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Progression Coach Vicki Roberts explains what we do to help young people with poor Literacy skills

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Progression Coach Vicki Roberts explains what we do to help young people with poor Literacy skills

It’s International Literacy Day on Sunday 8th September. Low levels of literacy is a problem facing many young people who come to St Basils. Progression Coach Vicki Roberts explains what we can do to help:

“As an Employability coach with St Basils I’m passionate about helping our Young People reach their true potential, many young people we work with have literacy problems, but this doesn’t need to hold them back. We believe building foundations with confidence and self-awareness, decision making and teamwork skills all helps with literacy and is a must as this is a skill for life as well as employability.

Poor literacy skills can be a result of a dysfunctional home life or an undiagnosed learning difficulty. Unfortunately without functional literacy it is difficult to access further education, and navigate daily life. In many cases all that’s needed is an intervention programme and skills development.

At St Basils if a Young person we are supporting has problems reading and writing we can help, after an initial assessment to identify their needs we can then help them to register with a specialised support provider such as CRISIS. The young person will then attend weekly literacy sessions through CRISIS with a respectful, positive and empathetic tutor.

During this time I will still support as their Progression Coach and I am happy to provide guidance through face to face meetings or, in this age of technology, some of our young people prefer Whatsapp.

I can’t describe the job satisfaction I get from seeing someone, who struggled even to write their name, go on to write their CV or fill in a college application form, it is quite simply life changing work!”