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Showing posts from September, 2024

Ways of Working - a life story

I was asked to talk about my 'Ways of Working' recently. It turned out to be a brilliant opportunity to connect up so much of my life and my work.  Working from bed since 1996   I first developed My Ways of Working in the 90s as a student living with ME. To get around my very poor mental and physical stamina I studied part time, mostly from home, often in bed, in short bursts of concentration interspersed with rest. It may have been a strange existence, but it got me a First Class degree from a top University. However, I soon found out that I was utterly unemployable. Pigs would fly before the Ways of Working that made me a high flying student would be accepted by employers in the graduate jobs market in the late 90s. I had no choice but to claim benefits. Then, in the early 2000s the New Deal for Disabled People came along: a specialist voluntary support scheme for disabled people who want to work. “Yay”, I thought (in those days employment support providers were all f