“What attracted me to Outward is what Outward stands for and how we’re trying to enable and empower people with learning disabilities to live as independently as possible. The reason this attracted me is because I have a daughter who has learning difficulties – she’s got global developmental delay and I’ve always been a strong advocate to make her as independent as possible because I’m not going to be around forever, so I’ve always tried to push her as much as I can and get her the help she needs so she at some point is able to live independently. So when I read up on Outward and what they do, it spoke to me because on a personal level it’s always something I tried to do with my daughter.
It has been extremely rewarding for me to see that we employ people we support as co-trainers or quality checkers. It is important because they’re involved in the training we do with our colleagues, to understand the way they see things. They’re also involved in welcome days for new people that join us and they visit services to complete quality checks to make sure that the services are doing all that they need to do to enable and empower them.
At Outward I have a better work-life balance. It’s quite nice to have flexibility and easy working arrangements, especially when the pandemic hit. They’ve accommodated colleagues on a personal level with what they can do and what they can’t do. As an organisation they’ve made as many accommodations as they can to keep everything running but to support you at the same time. That’s made me feel good about working here because they support you and understand you have a life outside of work, so I think that helps as an organisation.”