics and toiletries, owning well-known household brands such as Pritt, Sellotape and Schwarzkopf. The company plans to take on its first Hertfordshire PASS apprentice in the next few months.

“The WorkABILITY apprenticeship scheme fits perfectly into our Corporate Social Responsibility strategy,” said Diane Humphrey, HR Manager at Henkel. “One key part of our CSR strategy is looking at diversity and inclusion within our workplace and this project gives us another way to look at our inclusion agenda.”

In addition to employing the apprentice, Hertfordshire PASS also provides a mentor for each apprentice, who accompanies the apprentice full-time until the company’s staff can take on this responsibility.

The provision of a mentor makes managing the apprentice easier, according to Ian Whitelegg, Director of Welwyn Garden City printing company Prime Impressions, which took on a Hertfordshire PASS apprentice one day a week for three months last year.

“Having the Hertfordshire PASS mentor there made a big difference as we didn’t have to worry about managing the apprentice. For example, if the apprentice forgot to do something, the mentor would prompt them to do it,” said Ian. “We found the experience of taking on a disabled apprentice rewarding and would like to do it again in the future.”

As well as finding placements for apprentices in local companies, Hertfordshire PASS has also taken on six apprentices to run the WorkABILITY project, which resulted in the charity receiving a regional highly commended micro employer of the year 2010 award from the National Apprenticeships Service.

St Albans resident Ed Magee, 21, who has a mild learning disability, recently started working for the charity as a Marketing Apprentice.

“This is my first job that I have enjoyed,” said Ed, who lives on Blenheim Road, St Albans. “The best thing about being an apprentice is learning about the different job roles you can do within an organisation.”

Hertfordshire PASS is currently looking for local companies, young disabled people and potential mentors to join its apprenticeship scheme. For more information, contact the charity on pass@hertspass.com or 01707 321 442.

Attendees included:

• Hertfordshire County Councillors Steven Markiewicz and Richard Smith
• Dr Jon Nay, Regional Apprenticeship Director at National Apprenticeship Service
• Councillor Carl Storer, Deputy Mayor of Welwyn Hatfield Borough Council
• Bob Ferneyhough, HR Director of Henkel

To celebrate our 10th birthday we want to find…

• 10 young disabled people and appoint them as apprentices, and place them at
• suitable projects and placements with local employers across Hertfordshire, and
• support them with mentors.

This is our ‘10 pass TEN’ challenge and we hope you can help…

The 10 apprentices we want to appoint in 2010 will join the 6 apprentices already employed by Hertfordshire PASS WorkABILITY project.

Download our 10 pass TEN leaflet »

When I first started as an Apprentice, in January 2010, I decided I would benefit from having a PA to help me with personal care and to fulfil my job role properly. I started getting on the case to do this; I thought it would be easy but I didn’t realise what barriers I had to overcome first. I didn’t realise that access to work would have such a big impact in this because I am on supported permitted earnings and wanted help from access to work at the same time.

I cannot have help from access to work for more than 52 weeks, so I had this stress of access to work saying,

“No you’re not allowed a PA because you are on supported permitted earnings. However, you can come off your Benefits, if you would like to and you would be entitled to have a PA for a bit longer or they said that I could come off the supported permitted earnings and work longer hours.”

The manager of Herts Pass said that none of these options were really feasible because if I came off my benefits I wouldn’t get my money and the organisation didn’t have the money to pay me any more money, if I came off my supported permitted earnings so I carried on fighting with access to work who eventually agreed to giving me the funding for 52 weeks and when the 52 weeks is up. I will know what to do next time I want to appoint a PA. I have learnt a lot through making mistakes and I won’t make the same mistakes next time. I will get a PA that has care experience. I think, I was in a hurry because I’d needed to wait a long time to see if I was allowed the funding I didn’t necessarily think about the practical side, but I didn’t realise the hoist training would take this long to set up with my new PA.

Three months later, I’ve found out my job role is growing and I will do something around Self Directed Support so I think my battle for getting a PA has made me a stronger person and Herts Pass believe that I can do this job role as much as I believe it. I have had a roller coaster of experiences but now I am really settled and happy in my job.

HertsPASS Apprentice

Report done by one of the Junior Apprentices

Following on from the success of the first User driven Book  we have successfully published our second book.   User Driven 2 has a DVD with it there is a celebrity being a director of the Job Forum Theatre called Mat Fraser who is a very well known actor where they decided to make a play of Jack and the Beanstalk.

