Opening doors: A customised job in Canberra

Jack’s family has helped him explore employment since he was 14. He ran a small lawnmowing business with his cousin, refereed junior soccer games on the weekends, and did some work experience in high school and an Australian School Based Apprenticeship (ASBA) during college.

When he left school, his family employed a Job Mentor to help him explore employment opportunities using the principles of Customised Employment. Jack now works part-time five days a week at UniLodge ANU and is a highly valued member of their team.

This digital story was funded by the ACT Government through the Disability Inclusion Grant Program.

Video transcript

This transcript was auto-generated and may contain errors

Opening doors: A customised job in Canberra

Opening doors: A customised job in Canberra (Jack’s story)

Jan Kruger, Jack’s mother:

I’m Jack’s mum, and I have four gorgeous young adult children, three daughters, and Jack’s my youngest.

Jack Kruger: 

Hi, my name’s Jack. I work at UniLodge. I work with lots of people and process the parcels. I deliver the parcels. I earn good money. I like to travel, pay my rent, go to movies, go out on the weekend with my mates.

Jan Kruger: 

We wanted Jack to get the same experiences as his sisters with regards to employment. When Jack was about 13, 14, I was starting to hear that the best thing to do to set your child up for employment is to give them household chores. Now, we were not a family that were very good at delegating household chores consistently, so I don’t know whether we’re really setting Jack up well for employment. So, that’s where we started the idea of Jack starting his own small lawn mowing business. So, he did the lawn mowing business with his cousin for about four years.

The next job he moved on to from lawn mowing was the soccer refereeing. So, that was sort of a natural progression, like, he’d played until he was 16. The beauty of that role was that there was always another soccer referee doing it together, so there was that natural support.

So, we employed Julia to be Jack’s job mentor. She had a beautiful rapport with Jack. She was patient, she was kind, she was clear in her instruction. And then, we knew then we could train her up to learn about how to use Customised Employment.

Julia Shumaker, Job Mentor:

I am Jack’s mentor, and I’ve been a part of Jack’s work journey for the last few years. He did work experience both at Harris Scarfe and also at the University of Canberra, and that one actually led to him doing his student-based apprenticeship. And he worked at after-school care and Government House, and now he’s at UniLodge.

Jan Kruger: 

So, the key to Customised Employment is to utilise the connections that you have to then get a warm lead. So, basically, what that means is to get an introduction to a workplace that you think is going to align really well to your family member’s interests and skill set.

A person’s interests is what leads to the job, not a job vacancy. So, we don’t want to just be placing Jack in a job and hoping for the best; it’s actually got to really align with his interests and strengths, because we want him to become a contributing, participating member of the community.

So, the UniLodge job came through a friend that happens to be in my book club, who gave us a warm introduction to, to James and Rachael at UniLodge. We had an initial meeting with UniLodge, and they were really keen to explore this idea of Customised Employment.

Rachael Cumming, UniLodge General Manager: 

So, UniLodge ANU manages student accommodation on behalf of the university. We’re an operator, and in our site here, we operate 2,000 beds for them, and it’s all self-contained student accommodation here. So, we get a lot of parcels, a lot of mail, and a lot of inquiries that come through.

Jan Kruger:

So, Julia went in without Jack to have a look around the workplace, did a tour, understood all of the tasks that exist, and then some tasks that maybe should have been getting done that weren’t getting done.

Julia Shumaker: 

I observed four locations within UniLodge over about two weeks’ time, and that’s where I spent a lot of time shadowing all the staff members there, seeing all the tasks that run all between the lodges, and each lodge did things slightly different, so just trying to pick up on those sorts of things.

Another part of my observation was that I was keeping my eye out for people who might be good to teach Jack the task and identifying who might have a good rapport with him, who have a really good, like, teaching style.

What we ended up noticing was there was a really large influx of parcels. This was around the time of COVID, so there were a lot of students doing online shopping, and they were finding that they were understaffed in that task.

Rachael Cumming: 

Our parcels were out of control. The parcels were contributing to a significant amount of work for our team.

Jack’s had a huge impact, firstly, on our parcels, because it means it’s a task that’s been taken away from one of our front desk staff members, so to have Jack assisting with that has been really helpful. So, when Jack started with us, we started off with the parcels and logging them and putting them away, and slowly over time, we’ve been able to identify through Jack’s work mentors other tasks that he’s able to do. And then, we’ve been able to train him on those tasks and expand what he’s able to do for us.

Jan Kruger:

We really needed to understand how you fade support without the workplace feeling that they were left high and dry. So, what Customised Employment helped us understand is that if we get the job development right and we draw on the natural supports in the workplace, then the fading of support doesn’t become an issue.

Rachael Cumming: 

It was really important for Julia, for Jan, and for Jack to have our staff members be the ones who trained Jack on the individual tasks that he needed to do so that he understood they would be the people he would go to if he ran into a problem while he was at work. Having Jack on our team has actually benefited us so much more than what I feel it’s probably benefited Jack. I think the team would be devastated if Jack ever left, but it’s about finding the right opportunity for the right person. And it’s not scary.

Jan Kruger:

I feel really proud of Jack. Like, to be working in a role every day of the week where he’s getting paid award wage. This has enabled him to be a world traveller, which is a real interest for him. He’s moved out of the family home, so he’s able to pay the rent. And, you know, he’s able to afford the different things that, that are important to him. I just feel so incredibly proud of him that he has found a job where he feels like he belongs and he can contribute in a really meaningful way.

Having a really clear vision of your family member getting work when they leave school is really important. Dream big, have high expectations, because it’s absolutely possible.