Gold Offer

gold offer

Aligned with the Gatsby Benchmarks and the CDI learning outcomes.

My Employment Passport has been created by Richard Lamplough based on his 30 years’ experience supporting young people with additional needs into paid work. Over the years, Richard’s work has been funded by a number of different organisations including local authorities, the DWP and the Careers and Enterprise Company.

The Gold Offer has two versions: Gold and Gold PLUS.

Gold has no printed resources supplied with it, apart from a set of posters. Facilitators need to print off Activity Sheets for each student for each session. These are usually four sides of A4. Gold PLUS has all the printed resources shown in this flipbook, including the three workbooks. The only thing facilitators need to print off are the session plans.

At the heart of both versions are 30 videos, average length fifteen minutes, many of which feature people with additional needs in paid employment. These not only inspire your young people to help them believe they can get paid employment, they also show them the practical pathways to the all-important job interview.

Many organisations run the programme over a full year, but not necessarily an academic year. There are schools, for example, who start it with their year-10 students in the summer term with the introductory sessions (one session a week), and move into the main part of the programme when they’re year-11 students in September.

Who benefits from this?

Both versions of the Gold Offer are designed for young people at entry level. The typical gold user will have basic reading and writing and might have mild or moderate learning disabilities. The initiative is not suitable for young people with severe or profound learning disabilities. The typical gold user will probably have a basic grasp of how to use the internet and perhaps, for example, be able to navigate their way to the Sainsbury’s website. From that point, whilst they might be able to access the current vacancies section, going much further than this would be too challenging for them.

Both versions of the Gold Offer are ideal for students from year 10 to year 14. People in their twenties and thirties in day service settings can thrive too; Andrew for example, who got a paid job at B&Q having attended the course.

Whilst not typical, some schools run the intiative for their younger pupils. There is a school in Essex, for example, who break up the usual 60-minute sessions into short 20-minute tasters for their year-7 and year-8 students.

How does the programme work in practice?

On purchasing either version of the Gold Offer, facilitators are sent an email with the first ten session plans and video links. They receive resources for sessions eleven to thirty further down the line. We advise facilitators to print off the session plan in advance of the session itself and have a quick read through to prepare themselves. There’s no need to watch the video in advance of the session, but experience has shown some facilitators find this useful for the first couple of modules, until they are totally used to the format.

Page 1 of the session plan gives you an introduction and the learning outcomes. Page 2 of the session plan gives you two timelines and information about resources you need.

To show you an example, here are the timelines for session 3.

Session Plan for Raising Aspirations

Suggested timeline for a 60-minute session

16’22

of Part 1: 3’47 End of Part 2: 5’45

Suggested timeline for an 80-minute session

Page 3 of the session plan gives you a summary of the video.

The remaining pages of the session plan give you instructions how to run the session itself. After the initial warm up, what we call the Hello section, you play the first part of the video until a pause point, made clear by a graphic in your session plan, and a small clock logo appearing on the video itself, about twenty seconds before you need to pause it.

Once you’ve paused the video, your young people carry out a few structured activities as outlined in your session plan. These build on the value of conversations. Reading and writing is kept to the absolute minimum, so, for example young people are asked questions that need tick-box answers, or are required to carry out the sorts of exercises as illustrated below.

1 2 Write YES, NO or NOT SURE for these questions.

Does raising aspirations mean helping someone believe they can achieve something in the future?

If somebody is unsure as to whether or not they can get a paid job in the future, do you think it’s a good idea that their aspirations are raised to help them believe they can get a paid job?

Do you think the videos in the My Employment Passport course and the posters you have seen today help raise people’s aspirations?

Do

5

who inspires you? 3 4

you believe you can get a paid job in the future?

Whether or not you have answered YES, NO or NOT SURE to the red question, do you think it’s useful for your aspirations to be raised?

Dina Asher-Smith inspires many young people.

Whilst the activities suggested in the session plans should work well, don’t hesitate to go your own way depending on the abilities and support needs of your young people, and the atmosphere within the group. One advantage of having the various pause points throughout the videos is that you can change the structure a little if you need to. So, for example, on the timeline opposite for the sixty-minute session, if the activities after the second pause point are going so well, you don’t want to limit them to thirteen minutes, you could extend this section to fill the rest of the session. Subsequently, all you need to do before the next module, session 4, is find a twenty-minute window to complete session 3.

Finally, some session plans have, what we call, Context Boxes within them.

The information contained in the Context Boxes (always with a light yellow background) whilst having direct relevance to the session in question, don’t relate to specific advice as to how to run the session itself. The content, which Richard Lamplough believes you will find useful, draws on his thirty years of experience within the sector.

What are the titles of the thirty different sessions?

Some of the titles here will mean little to you, but the rest give you a good overall picture of the My Employment Passport course and approach.

