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Employ Autism: Work experience programme for autistic students and graduates

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The team in Careers and Enterprise at Durham is here to help students to make career plans and take the next step towards getting them to where they want to be.

These steps include developing their skills, helping them gain work experience, exploring options, making effective applications, and preparing them for interviews. Obtaining work experience is important to all students, but more difficult for some and particularly autistic students, who need more targeted support.

To create a full work experience programme for autistic students to benefit from, Careers and Enterprise and Disability Support joined forces for the project ‘Employ Autism’ in 2020/2021, which was funded by an external partner.

We are proud to say the 11 students were placed across five organisations, with internships ranging from business and product development to financial analysis and wellbeing.

The funding allocated to Durham for one year, created 11 internship opportunities. The project team worked with selected partner organisations to develop suitable internships and ensured that the organisations were able to offer a realistic and suitable application and interview process.

In preparation both the project team and the host organisations received training by ‘Ambitious About Autism’, the national charity for children and young people with autism.

We are proud to say the 11 students were placed across five organisations, with internships ranging from business and product development to financial analysis and wellbeing. All internships were offered on a part-time basis and were tailored to meet the specific needs of the intern. The benefits for our interns were immense, gaining increased readiness for work and the ability to move into employment, as well as enhancing their confidence to contribute as an employee within a team.

One of the host organisations in particular, ‘Eric Knows’, has received a lot of support, and benefited from a team of autistic interns from Durham. ‘Eric Knows’ is a website set up by a County Durham mum, who discovered at the age of 39 that she is autistic. The website allows people with additional needs to find activities, places and people that will go the extra mile to accommodate any special considerations.

Ella Bains founder of ‘Eric Knows’ said: "The team has been amazing; they really understand the vision that we are trying to achieve, and they are also really creative as well as being out-of-the box thinkers. They've all seen what Eric Knows does for people and their passion fills me with a lot of confidence – something which I lacked in my younger years. They've taught me so much about neurodiversity and how to recognise strengths in everyone regardless of any disability they may have.”

Intern Ella-Louise Jain completed a Marketing and Sales internship with BEEMEE Media and said: “The internship has been amazing thank you! I've been offered a part-time job continuing the work I've been doing this summer which I've accepted and am looking forward to.”

‘Employ Autism’ was open to all our autistic students and graduates, with over 60 registering an interest at the launch of the project. Although not all students who signed up for the programme initially did secure an internship, all who expressed an interest were able to benefit from the wider support package on offer; ranging from employability workshops (such as ‘Developing Your CV’) through to one-to-one support with both Careers and Disability Support.

Given the impact and success of the project, additional funding for 2021/2022 has been made available from the Disability Premium Fund awarded to the University to enhance support for students with a range of disabilities. Continued funding is essential to provide paid opportunities for our students and graduates and empower them to self-advocate in the workplace.

 

 

 

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