This is a great DVD to watch. The book mostly covers 3 of our senior apprentices talking about how they felt at working in Hertfordshire PASS and WorkABILITY.

Katie Fraser’s views: “My views on User Driven 2 are that I think that the stories are great and a fantastic achievement on what we have done to make the book a success. I have enjoyed everything I wrote about, and I am proud to lead one of the best sessions which was the Mat Fraser session as it was something I enjoyed doing acting for the forum theatre even though it was way out of my job description. I also enjoyed the fact that User Driven 2 carries on from the success of User Driven book 2 and I hope that by reading both the books that people get a sense of what WorkABILITY does and that they can feel that they use us , either referring young disabled people to us or work with us in some small or large way, by watching the best DVD in the whole wide world , or by reading the book and thinking that they want to help us.”

Jonathan Pamment views: “ I think that the new book  is very good  because it has more information about Hertfordshire PASS and what we have done it is nice to see a DVD in the back of the book which gives a 15 minute role play of Jack and The Beanstalk.   The book also shows us mentoring students from Oakland’s College and tell you what work we did with them.”

Patrick Fitzgerald’s views: “User Driven 2 is a brilliant job and it’s great that we’ve managed to include a DVD this time, providing people with a more visual expression of what we do. Although the Job Forum and particularly the forum theatre session was fun to be involved in, it all had a very serious message about how young disabled people should be given the same chances in work and in life as their non-disabled peers. I enjoyed writing about my apprenticeship and the Ready for Work programme, and feel that the book as a whole is a better and more focused and professional work than the first one. This is only to be expected – when the original book came out, Andrew, Katie and I were only volunteers, but now we’re Senior Apprentices with responsibility for others. I’m looking forward to User Driven 3 already!”

Andrew Bird’s views: “The book is excellent it has a lot of user driven information and I like the pictures I also like the forum theatre play on the DVD.”

Hanna King’s views: “I think the DVD is good and it could help people knowing how to get a job. I think Mat Fraser helped with knowledge of the disability issues. I think the second book is better than the first book.”

Ed Magee’s views: “Even though I am in neither of the books 1 or 2.  I feel  that the 2^nd User Driven book shows a lot of detail about how the three senior apprentices have been working at Hertfordshire Pass.  Whereas there can be new things learnt into what everyone did at different times.  I have found the DVD very interesting to watch with including telling more about the basics of work that I never knew.”

Nigel Fenner’s views:” I feel that both books are excellent books because they are about young disabled people overcoming barriers to work, written by young disabled people themselves.  I look forward very much to User-Driven 3.”

I found it hard and exciting to recruit for my PA as I did not know really what I was doing and how to do it. Once I got going I found it really quick and easy to get my PA.

The bit I found hardest is getting the funding in the first place, but now I have a PA and she is really nice and helpful even though it has been a struggle.

I feel rewarded in the end that I have done this all on my own with out much help from my colleagues as it has been a learning curve for a lot of them. I am really happy and finding work a lot easier to do and being a lot more organised.

Written by, Junior Apprentice.

Minutes of the Job Forum session held on 18^th February 2010Venue: Lavender Fields, Hitchin

Present:

Hertfordshire PASS/WorkABILITY: Hanna King, Andrew Bird, Sujeevan Premakumaran, Katie Fraser, Patrick Fitzgerald

Lavender Fields: Ciara Rose Hogan, Ciaran Kiely, Martina Lawrence, Caroline McKenna, Jack Price, Amy Thomas, Robert Voigt

Welcome

AB welcomed everyone to the session.

Work Experience and Barriers

We started with a discussion of different aspects of work experience, and the barriers that people may come across at work.

Summer Job Forum

We talked about last summer’s Job Forum sessions, and HK recalled that she had said that she was interested in working with Hertfordshire PASS, which of course she now is!

When Katy Etherington visited, the residents asked her about what she does for a job, and said that it was helpful to learn about her work. PF shared some of the feedback he had collated from the sessions, and read out that HK had been surprised that KE did paid work and not voluntary work. Given that HK now does paid work as well, she said that she is not so surprised now!

HK said that she is proud of herself because she now works at Hertfordshire PASS and is doing something she enjoys.  She also remarked that disability does not stop you from doing anything you want to do.

During one of the summer sessions, another surprise for HK was that AB had got a job despite his disability. She has now learned that disability does not matter, the physical challenge of everyone does not matter. She then made the point that people should not look straight at your disability, they should look at you as a person.

