‘The job means a lot’: the scheme helping Send school leavers find work

An award-winning school in Essex aims to help improve job prospects of pupils with special needs

Liam, 18, who has learning disabilities, had always been told by family members that he would never find work. It was upsetting to hear but, with 95% of people with learning disabilities unemployed, not an unreasonable assumption. When he secured a job planting trees for a conservation charity, he was so happy he burst into tears.

Liam got his job thanks to an unusual training and employment scheme set up by an award-winning special educational needs and disabilities (Send) school, Market Field in Elmstead, Essex. The scheme seeks to address the woeful employment prospects for the school's graduates. Autistic people and people with ADHD and learning disabilities struggle to find work throughout the UK, but especially so in deprived rural areas such as east Essex.