Time to introduce you to my mentee! He is a
19 year young man called Harry, he is from Swindon and he finished college in the
summer. Harry is on the autism spectrum, however I won’t be talking too much about his
“disability” over the course of this blog, unless I feel it is directly
relevant to the matter at hand and might help shed some light on the experience
of those with disabilities both looking for jobs, and their experience when
they are already employed. This is because I don’t feel that anyone should be
defined by their disability, yes Harry may have additional requirements and may
find some things more challenging (as many of us do to a greater or lesser
extent), however he is a human being first and foremost before he is a walking
condition.
We were mutually introduced over email with a
quick fact sheet to get to know each other, it turns out we are both big movie
fans – it was a great icebreaker on our first meet-up talking about the new
Avengers movie – while Harry also enjoys swimming and playing the piano. We had
to hold off on our first meet-up for a few weeks while he was busy sunning
himself on holiday, though I’m sure he would have much rather been in Swindon
working with me! We arranged a time for him to come over to the office for us
to grab a coffee for our initial meeting; Harry had asked if his mum could come
for the first time which was understandable as he was a little nervous, and his
profile had stated that he can feel a little uncomfortable when doing things
that are a break from the routine, such as meeting new people. At first it was
mainly his mum and myself chatting, as he did seem a little shy and would reply
to her instead of talking to me directly, however his mum was excellent at
pushing him to talk to me and answer my questions. I explained to the two of
them more about the scheme, how Harry and myself would be meeting regularly
over the next 6 months to work on his employability skills, though there wasn’t
a set structure and we had a lot of scope to work on the skills that we wanted
to. After around 25 minutes I could tell that Harry was starting to get tired
out by the meeting, so we made our arrangements for our next meeting and then I
let him and his mum get on with their day.
Harry came back to meet up with me a
fortnight later by himself. I found out when he got there that this was his
first time taking that bus route by himself (he had practised it on the weekend
before with his parents), which made me feel proud that this scheme was already
starting to take a small part in improving his independence and confidence (not
that I am taking any credit myself for that particular aspect!). Although he
was further out of his comfort zone being there alone, he was noticeable more
confident and talkative this time, which is something I hope that we can
continue to see him build on over the months. We grabbed a small pod, this was
quite near the lifts and it was quite loud – his notes had mentioned that he
liked a calm, quiet environment, though again he did admirably being able to
focus well.
To start with, we went through his “Getting
to Know You” form – this was a set of questions on the topics on his personal
development, self-esteem, aspirations for the future, life satisfaction, and
his overall health and wellbeing. This is a document that Volunteering Matters
have asked to be completed at the start of the scheme, and once again at
the end to help measure our progress. We spent the
majority of our first session going through his answers. One thing that is
great to see is that he is very confident in his own abilities and will always
“back himself” (I wish I'd had that confidence myself as a teenager!). While some
areas that he scored himself lowly on were his ability to work in a team and
cope with problems. Although certain roles offer the opportunity to avoid those
aspects, I talked him through some examples of
where collaborating and crisis-management can be unavoidable in any job, from
bomb-disposal to quarter-end reporting (I will leave it to yourselves to find any similarities there).
Towards the end of the session we talked about what he wanted to get out of the scheme, and something that him and his mum had both mentioned was his CV. I will leave that with a very dramatic “To be continued…” and will document our experiences working through his CV in Blog #3!
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