JERICHO: reflections on autism awareness and trauma-informed training

JERICHO supports people facing extreme challenges in getting a job, focusing on marginalised young people and survivors of modern slavery. They provide supported apprenticeships, work placements and volunteering opportunities across seven social enterprises in Birmingham, including The Reusers and Jericho Construction. They provide shorter-term placements and volunteer opportunities as well as apprenticeships.

About the work supported

• The funding was used to deliver four half-days of autism awareness training and one full day of trauma informed working training. This was prompted by an increase in the number of neurodivergent and autistic apprentices, and by a growing understanding that many of their apprentices, as well as almost all survivors of modern slavery, had experienced trauma which affected their wellbeing at work.
• The funding enabled 24 staff at the Jericho Foundation to receive autism awareness training and 13 of those staff to receive more in-depth training and become autism champions across the whole of Jericho’s operations.
• 12 staff also received trauma informed working training. This has enabled Jericho Foundation staff, particularly those within the social enterprises, to support their autistic employees at work and to work towards providing a more trauma informed work environment across the different sites.

Reflections from JERICHO

What did the DEI support help you to do?

Louise Gore, Director of Operations: The training gave us a deeper understanding of what autism is, some of the challenges individuals might be experiencing, and equipped us with a toolbox of things that could be put in place to make things less stressful. It helped some staff to look at things differently and to just see the world in a different way – to understand that you can’t always know what someone is going through.

The funding helped us to release the staff we really wanted to attend the training and to backfill their roles for a day so that they could attend. It’s not always easy to do that because some of the businesses operate seven days a week and people are needed on the shop floor, but the funding helped to pay for releasing staff. We also repeated sessions and had a couple of different dates to maximise attendance. This meant a higher number of people were impacted because we could be a little bit more flexible in how we approached it.

What difference did it make to you as an organisation?

Dawn Hall, People Support Manager: It became really clear that just because something has worked for one person that’s autistic, that doesn’t mean it’s going to work for another. What we now do is for anyone who is autistic is an individual assessment. It’s about having that conversation: you’ve told us you’re autistic, you know yourself and how it affects you, what do you need from us to enable you to be the best that you can be at work? It’s all very, very individually based.

There are some generic things we picked up that have been interesting. For example, a couple of people who recently started with us both talked about noise sensitivity, and we offered them earplugs that block out some of the background noise, which they accepted. But before the training it would never have entered my head to have that conversation. Sometimes it’s really small things that have a big impact on the individual.

It’s also important to take time to invest in training and reflection, to make sure we’re getting the best out of people. We get caught up in the here and now, but we need to invest in ourselves to support people to be at their best.

What were some of the challenges you faced in sustaining the work?

Louise Gore, Director of Operations: I think the challenge has been about keeping it fresh in people’s minds. That’s been easier to do with the autism champions work, because staff will talk about it regularly in wider project meetings and each of our neurodivergent participants need individualised support.

With the trauma informed work, it’s been more of a challenge to keep it prominent in everyone’s mind. It’s prompted lots of conversations and lots of ideas, but practically delivering them can be a challenge, particularly where finances are required. It will become more ingrained in our thinking, reviewing policies in a trauma-informed way, or thinking about how we could make improvements to our buildings to create a more trauma informed space.

What learning would you like to share with other organisations?

Louise Gore, Director of Operations: Bringing experts in from outside can offer a fresh perspective, but it was also helpful having providers who knew us really well and could make it relevant to staff who aren’t office-based or used to external training. We wanted something in person, because we’ve learned that our staff engage so much better with that than online. Some of the staff we really wanted to participate in the training are used to being on the shop floor, working directly with people. So we wanted - and got - something that was a little bit more interactive, that could be delivered in person and accommodated a variety of learning styles.

For funders, having the willingness to trust that organisations know what’s needed for their participants and clients is really valuable, as well as being flexible enough to understand changing conditions and amend deadlines if needed. It would also be great if some longer-term funding was offered so we could build on the work we’ve done.