Lisa Matthews is a 36 year old Stockton mum of two who faces with, her husband who has difficulties of ill health, the increased cost of living and long term unemployment
Due to a long term condition, Lisa was unable to attend mainstream school and always felt disadvantaged. She left School early without any qualifications. As her children have progressed, her personal drive and ambition to develop her skills has grown so she made the first steps and called into Five Lamps’ building at 32 Dovecot Street in Stockton to enquire about available courses.
Lisa was referred to the Family Wise project, which is funded by the European Social Fund. She worked with Jane Simpson, Five Lamps’ Family Coach to create an action plan tailored around her strengths, aspirations and the challenges she faced.
Jane identified the training Lisa required to remove barriers and to improve her confidence and self-esteem. She referred Lisa to a Literacy and Numeracy course with Ingeus and IT programme with Five Lamps. Lisa also completed an employability portfolio which she can use to progress to voluntary work as her condition permits. This included; Food Hygiene, Health & Safety and Customer Service training which was provided by Cool Blue.
Jane also provided a CV writing service which included one to one support on cover letters, coaching on applications and interview techniques and information on voluntary placements and voluntary recruitment organisations including VIVA volunteering and doit.org.
Despite Lisa’s difficulties she attended the training each week, showing determination which resulted in her passing her training courses. With her new found confidence, Lisa is looking towards securing a voluntary work placement to further improve her skills.
Lisa said:
“Five Lamps has helped a lot, I am very grateful to be given the opportunity to develop my skills, learn new ones and to be given the support to make it all possible”
Family Wise is funded from the European Social Fund support for families with Multiple Problems contract.