We live in a world where we are privileged to have access to instant knowledge about almost any subject.
A quick google will answer any question giving you mountains of information. If you google 'What is it like to be autistic' there are about 210,000,000 results. While this is valuable information how much does it really help us to understand the real-life experiences of people in the Neurodivergent community?
At People First we believe there is no better way to really understand the experiences of people who have a learning disability and/ are autistic than to work alongside them. It is this belief that sparked the idea to create the People First Experience Day, an opportunity for people from local businesses to come and work alongside some of our fantastic learners who work at the People First Conference Centre.
Our first People First Experience day was attended by 3 amazing employees from Carlisle Brass. This local business has been working with People First over the last year as partners in our Creating Careers programme. Six months ago, they hired one of our Creating Careers Candidates providing them with an opportunity to work in their warehouse.
Carlisle Brass are passionate about providing the best environment for their employees and providing them with the support they need. Therefore, they were keen to learn more about supporting the neurodivergent members of their workforce so were excited to have some of their employees attend the first People First Experience Day.
The Carlisle Brass guests were provided with mentors for the day who were all senior learners from our Hospitality Academy. These mentors guided them through the tasks of the day which the learners do every day to ensure that the People First Conference Centre is a hospitable, clean and tidy space for the customers who use the space. After having lunch together our Carlisle Brass guests were provided with an opportunity to learn more about inclusive forms of communication. They had a teaching session with our Education Manager, Faye, learning about Easy Read to help them in their creation of accessible how to guides in their business.
After a very enjoyable day spent together, we provided our guests with star badges and an award to say well done for all the work they had done and to thank them for coming and experiencing a day working at People First.
This was a very normal day at People First nothing was done differently but through working alongside each other people walked away changed. Our learners who were mentors for the day have a new sense of confidence and pride in their work and want more people to come and work with us for the day.
Our guests from Carlisle Brass walked away inspired and shared;
“Everything we witnessed truly inspired us and gave us a valuable understanding of the potential that can be achieved through creating a safe, educational and emotionally adaptable environment. All in all, it was a truly great experience that we would love to expose more of our staff too. In addition to this, we would love to have learners from People First come and experience a day at our site to further build on the great working relationship and shared learning experience our two organizations have developed.
We fully recommend this experience to any business and staff that want to expand their understanding of supporting neurodivergent people and experience the warmth, humour and the desire to better themselves that the People First learners have.”
If you are reading this and you are a person or a business that want to experience the joy that comes from creating a work environment that enables everyone to fully participate and contribute as their authentic selves, why not get in touch about coming for your own People First Experience Day.
For more information, please email Natalie, our Partnerships Manager, at [email protected] or call on 01228 236336.