Wood to Work Partnership

Laura Shuttleworth • Jul 25, 2022

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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When Rajpal first became a client at Ways into Work he had been struggling with looking for work and a good job match. Rajpal has a mild learning disability and mental health issues and had not worked for over ten years except to help now and then at his family’s supermarket. He had not worked for such a long time as he was not well enough to think about his career and life choices. When he joined Ways into Work as a Job Seeker and was assigned an Employment Coach who spent a long time getting to know him, doing a vocational profile and job matching. It was decided that the best first step was for Rajpal was to experience what different jobs and roles are like and what they would entail. Ways into Work then supported him in applying for various roles in retail and did mock interviews where he gained lots of practice. He secured a few interviews but was not offered any of the jobs. Rajpal had begun taking an interest in going to the gym and informed his Employment Coach that he would like a job at the gym. After approaching the employer, his Employment Coach secured an interview for him. He was so happy that at the interview when asked why he would like to work at the gym, he pulled out of his pocket a handwritten lengthy list of reasons why he liked the job and the skills he had to offer. This showed the employer his passion for the job and Rajpal was offered the job, working 3 days (24 hours) a week to begin with. As the leisure centre was 7 miles away, his Employment Coach supported him with applying for Access To Work transport to and from work. They also taught him and his parents how to claim his monthly ATW transport and supported him with the change of circumstances in his benefits. When Rajpal first started to work at the Leisure Centre he solely worked in the gym and his role included ensuring that all the equipment was working and clean, as well as dealing with lots of customer enquiries. This was quite a challenge for Rajpal to begin with, as it was a large premise and no two days were the same. With Job Coaching , Ways into Work was able to support Rajpal by helping to create a routine for him and also discussing with his supervisor a way of building new tasks into his days as the weeks progressed.

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