Prior to attending Thornbeck College Kieran has had no prior experience of accessing a work experience placement in the local community. During his weekly Tutorials sessions he has accessed an impartial Careers, Information, Advice and Guidance workshop delivered by Career Wave and expressed interest in a range of environments linked to future employment.

To support him to make an informed decision relating to potential jobs, staff at Thornbeck have made links with a range of local employers. This half term Kieran is accessing a weekly, community based work experience placement at Tesco. He is completing a range of activities including:

• Dealing with customer queries
• Replenishing stock items
• Unpackaging items in the store warehouse
• Recycling 

Accessing work experience is supporting Kieran to identify a potential career pathway, transfer the skills he has learnt at college to a less familiar working environment, develop his functional skills, building his confidence, further develop his skills in relation to working as part of team, as well as promoting community inclusion. 

Kieran expressed the following views relating to his work experience placement:

It’s fun stocking the shelves except the toy aisle which is hard work. Tesco have very nice colleagues. As for the benefits, you get a reference for experience for future jobs, takes your mind off things and you get customer service skills. It's something I would consider working at in the future.

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