1) David’s Story. 2) Peter’s Story. 3) Paid Job Foundation Blocks. 4) Raising Aspirations. 5) Sounds Fantastic. 6) Katie’s Story. 7) A Stable Career Programme. 8) Alice and her Community. 9) Finding Out where there are Jobs. 10) Local Labour Market Information. 11) What Have We Learned So Far? 12) Recording Our Achievements. 13) An Introduction to the CV. 14) Making a Video CV. 15) Different Types of Jobs. 16) Richard’s First Paid Jobs. 17) More About Skills. 18) Skills, Qualities and Francis. 19) Making the Most out of Life’s Big Changes. 20) Chunking Things Down. 21) Building a Work Ethic. 22) Edward’s Story, part one. 23) Edward’s Story, part two. 24) The Importance of Information Technology, part one. 25) The Importance of Information Technology, part two. 26) The Best First Paid Job For Me. 27) Learning New Information and Following Instructions. 28) Moving On, part one. 29) Moving On, part two. 30) Moving On, part three.

How much does it cost?

The Gold Programme is offered at £220 a year for as many students as you want to take part. For each session you are supplied, via email, with a video link, a session plan and an Activity Sheet for your young people, usually four sides of A4. You print off the number you need depending on how many young people there are in your group. You are also supplied with one set of A3 posters, shown below, that are posted to you. These form an essential part of the course.

The Gold PLUS Programme is offered at:

£100 per young person for a group of six or lower.

£92 per young person for seven to fourteen participants.

£85 per young person for fifteen to twenty-four participants.

£75 per young person for twenty-five and above.

The only thing facilitators need to print off are session plans which are emailed to you along with the video links. Everything else is sent by post. Most resources (Explanation Cards, Job Cards etc.) are supplied for your young people in duplicate, meaning one set can stay at your organisation and one set can be taken home with them. As the first Gatsby benchmark says: A Stable Career programme should be regularly evaluated, with feedback from learners, parents, school/college staff and employers as part of the evaluation process. My Employment Passport goes one step further: it’s a programme that can be used by parents either at home, or within community support groups with those young people who might be excluded from school.

The Raising Aspirations Posters (fifteen A3 posters)

This set of posters are supplied to all organisations whether they buy the Gold Programme or the Gold Plus Prorgramme

All other printed resources only come with the Gold PLUS Programme: 3 workbooks per young person.

the printed resources that are explained over the next three pages are used in harmony with what’s in the workbooks.

The Small Cards (twelve in the set, four sets per young person).

these five Types of Job Cards,

The Small Cards consist of these six Skills Cards, and this Support Card

The idea of the Support Card is that, using the dotted line, your young people can write no, a little, some, or lots of

The Explanation Cards (sixty-five in the set, two sets per young person).

The Explanation Cards contain a broad range of topics. Most are qualities or skills, but some are neither of these things, but have particular relevance for young people moving from education to employment, for example, Challenging ourselves to try new things, or An explanation of what a career means

On the front of each card is the topic title and the relevant Skillsbuilder logos. On the back is the explanation. Whilst the language will be accessible to many young people at entry level, some will need support with reading the words.

Here are the titles of the Explanation Cards

1. Being willing 2. Being on time or punctual 3. Being reliable 4. Being able to keep going even if a task gets boring 5. Being enthusiastic 6. Being trustworthy 7. Being hard-working 8. Showing initiative or taking the initiative 9. Being conscientious 10. Being adaptable or flexible

Being committed to doing something

Being a good team player

Being personable

Being dexterous

Being good at face-to-face

Being thoughtful

Being chatty

Being able to work well unsupervised

Being responsible

Staying focused 22. Being keen on doing something 23. Prefers solo work rather than teamwork

24. Being full of vitality

25. Being proud

26. Being approachable

27. Having good attention to detail 28. Being organised or methodical 29. Being polite 30. Being quiet

31. Being kind

32. Being supportive or encouraging

33. Being determined 34. Being a good multitasker

35. Having a good memory

36. Being dependable

37. Being resourceful

38. Having an outgoing personality

39. Having employment potential

40. Being helpful

41. Being observant

42. Being steady 43. Being valued 44. Being neurodivergent

45. Having physical stamina

46. Being honest or truthful

47. Being passionate about something 48. Being confident

49. Remaining calm

50. Being optimistic

51. Being energetic

52. Being physically fit

53. Being able to work in a fast-paced environment

54. Responding positively to feedback

55. Being creative

56. Being imaginative

57. Being practical

58. Having fast reactions

59. Being unique

60. Being curious

61. Being a good listener

62. Staying positive

63. Challenging ourselves to try new things

64. An explanation of what a career means.

65. The value of having a Key Supporter

The Job Cards (sixty-five in the set, two sets per young person).

The Job Cards contain a broad range of jobs. Your young people will be familiar with many of these and have little or no knowledge of a few of them. Some jobs My Employment Passport identify as dream jobs, and some as possible first paid jobs. Many are simply best described as jobs.

On the front of each card, there’s a picture of the job, a skills bar-chart and the type of job it is. Both these correspond with the Skills Cards and the Types of Job Cards shown above.

On the back there’s a quality or skill that’s useful for the job, and two Skillsbuilder logos.

where I am working for most of the day by myself, only speaking to people from time to time, usually on the phone.

The Things in the Community Cards (fifty in the set, two sets per young person).

Community is at the heart of the My Employment Passport approach. Almost certainly, for the members of your group who move on to paid employment future, their jobs will be within their local communities. Whilst they’re at school, college or day services, the more you can encourage them to think about what organisations exist in their communities, the more they can explore what jobs might be available at these. Below are ten of the cards.