The Kubera Principle

The Book That Will Change the World

One of the keys to emotional health and well being is the opportunity to contribute through meaningful and rewarding work. Work provides you with money, self esteem, friends, colleagues, networks and a sense of purpose and value. Working helps build personal resilience, it helps create a resilient network of support and friendship and it helps you to be financially resilient. People with learning disabilities are one of the most disadvantaged groups in terms of access to work in the UK. Many people with learning disabilities and their families are given negative messages about their capacity for work from a very early age and hence they are denied something that most of us without a learning disability value enormously – the opportunity of paid work.

Project SEARCH is a unique programme that comes from Cincinnati in the US. It takes people in their last year of education and immerses them in a work setting. It ensures that there is no break for students between school and work, so that students do not become unemployed at any point, and are transitioned into the identity of a working person. Students are based in the workplace and as well as learning English and Maths they learn employability skills and go on work placements every day to prepare them for a real paid job. It has tremendous success rates and is something that is growing in popularity in the UK and Europe.

Presentation at the Boingboing Brighton Resilience Forum by Anne O’Bryan and Carmel McKeogh in October 2015.

Project SEARCH – Tuesday 27 October 2015 – Brighton Resilience Forum