Kirklees Together

Hannah Russell is an Apprentice at REAL Employment.  After having a few knock backs she came to REAL looking for support to build her confidence and get into work. Not allowing her learning disability to hold her back.

She is now an apprentice with REAL Employment providing support to people in the same situation she was in.

See below Hannah’s story

“After college, I was looking for paid work and applying for jobs all the time, I then started to look for employment agencies online to support me and found REAL Employment. I had a read about what they did, I needed to build my confidence and having a mild learning difficulty. Me and my mum rang up REAL to let them know more about me.

I then had an appointment with REAL with Debra to do my vocational profile over in the Batley office, I started coming into REAL to look for paid work for retail and childcare jobs.

With joining REAL I had support to help me sign up with the jobcentre and was on universal credits to claim benefits, I was only at REAL Employment for 4 months.

I was looking at jobs in the council, as I’ve always wanted to work with helping people at any age, I then found a few apprenticeships in the council and I then found the REAL Employment job, this one stood out to me as I was previously a customer at REAL, So I had an idea on how the service worked.

I had an appointment to come into the college and had to answer a few questions about why I wanted to work for REAL and what previous experience I had with people.

The following day I got a phone call saying I got the apprenticeship at REAL Employment.

I was very pleased and happy with this as I have always wanted to work with people, I love working with REAL helping the customers and love working with all of the friendly staff members.”