DR UK and National Star transcript
- My name is Rebecca Andrews. I work in generation information systems and I’m a PMO and Portfolio Assistant.
- I’m Sophie Mills and I work in the nuclear power academy which is the training bit in EDF Energy Barnwood. I’m an Admin Assistant.
My roles are; I do iPads, I put courses onto iPads for our instructors and I do day-to-day things in our learning centre, sort out books for people and file away other people’s papers.
I got it through an internship ‘Steps Into Work’. My OT rang me and said “Oh we’ve heard about this place and I’ve rung them and they’re going to come and see you at home” and yeah basically I went from there.
- I started the internship in September last year and then was lucky enough at the end of the programme to be offered a paid employment position here.
- So yeah now I’m in paid employment. I do four days a week.
- So I currently work three days a week which works out at about 15¼ hours a week. So basically, unfortunately under the benefits I that have to claim for my disability, it limits me to the amount of hours that I can work. So I can only work under 16 hours or those benefits will be affected or potentially stopped.
- It was a whole new experience for me and I was a bit apprehensive about coming in. I was very shy when I first started.
- Whether you’re disabled or not, this was an environment that I wasn’t used to. Having a very strong performing arts background, working in an office was definitely going to be a new experience for me.
- The internship was supported and we had a tutor and a job coach who would come round and make sure that we were getting on ok in our workplace …
- They enabled us to settle in well into our job roles and be able to communicate with the people within our department …
- … that everyone was happy with what we were doing.
- … and if there were any issues or problems we knew there was somebody we could go and speak to about it.
- Yeah it was really, really good!
- I’m Matt Roberts. I work for National Star as a tutor. I’m based here at EDF Barnwood and I’m a tutor for the students who are on the internship programme.
- My name is Kathryn Prime. I work in the generation information systems department of EDF Energy in Barnwood in Gloucester. When Becky was on her internship, I was assigned as her buddy and now we are colleagues in the office like with anybody else.
- My role as a tutor here is really to provide education and pastoral support to the students on a daily basis. So sometimes it’s … kind of … geeing them up to want to carry on and motivating them. But a lot of the time it’s answering questions they might have, that staff also might have about the interns and providing that holistic support to all the people here that are involved with the programme.
- So what I did was; I assigned her some work, I ensured that she was set up ready to do this work so anything she needed in terms of access or training or help to do it. I was her point of contact for that.
- Definitely there’s the link there between the employer and the interns whilst they are here, especially during the start of the process. So I’ll help broker the different job roles that are available here, help match the interns to the most appropriate job roles, help with job carving as well. So picking out different elements of different jobs that we think “Actually, that intern could do really well at that specific part of the job” and matching them up appropriately, thinking about that.
- So what we did … when she’d been here for a couple of months and had settled in, we instigated a voluntary pairing scheme within the department.
Becky spent two weeks working with them, so she got involved in lots of different areas of the business. She also spent time with our head of department so she was able to see what happens in the business from a different perspective.
This exercise was so successful that, what it’s meant is, Becky is paired now with one of our project managers, predominantly working with him on a day-to-day basis. It’s worked really well because he’s actually now become very reliant on her and really misses her when she’s not in the office.
- Here at EDF Barnwood, once we’re getting into February/March type time, we start having those conversations with the departments about whether there’s going to be the opportunity available. Some departments might just not have the capacity to take someone on. But if they do, we usually have those conversations then and start the ball rolling in terms of how can they progress and transition into paid work here at EDF.
- The only barriers were … it was a whole new experience … so the barriers were just learning about how the office environment works.
- Mainly for me physical barriers so things like doors and access in and out of places.
So the main doors to the building here when I first came were very heavy and there was no way I could get in and out of them without somebody opening the door for me. Now thankfully they’ve been changed. They’re electric doors so I can come in and out as I please which is great.
And then just small other things like adjustments were needed to be made to my desk to make it higher so they could get underneath it. And I’ve recently been helped out with some Dragon dictation software which makes my job a whole lot easier as well.
They’ve been great at including Gino into the whole situation as well so he has a bed underneath my desk with a bowl. It stays under there all the time. They’ve also provided tuggies on the doors in and around the office where I work so that Gino can open and close the doors for me when needed.
- Gino has his own discrete little toilet area outside which is probably one of the stranger requests that the facilities team have had.
One of the big improvements that we made last year was we looked at the evacuation process. So if Becky is upstairs in the café or a meeting room and the fire alarm rings, it means that somebody who is trained in the evacuation process, when they go to meet her at the rendezvous point, are not panicked by seeing her there, by seeing Gino there. It also means that Becky has some confidence that she can be taken out of the building in safe manner.
- I’m 34 and to be able to say that I go to work like everybody else means a huge amount to me. It’s nice to be able to have a conversation with somebody when they say “Oh so what do you do?” and I can say “Well actually I go to work and this is my job title and these are the kinds of things that I do”. It helps to make you feel like a member of society.
- Oh it’s made a huge difference. Before I was just not doing anything and I was bored and I really wanted to get into something. Yeah it’s just made a huge impact on my life. It gives you a reason to get up in the morning and walk out your front door.
- National Star; they’re the people who implement the programme. They’ll decide the best educational things that we’re going to do. They obviously do the recruitment, find the most appropriate people for the programme.
- On a personal level, it’s made so many of us aware of the simple things that we take for granted on a day-to-day basis. Being able to open a door easily, being able to walk up stairs. it’s made us just see some of the challenges that people with disabilities can face.
I think from a business perspective, certainly in our department and then leading up into EDF Energy as a whole, it makes for a more rounded team. Becky has a different way of looking at a problem, a different method to finding a solution.
What’s been really positive in the last few months to see is that actually in action with her working with our visitor centre team down in the Hinkley station in Somerset. They have a visitor centre that they want to have accessible to a lot of people. It has a number of flights of stairs.
Whereas an able-bodied person could quite easily write the procedure for evacuating people out in the event of an emergency, the fact that Becky has been asked to consult with and offer some information on the types of questions to ask the public, just to get her viewpoint, it’s really pleasing to see that it’s actually being actively used in the business.
- Oh I would say definitely take up a supported internship. It’s a really good way to get you into work and the support is always there whenever you need it. So I would say definitely do it yes.
- It may be difficult at times because every new challenge is, isn’t it, but if you can stick with it, it’s definitely worth it.
- Hopefully the link can continue for as long as possible between National Star and EDF Energy because I think it’s been really successful. Hopefully rolling it out across the country and across other EDF sites I think would be a really successful and positive thing to do.