Our Social Impact: Steven's Story - Restart | Cosmic Skip to main content

Our Social Impact: Steven's Story - Restart

The Restart Scheme helps people build confidence, skills, and the ability to move back into work.

Steven started on the Restart Scheme at the end of 2021. He was keen for support with job searching and finding a role in the gardening sector. He enjoys being outside, and has been in the trade for over 12 years.

Steven struggles with reading and writing, he has a phone although he prefers to communicate with people face to face. Steven has found it challenging to find employment due to not having an email address or job searching account, because of his lack of digital inclusion.

To support with his access, Steven started to attend the supported job club on Tuesday’s and Thursday’s. During the first session, we set up an email address so that he would be able to send and receive responses from job applications. At the same time we linked this account to Indeed, and used it to look for roles that Steven was interested in.

He continues to attend the supported Job Clubs, so he can access his emails and get support from myself.

During February, he applied for a role with South Hams District Council. To his delight he received a response and was invited for an interview. This did however, cause him a lot of stress as they had asked him for an interview over Microsoft Teams which was something he had never experienced.

Before his interview, he came into the office during the support Job Club. We looked at how it would feel to be on a Microsoft Teams conference call. We also discussed questions that might be included in the interview.

Steven has been applying for gardening roles since being made redundant during the pandemic.

Positive news, Steven has been invited for a trial day and is hoping to commence employment in April should he be successful.

Steven is still attending the supported Job Club and still seeking employment. He said “He had been helped in other places, and hadn’t received any replies from employers, but now the responses are coming in all the time”.

We are keeping our fingers crossed for Steven as he would make a very good employee for any company.

For more information about our Restart Scheme, click here.