A4e – Internal Investigations & My Progress upto February 23rd[long post]

I had my first appoinment with an “Employment Coach” today. For those wondering, A4e caterogise their staff as folllows:

• Personal Career Coach (Who I’ve been dealing with up until now)
• Trainers (Who provide in-house training – more on this later)
• Employment Coach (From the “Promotional book” – “…Your Employment Coach will help you to obtain both work placements and long-term employment. In short, they’ll create employment opportunities for you…”)
• In-Work Mentor (Offer support while you’re in work).

So how did I get to this stage? I guess I’d better catch up on what’s been happening the last few months while I haven’t been super-active in keeping this blog updated.

Should Ex-Offenders be sent to “regular” FND Providers, and, perhaps more importantly – should other Clients be informed?

Towards the start of last week, I started to notice I was getting visitors “referred” to the blog, from a site I’m somewhat familiar with already, due to researching A4e, called  WatchingA4e. It turns out the person running the site was nice enough to include my site on the list of “Interesting sites”, on the right of the page, and as a result, people were clicking through, and stumbling upon the site. So by co-incidence, after my second FND meeting at A4e, I popped into a local library, to check my e-mail, and by chance I accessed the site, and noticed that as well as a link to my site on the sidebar, there was also a comment about my site, and a link through (again, many, many thanks). What interested me, however, and what’s ultimately inspired this particular post, were the comments posted in reply, by a person called Jack…