Five young people with disabilities have been offered employment with Harrison Catering Services through the work experience programmes the company offers and supports.
Harrison has been engaging with colleges throughout its business areas to offer young people its work experience programme, which has achieved Springboard’s INSPIRE Work Experience Quality Standard. It has now expanded its implementation of the programme even further through its work with Camden Society, which runs services for people with disabilities across London and Oxfordshire.
James and Dianne both completed two successful weeks of work experience at schools in the London Borough of Southwark where Harrison provides the catering. Their enthusiasm, hard work, and ability to adapt to the demanding kitchen environment led Harrison to offer both positions as catering assistants.
They were among five Camden Society clients who completed work experience with Harrison’s catering teams. They were placed in large maintained schools serving 500-800 meals per day, working on the servery and helping with food production—doing practical tasks that added real value to Harrison’s catering teams and gave the participants relevant experience.
Harrison’s Training Manager Alex Taylor said: “All the participants approached the work experience in a positive way and really responded to the coaching and mentoring that our teams provided them. They made a real impact in the schools where they worked and left a lasting impression.”
Harrison has also recruited three new catering assistants to its school catering teams in Ealing through Project SEARCH, a partnership venture which prepares young people with intellectual, developmental and physical difficulties for competitive employment.
Ealing Mencap, which represents the interests of people with learning disabilities and their carers, reached out to Senior Manager Client Services Bill Graney in early 2015, introducing him to the Project SEARCH programme being run at the Hilton London Heathrow Airport Terminal 5. There, 12 young people ages 18 to 24 were completing a 12 month internship working in front office, food and beverage, meeting and events operations, and housekeeping, learning new skills hands-on in a real life work environment.
Following discussions with Ealing Mencap and a visit to the Hilton to meet the interns, Harrison interviewed several candidates from the programme, ultimately deciding to employ Christiana, Jordan and Ryon.
Bill Graney said: “We immediately recognised what a worthy programme this is and a great source of dedicated, enthusiastic young people. The schools where they are working are not only benefitting from their hard work, but because we have consciously placed them with catering teams working in special schools, all three are serving as fantastic role models for the pupils, which the headteachers, staff and parents are really delighted with.”