William was helped into work by our Southampton Confident to Work programme. As a sufferer of depression, William had been claiming incapacity benefit for nearly a year before he joined the Southampton project.

Our Southampton team promote their two projects (Advice & Guidance to Confident to Work) to potential beneficiaries throughout Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. William, who lives in Basingstoke, found out about the opportunity through his local Jobcentre. The range of services on offer appealed to him and he decided to try the programme.

After initial sessions in which we found out more about the type of options the programme could offer him, William chose to undertake counselling sessions with a professional counsellor at the same time as receiving advice and support from his Personal Development Coach Carly. The counselling helped him to find strategies to improve his confidence and manage his depression while Carly’s coaching enabled him to gain the skills and knowledge he needed to find and secure employment.

Before joining the Confident to Work programme, William struggled with application forms and had not previously received any guidance to help him overcome this issue. With ongoing support from Carly taking him through each step of the form writing process, he developed the ability to express his suitability for a job within the relevant application form. The result was that he submitted an application form to the retailers TK Maxx that secured him an interview. Although William was nervous about the interview, he was impressive in spite of the pressure and was offered the job on the spot.