Eileen spotted the poster in her café and knew it was meant for her, a free, 6-week course in basic I.T. skills. She’d been thinking about how to improve her I.T. skills for a while, recognising that her current lack of knowledge was holding her back socially whilst limiting her in securing a paid role. As Eileen admitted, it wasn’t just about finding a role which doesn’t require I.T. skills, it was also about the process of looking for a job and becoming lost in a system where everything from job portals, to recruitment firms to job centre plus has gone online. When your confidence is already low from being unemployed, it’s excruciatingly painful that your lack of knowledge has alienated you from the system which should help you back into work. She’d purchased a second-hand laptop and seen other courses advertised but all-to-often, the free courses were either vastly oversubscribed or crammed into 1 or 2 days, neither of which bodes well for a positive learning experience.
Eileen greatly appreciated the 6 x 3-hour sessions of our course, the gentle pace of the 6 sessions, the numbers being limited to 6 people and the trainer having an assistant on-hand in order to ensure as much one-to-one support as possible. She made rapid progress in her knowledge and use of I.T., something which improved her self-confidence and enabled her to start making her own online applications – “I really was frightened of my laptop but now I feel quite confident.”