United Response is a national charity celebrating 50 years experience in  supporting adults and young people with learning disabilities, mental health needs and physical disabilities to take control of their lives. Cornwall Supported Employment (CSE) is a part of United Response.

CSE support adults and young people with learning disabilities, difficulties, Asperger's and autism (LDD) to take part in work-related activities throughout Cornwall. We have been doing this for over 15 years in Cornwall.

We offer group & one to one mentoring/job coaching, specialised accessible training, work placements/tasters and provided in-work support. We encourage people to start thinking about what getting paid work means to them, offering pre-employment support and then support after they get a job.

We work with employers to ensure the people we support can access meaningful volunteering, fantastic work placement opportunities which lead into paid jobs. For many, the support has led to life-changing experiences and opportunities.

Matching employment opportunities to the skills and interests of people we support is crucial to success. Supporting employers to understand the business case for employing someone with a disability and offering on going in-work support to them through our Job Coaches facilitates many work opportunities for people we support, and creates happy employers! We also offer specialised mentoring training/disability awareness training for businesses to help them diversify their workforce with the skills they need to do so.

How are we funded?

We do this through various sources of funding. These enable us to offer a diverse range of free support to individuals and employers depending on need.

For young people 16-24 with an educational healthcare plan (EHCP) we offer a Post 16 Programme of Study & Supported internships. As part of the programme we tailor individualised programmes of support designed to help those who want to overcome barriers to entering the world of work.  As part of the preparing for adulthood agenda the bespoke programme also provides independent living skills such as travel training, money management, healthy lifestyles, alongside training in all aspects of employability, work tasters and work experience in real situations with the aim of progressing you towards work related activity & paid work.

We support young people from across Cornwall and our current delivery venues are Truro, Tolvaddon and Bodmin. We currently have 42 young people on programme and purposely keep our cohorts small (groups of 7 max) to ensure the young people have the best opportunity to engage and progress.

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We take referrals from other providers for bespoke interventions as required.

We also work in partnership with provider networks who believe in what we do to secure funding through external agencies to ensure that we can continue to help individuals with LDD in Cornwall to find work.

Once in work we can apply to Access to Work to ensure sustainability & offer support through people’s personal budgets / direct payments.

Eligibility to access our support depends on the funding criteria, where people live and their current status, it is not guaranteed and as such, the numbers of people we can support at any time is dependent on this.