County Council honoured for preparing young people with SEND for the workplace
A life-changing transition to work programme that prepares young people with Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) in Lancashire for the workplace has been recognised for its 100% success rate.
Compared to the general population, young people with a learning disability are significantly less likely to be in full time paid employment.
DFN Project Search is a national one-year programme for young people in their final year of school or college. It helps interns acquire competitive, transferable, and marketable job skills and helps them gain increased independence, confidence, and self-esteem.
On average 70% of graduates nationwide achieve employment of more than 16 hours per week through the programme. For those based with Lancashire County Council between 2019 and 2022, 100% of our graduates have hit this DFN's Target.
At the Annual DFN Project Search Conference, Lancashire County Council received an award for the second year running for this notable achievement.
Deborah Barrow, Head of Human Resources at Lancashire County Council, said: "At Lancashire County Council, we fully commit to provide a rich experience for our interns that aims to develop skills, confidence, experience, teamwork and friendships.
"We do this by providing high-quality work placements across a variety of our services, working with great people and supporting the delivery of our services to our customers, partners and all Lancashire residents who use and need our services in the communities we serve.
"Our experience has shown that whilst we fully commit to our interns' development, we also learn so much from them.
"They show us the best way to maximise development, motivate our teams with their willingness to learn, embrace and enrich the diversity and inclusion in our workplace, and bring out the best in us and we have lots of fun doing so."
The county council first began working with DFN Project Search in 2018.
The first year saw nine interns successfully complete placements with council teams, including document handling, libraries and adult and disability services. Since then, more teams across the council such as the information, communication technology service centre, catering and conferencing, and facilities management have joined the programme to offer regarding placements to interns.
County Councillor Jayne Rear, cabinet member for Education and Skills at Lancashire County Council, said: "Lancashire's involvement with DFN Project Search started off as a way to support young people with learning disabilities and autism to provide them with a pathway to employment through these supported internships. However, it has become something much greater.
"This scheme gives young people life-changing skills and confidence to help them reach their full potential and helps to create more diverse and accessible workplaces.
"I'm really proud of our record in helping young people into paid employment though this fantastic programme and would like to thank everyone who has helped to make this happen."