Matt left school without any qualifications after struggling with his mental health but Jump into Work helped him get to a better place.
Find out why he chose Jump into Work, his hopes for the future and how he was supported to gain qualifications and skills.
“For people struggling with mental health who can’t see themselves going to college or university, Jump into Work is ideal.”
My name’s Matt, I live in a little town called Waltham Abbey in Essex. I grew up in a pretty normal way, I went to infant school, junior school and secondary school. I started developing mental health issues in secondary school, so I left in year 10 and started doing home schooling. I couldn’t take my exams because they would have been at my old school, so I couldn’t do that due to my mental health issues.
Ever since then, I’ve been progressing with my mental health and I’m in the best place I’ve ever been since I was around 12 years old. Thanks to Ixion and my tutor Pete, I’ve managed to get some qualifications done that I can put on my CV.
It was put forward to me through the job centre. I got put in touch with Shaw Trust, who I’m still working with now. I needed to get some qualifications to put on my CV because the only job that I can imagine myself doing at the moment is something remote or a hybrid role. So, my advisor told me that to start off with I would need to get some functional skills qualifications.
I went through and I did the programme. Initially I had said that it would be quite hard for me because I hadn’t done a six-to-eight-hour day ever since I was in school. I wasn’t very used to the early mornings either! However, Jump into Work was tailored to make it manageable for me.
Mondays and Tuesdays of Jump into Work were spent developing work skills and CVs and then Wednesdays were functional skills. Initially Thursdays and Fridays were going to be the work placement, but they gave me the option of doing two weeks of work placement at the end instead, which was better for me, so I did that.
I didn’t have a clue about them to be honest! I presumed that to get any qualifications I’d need to sign up for some sort of college course, but this has been really convenient.
I got maths and English functional skills level two qualifications, along with a work skills qualification. Through Ixion I also did a digital skills short course which was great as well.
It’s difficult when you have eight young adults in your class and the tutor is trying to establish their needs and work with them. People can easily just pick up the phone or watch YouTube in the background. It’s hard to get everyone to dig in. But the tutors have all managed to get everyone to engage.
It’s been a massive boost for my mental health. At the start of it, I couldn’t have imagined turning my camera on during the calls and speaking to people on there. At the beginning I wouldn’t really answer questions or just give one-word answers. Towards the end however I was happily engaging throughout and taking part in conversations.
At the moment I’m still working with Shaw Trust and the job centre. I’ve finished the education that I’d planned for, and I’m now speaking to Shaw Trust about hopefully starting a business admin course.
Ideally, I want to work in a remote job and lots of those roles require skills in Microsoft Excel, Word and PowerPoint. I’m fairly competent with them already but it would be nice to have on my CV to say that I can officially work with those programmes.
We’d have our regular classes and if anything came up individually, Pete would give the rest of the group something to work on then he’d ring me on my phone while we’re on the call. We would both mute ourselves on the group call and have little private conversation on the side about anything that’s tailored individually to me.
My tutors were always an email or text away. They were always very prompt, understanding and very nice.
Yes, I would. Especially for people struggling with mental health who can’t see themselves going to college or university because of those mental health issues, this is ideal I’d say.
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