Raising aspirations starts with parents in employment
News article from January 22, 2018
“My volunteer did a lot to help my CV meet the standard which is really appreciated and I got great help on interview skills.” – Mum
School-Home Support (SHS) is proud to partner with international bank, Nomura. As well as providing vital funding for our frontline work with vulnerable children and families, SHS gets to utilise Nomura’s staff talent in a really tangible way.
This week, nine Nomura staff got involved in two parent employment skills workshops at primary schools in south east London. Sessions were practical and hands on: mums dropping in and children were welcomed. A series of mock interviews took place, and parents who didn’t have a CV when they started took one away at the end that they felt really proud of.
It’s always interesting to hear what volunteers think about the session; they are thrown in the deep end and matched one-to-one with a parent on the morning. They need to build rapport quickly and get down to providing practical help based on parents’ needs. As always, however, the feedback from both the volunteers and parents was hugely positive.
“It was fantastic to be able to share my experience around CVs and interviews with parents who were so keen to learn. I hope our time together leads to a successful career.” – Laura Fogden, Nomura
“Extremely rewarding and great to find out more about the parents and help them develop their confidence and skills.” – Laura Green, Nomura
“It was a really good experience and I’m glad to have helped this morning. It’s a really different environment to that of my day job. I will definitely sign up to do this again. I love the environment, really friendly and relaxed.” – Xin Yu, Nomura
We want to make it as easy as possible for parents to attend, so young children can sometimes make an appearance at these workshops. Keeping the workshops informal really helps, and it’s not unprecedented for volunteers to find themselves reading a child a story.
The parents supported by School-Home Support often have limited social networks, with advice on CVs or job applications coming from the jobcentre. Having the chance to engage with and learn from someone working in business is really valuable and definitely provides a real boost to parents’ confidence.
“I am really happy, it was so good to talk to these people and everything was really helpful. I’m absolutely going to recommend this to my friends”. – Mum of two children
“I got help rearranging my CV and also the basic things to answer in interviews. I’m looking forward to applying for jobs.” – Mum of two children
We’re looking forward to reporting back about how the parents have got on, and to running more employment skills workshops with Nomura staff going forwards!