We placed Teddy, excluded from mainstream education and at real risk of falling out of education, employment, and training altogether, into a six-month internship at Bellway Barking Riverside.
The placement was split deliberately between site and office. On site, he learned skills you can’t get from a classroom: snagging, making good, and the confidence to instruct labourers on what needed doing and when, a marker of trust he hadn’t held before. In the office, he picked up spreadsheets, Word, and research skills for the first time, the kind of grounding that quietly determines whether someone can function in a workplace at all.
By the end of the six months, he was a different presence on site.
“I hope to get some kind of job in a trade, as I am a lot more confident on a site now than I was a few months ago.”
For our team, hosting him was just as rewarding as it was for him. He was engaged, polite, and eager to learn throughout, and the progress in his confidence and independence over six months was steady and visible, exactly the kind of growth that keeps a young person moving toward employment rather than away from it.