A Monmouthshire project that gives students with disabilities office skills is looking for volunteers in the new year to help develop the students further.
The project, Office Services, allows people starting at all sorts of levels and ages to gain office skills and take part in a business environment.
The project has been running for nearly two years and replaced traditional day care services. In the old day care system, students had little opportunity to move out of the building they were in and they didn’t benefit from learning the life and work skills that taking part the social enterprises offers.
Alan Kalawsky, Disability Services manager, who has been responsible for developing the projects, explained:
“The project is one of three in Monmouthshire; all the projects are different and hugely successful – we want to move forward and develop Office Service even further.
“We would really benefit from having input from people in the community with skills they can pass on to the students.
“Ideally, volunteers would have good skills in IT, printing, design and publishing as a lot of the work we do here is creating flyers, business cards and other business materials.
“Some people can’t read when they come here but some are already computer literate so we create a personal development portfolio for each student. This identifies their needs, for example confidence building, and then we create an Individual programme that develops their skills. We work in partnership with the council so that students get accreditation for their work.”
“The structure of having a working day in an office environment means that some students who have had behavioural problems have improved a great deal. The people here have responsibilities and they respond to the work environment brilliantly. They can’t wait to get on with work!
“Our emphasis on supporting independence, learning new skills and socialising within the local community.
“Volunteers need not commit a vast amount of their time and other staff members will always be present.
“We may need to carry out CRB checks and we would arrange and pay for that to be done.”
Karen Godfrey, 50, attends Office Services:
“I come every Friday and work as a secretary in the office – I like it very much. It’s changed a lot since it was a day centre – now I’m aiming to get a work placement and eventually I hope to work in a lawyer’s office.”
There are 15 students a day at Office Services currently. Four of these have started on work placements in MCC’s Training Unit, in the Abergavenny One Stop Shop, the library and in a local garden centre.
Ruth Harris, 37, (pictured) has recently finished her placement at Abergavenny Library and will be moving to another library early next year.
“I’m really enjoying it and it’s nice to do something different. I also help out in the enterprise office where I check attendance sheets and work on the computers.”
Office Services offers business cards, photo coping services, binding, flyers, menus, enlarged photographs, and many more business services.
For more information contact Lynne Depree on 01873 859758.
