Gerry, from our Employment and Training team, has been working with Helen for just under a year after she lost her job as a cleaner for a care home. Helen has learning difficulties and struggles with anxiety surrounding her job search, so she’s been working with us to improve her confidence and digital skills, which will also help her on her journey to finding employment. 

Last year, Helen received a flyer from our Customer Engagement team, inviting her to attend an IT Skills taster session at Eastleigh College as part of 'Get Online Week'. Helen’s sister registered Helen and her husband, Geoff, to attend the session, so that they could boost their digital skills and understanding. So that Helen could make the most of the experience and continue her job search at home, our Digital Coordinator, Jan Waterman, also arranged for her to loan a tablet from us. 

Helen enjoyed the session and with VIVID’s guidance, proceeded to complete modules on the ‘Learn My Way’ training platform from her tablet, allowing her to gain experience and knowledge with creating documents, job searching and staying safe online. Helen’s confidence in her digital skills is continuing to improve and she is now researching local jobs independently, completing additional training and she’s able to access her Universal Credit journal online. 

Our support has motivated Helen to work on removing digital barriers, giving her the opportunity to learn new digital skills and explore the Internet, using her new knowledge of the online world to help her employment journey. Helen remarked that she found the Learn My Way platform really useful and particularly enjoyed the short quizzes at the end of each unit. Helen also noted that she didn’t feel under pressure at any point and liked that if she didn’t feel comfortable reading the text on-screen, there was an audio function available instead. 

We are really pleased with the progress Helen has made and she is working well with our employment team to support her in achieving her employment goals. 

If you feel as though you would benefit from our digital training support, please contact us so that we can put you in touch with the Digital Training team.