Wood to Work Partnership
Wood to Work is a partnership that was launched in October 2021, between us at Ways into Work, Oxford Wood Recycling and Oxfordshire Employment.
The aim of Wood to Work is to help individuals, in and around South Oxfordshire, who have various employment barriers due to their health or a disability, to enter the world of work. This includes supporting them in gaining permanent positions or work experience in a variety of industries including accounting, business, trade-based learning, administration, and many more.
Our Clients at Oxford Wood Recycling
Oxford Wood Recycling is a social enterprise based in Abingdon that specialises in recycled timber, building materials, and high-quality carpentry. Oxford Wood Recycling offers voluntary work experience to clients at Ways into Work in numerous work-related activities within their business. This helps to provide valuable experience for our Job Seekers CVs.
Our Senior Employment Coach completes a vocational profile for each of the volunteers to identify their strengths, areas of development, and career aspirations to help determine the most valuable work experience at Oxford Wood Recycling which ranges from woodwork to customer service experience. The Senior Employment Coach then ensures everyone on the program receives an induction, health and safety training, and the relevant PPE for the wood shop environment. We then continue to provide workplace support once our clients have started their work experience and will assist with job coaching, creating or updating CVs and job applications for when they finish their work here.
As of May 2022, there are currently eight volunteers on this programme who are completing valuable work experience with Oxford Wood Recycling. Several clients have now secured paid employment and are due to start in the coming months showing the huge success of this partnership and the hard work of our clients!
Our Managing Director, Becky Lawson stated that:
“We are delighted to be working alongside Oxfordshire Employment and Oxford Wood Recycling on this exciting new venture. We’ve long been working in Berkshire and Hampshire delivering supported employment and supported internships, and this project marks not only our first steps in Oxfordshire but our first collaboration directly with two very different and very successful supported business models. We are really excited about the opportunity this partnership brings to grow our collective impact and change even more lives one job at a time across Oxfordshire country.”
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