It’s with pride tinged with sadness that we’ve said our goodbyes to our fantastic development worker, Kathryn Littlewood, who many of you will know and love! Kathryn has successfully applied for a secondment opportunity with the Department for Works and Pensions which started this week. Kathryn explains more about the role:
“I am being borrowed by DWP for one year, possibly two years, to lead a team of six people to hopefully make improvements and changes within the system and to increase the knowledge amongst Job Centre Plus staff about disabilities. I’m proud to be involved in this really exciting initiative. It has cross party support so the initiative will not be affected by any changes in Government over this next year and the people that have been chosen for these roles are either people with lived experience of disability like myself or people who have an in-depth knowledge about the issues people with disabilities deal with on a daily basis. I will be covering approximately 28 job centres across South Yorkshire and the team has a range of specialisms including young person’s specialist, a neurological specialist a mental health specialist, a musculoskeletal specialist and a drug and alcohol specialist.
I have already spent a week with the DWP and know from what I have seen that there is huge support for this initiative and a real sense of excitement that we can bring about a cultural shift by supporting the link between the job centre and the community.
I will dearly miss working at Disability Sheffield for the next year or so and can’t thank Disability Sheffield enough for believing in me and affording me the opportunities that I have had here to develop my skills and career “
We would like to take this opportunity to thank Kathryn for all the energy and passion she brought to Disability Sheffield in championing equality for disabled people and challenging existing discrimination. We wish Kathryn all the best and look forward to developing new relationships with DWP and working with her in her new role. We will miss her laughter and storytelling, the office will be a much quieter place.
09 Jun 2017 12:46:03
Yes and who would not love Kathryn for the way she is.
She has been great to train with and through her experience she has been given the gift to support disabled and learning disabled on a wider scale.
Thanks Kathryn and good luck in new role.
From Guess Who The Quiet 1.x