Twenty years after his first job ended, Akin found his way back to work — and stayed.
Akin is 50 years old and has learning disabilities. He left school after his GCSEs back in 2003, and for a while, things looked promising: he landed a fixed-term contract as a Warehouse Operative at Boots, and worked there for a year.
But when that contract ended, something shifted. The next decade became a kind of loop — one training course leading to a spell of voluntary work, which led him to sign up for more training, which led to more volunteering. Between 2005 and 2015, Akin attended a course at Barnet College, completed Mencap’s Pathway to Work programme and Seetec’s Work Choice Programme, and volunteered as an assistant in several different charity shops, along with one short-term data entry role. He was doing everything asked of him. None of it led anywhere permanent.
Then came ten years of nothing at all. Akin’s life circled inwards, and he didn’t set foot in a workplace once.