Employability
Visually impaired people have so much to offer in the workplace yet only 24% are in employment. This project provides one to one support as well as offering employability workshops and support to enter training, work placements and employment.
How can we help you?
We will talk through your current circumstances, where you would like to be, and how we can work together to get you there. This could be education, volunteering or working.
We will create a plan together, what do you need to get you to where you want to go, what will you need to commit to and how we will help you.
We’ll help you develop core skills to be independent, communicate with confidence, increase your employability and build your self-esteem and wellbeing.
We provide this through one to one support and workshops that are free to attend to help you on your journey. Berkshire Vision also offers social, hobby, activity and friendship groups to introduce you to like minded people. We can help you build skills, community and gain support.
The support you’ll get:
We offer lots of support. We’ll meet with you (virtually if you would prefer) to talk about what it is you’d like to achieve, you might want to get back to or start work, support others, learn something new, whatever it is we can figure out the best approach together and work together to get you where you want to be.
We also run workshops, virtually and face to face, these will be listed in our monthly calendars and special events will be flagged on our website. These cover topics such as:
- Confidence
- Planning and Organising
- CV and application writing
- New opportunities
- Volunteering and work placements
- Guest Speakers – their journeys as visually impaired people into work
Contact jenna.lynch@berkshirevision.org.uk or employability@berkshirevision.org.uk to find out more
Opportunities and support for Employers
There are a number of recent reports that have highlighted the lack of diversity in employment in the UK, specifically focussing on disabilities, it is worth reviewing these reports as employers to fully understand the issues disabled people face and how employers are missing out on highly skilled talent :
https://www.visionfoundation.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/See-My-Skills-Report.pdf
Thanks to our networks and skilled team at Berkshire Vision, we’re able to offer guidance and advice to employers on many different topics.
Access to Work
How does it work and how will it affect your business. We can provide clear information on the process, it’s benefits to you and employees and any other questions you may have.
Working with Visually Impaired people
We recognise that lots of workplaces don’t have visually impaired people working for them and may be unsure of how a visually impaired person could be in their environment, we can run sessions with you in person or virtually to help your business understand the basics such as language, technology, health and safety, adaptations.
Technology
We can help you understand what kind of technology is available to people with visual impairments, from adaptive technology, screen readers, text to speech programmes and even apps on smart phones that can help people navigate or read barcodes. We can run virtual or in person sessions to demonstrate some of the technology that might be relevant to your business.
Training sessions
We can bring one of our working members along and run a training day for teams or HR departments to provide lived experience of a working person with a person with a visual impairment. This session can be tailored to your needs and can be a mixture of all our expertise or can focus on specifics (such as technology).
If you would like to find out more please contact us on employability@berkshirevision.org.uk
