Samantha’s Journey

Samantha came to Kilmarnock, from Hornby High School, for a six-day school work experience in May 2008.

Following her successful participation in this, she then decided to leave school and did a four-week PoP Work Experience trial with us in July 2008 and was subsequently offered an Employment Agreement with us.

Samantha commenced at Kilmarnock on 18 August 2008.

Since then Samantha has worked in our various departments at Kilmarnock, learning more through both on the job experience and more formalised in-house training, on Health & Safety & Wellness, ISO quality standards, Food Safety, work expectations and ethic, and the skills needed in the enormous variety of different jobs we have.

Skillwise and Kilmarnock entered a collaboration in early 2016 with the aim of helping people with a disability into more formalised training to assist them into mainstream employment.

Samantha began this Skillwise “Skill-up” course in February 2016; a 17-week course where he attended CPIT 3 days a week and worked at Kilmarnock on the other two days.

As part of the course Samantha undertook work experience at a café and then at Turners as an Operations Assistant.

On her successful completion of the course and work experience, she was offered three paid shifts per week at Turners which she gratefully accepted.

She spent the remainder of her time during the working week at Kilmarnock, while we continued to actively seek full time employment opportunities for her.

Samantha’s confidence and motivation continued to develop through this work experience.

In October 2018, Foodstuffs approached us about interviewing potential candidates for a full time position. Kilmarnock assisted Samantha through the preparation and application process, resulting in her successfully gaining the full time position.

We will continue to support Samantha and Foodstuffs throughout this transition as per our Transition Plan.