Aberdeen City Health & Social Care Partnership has launched a groundbreaking scheme to put people with learning disabilities at the heart of recruitment.
The Partnership has brought in the idea so that learning disability clients can play a central role in hiring the people who will support them.
Eight service users attended an induction session at the Town House – led by team manager Sue Bosbury and development officer Gordon Edgar – to learn more about the ‘meet and greet’ session where they will meet the shortlisted candidates for support worker jobs.
Sue, who started developing the idea last spring, said: “It’s about including the people we support in the recruitment process and giving the people we support a choice in who it is that supports them.”
Participants in the scheme will take part in the meet-and-greet, which will take place soon at the Len Ironside Centre in Mastrick. This will see them take on a variety of roles, including meeting the job applicants, asking them questions, serving refreshments and taking photographs of the candidates.
That event will be followed up with the formal recruitment process – and the meet-and-greet participants’ feedback will contribute to the final decision-making.
Sue said the input from learning disability clients will give the recruitment team the opportunity to see how well the candidates interact with the people they will potentially be supporting. Giving the service users the chance to play a meaningful role in the process would help pinpoint the best candidates and would contribute to our clients’ sense of self-esteem by showing them that their voice is important, she added.
She said: “I’m also hoping that this gives us the chance to get people on board who might not have a vast amount of experience but do have a caring nature.”
The Town House induction session was given excellent positive coverage by the Evening Express this week.
The Partnership supports around 140 people across the city with learning difficulties and has some 150 support workers.
