2022 – 2023 has proven a busy and productive year for Leicestershire Cares in terms of education work , continuing to support students in both mainstream and SEND settings. This academic year we have supported 11,000 students and continue to utilise our strong connections to the business sector with over 400 volunteer placements in schools.
We are proud to have delivered tailored employability support to over 150 SEND students through our “We Discover” project helping young people with a range of learning and physical disabilities to move closer to the world of work, which is often further away for them than their mainstream school counterparts.
We have continued to deliver our mainstream programme of interview skills and employability workshops to secondary school pupils across years 7-11. Not only does this help schools satisfy Gatsby Benchmarks and deliver a quality employability programme; the delivery of these workshops gives young people and business volunteers meaningful and mutually beneficial encounters.
Over 3700 students have benefited from a live mock interview and over 7000 from employability workshops with over 90% of students reporting a significant increase in confidence surrounding careers.
“We appreciate your time and efforts with our students, this is an invaluable experience they will have. Shaping their future interviews and recognising they are not as daunting as they sound. Thank you for putting them at ease when they have had anxieties and also helping them showcase their strengths (which is hard for a lot of our students to do)!”
We would like to take this opportunity to thank our business volunteers for giving their valuable time to truly make a difference to students across Leicester and Leicestershire.
We hope you enjoy reading our full report which delves further into the different types of work we are carrying out in education settings across Leicester and Leicestershire.