Brookside Day Centre is a Northampton day care centre which provides services for adults with learning disabilities.
Brookside do great work supporting people with learning disabilities, and my view was strengthened after my recent visit to the Day Centre. During this visit, I learned more about their work and heard about their participation in the Government’s ‘disability confident’ scheme – a scheme designed to encourage businesses to recruit and retain disabled people. This is a scheme in which I have previously been involved – which you can read about my clicking on the following link: https://www.michaelellis.co.uk/news/michael-opens-disability-confident-event-northampton - and I was very happy to help Brookside’s involvement in the scheme.
In light of this, I recently agreed to take part in Brookside’s in-house video message about the scheme in which I discussed my visit to Brookside and outlined my support for their work.
As part of the scheme, Brookside are working with the Department for Work & Pensions and also Starbucks in Northampton to give disabled people in Northampton meaningful work experience and skills. People with disabilities and health conditions contribute a great deal to a company- whilst overall employment figures are overwhelming positive, employment figures for those with disabilities is below the desired level. There is still a lot more to be done but I am encouraged by great schemes such as this to help people help themselves.