HK’s presentation

HK showed her presentation, that she had drawn up earlier in the week. This consisted of seven PowerPoint slides, and told her story about overcoming barriers to work. It went down very well, and KF opined that it was great to listen to and well presented. HK then took questions from the residents. A good quote from HK:

‘If you are in work, you are there to do a job, you cannot always sit around and have coffee! But you meet different people every day, so you are still meeting new people.’

As PF was HK’s line manager for this week, he later told her that he was very proud of what she’d done during the session.

Sharing experiences

CH said that she does voluntary work in a church. It gives her confidence and she likes being sociable. She enjoys talking to the elderly people at the church. PF then shared his own experience of voluntary work with the Shopmobility scheme in St Albans, which he only stopped because he was starting full-time work. He was by far the youngest volunteer for the scheme, and most of the others were pensioners, but he got on well with them. In this way, his was a similar experience to CH’s. The group agreed that it takes a long time to overcome fears and build confidence.

Mentoring

HK told the residents that KF is going to set up a pool of mentors to accompany the young people that WorkABILITY will bring together with local employers. HK shared the story of Amy Cox and Kelly Laville working together at Oxfam, eventually without the support of their mentors. It was an unexpected and interesting story, as AC went full circle – she started as a mentee, with KF as her mentor, but ended up being a mentor to KL herself.

Benefits

ML asked about paid work affecting your benefits. HK went and got her supported permitted earnings paperwork, and said that it showed the benefits people that she can work up to 15 hours a week without her benefits being affected. PF then talked at length about different types of benefit:

Disability Living Allowance (can be claimed by any disabled person and is never affected by work)

Working Tax Credit (can be claimed by a disabled person who works at least 16 hours a week, and therefore actually encourages people to work more hours)

Incapacity Benefit (which you will lose if you work more than 16 hours a week)

Areas of Interest

We split into two groups and discussed what kind of work experience the residents would like to do. We used what they told us last summer as a guide, and also asked if they had any new ideas. This is what we came up with:

CH – office work (has voluntary work in a church)
CK – office work, dance
ML – office work, shop, gardening
CM – office work, drama, gardening
JP – Waitrose in Hitchin (JP was not a resident of Lavender Fields during the Job Forum)
AT – pub, drama
RV – teaching (is going to start work experience)

Obviously, any placement would have to be wheelchair-accessible, unless it was for JP, who is not a wheelchair user.

ML and CM told that they would be moving out of Lavender Fields in the near future. ML will be moving to St Albans, Hitchin or Stevenage when she leaves, and CM most likely to Cheshunt. After ML’s move, we could look to find her something in whichever town she moves to, but as far as CM is concerned, Cheshunt would probably be too far for us.

Toilet and Kitchen Project

After lunch, we again split into two groups and researched the toilet and kitchen facilities at Lavender Fields. This was done with the aim of making our own facilities at Hertfordshire PASS more accessible, when we move into our new offices. The toilet group recommended that our new toilet include the following things:

Hoist
Closo-Mat
Lower sink
Plenty of room
Hand rails
Towel rails
Air freshener
Extractor fan
Call bell/alarm
Easy-opening door
Tiled floor
Gloves dispenser
Hand dryer
Light switch/cord that is easily reachable
Easy-reach toilet paper dispenser
Easily accessible bin
Temperature-safe taps
Taps – easy lever with hot/cold signs
Toilet chain/flusher – easily reachable
Non-slip flooring
Big u-bend!
Locks
Commode chair
Changing bed

Meanwhile, the kitchen group found that the kitchen at Lavender Fields had height-adjustable counters. We have tables of this type at Hertfordshire PASS, but not counters, and we obtained the name of a company that could provide them to us. These counters easily adjust so that people can use the kettle, microwave and toaster. There were also special cutlery, special cups and long straws.

Canvassing

After the session, AB, KF and PF went into Hitchin to do some canvassing on behalf of the residents. HK did not join us as she was taking a half-day holiday. We first went into Waitrose, where JP wants to work. HK had previously spoken to someone in the supermarket briefly, and they had expressed an interest in taking a young person on.

When we entered Waitrose, we were told that the personnel manager, Roberta Messingham, was not there. However, we were given a contact number and PF is currently in the process of contacting her. We also left a copy of User Driven, a leaflet and our business cards.

We canvassed two other shops, Dance (a supplier of dancewear, and one of the employers found by HK in her Internet search) and Cane & Able Healthcare (a mobility shop). Neither of these had enough space to place a wheelchair user, though.