I have been running my inclusion consultancy, Making Lemonade, since 2003. This time two years ago I was approached to take up the position of Head of Employment at Thomas Pocklington Trust. My role was to lead on the charity’s planning and programming of all internal and external activities aimed at increasing the employment prospects of blind and partially sighted people in the UK.
I left this role and returned home to Making Lemonade at the end of 2019. I had made a good start at changing how we look at the employment gap faced by blind and partially sighted people and a strategy around new ways to address it. I was then offered freelance work delivering personal development training to disabled staff within a number of large corporates and as I love this work I returned to Making Lemonade.
Who would have thought in January as I began to build up my portfolio of work again that I’d be writing this with a clear diary? We’d barely heard of the Coronavirus back then, let alone known the impact it would have on all of us. As a result, I am open for business only for services that can be delivered remotely. What this means currently is that I am continuing my coaching, as this was delivered to my clients by phone anyway, and I am facilitating a remote action learning set. Gladly, it seems my personal development training will be rescheduled to when it is safe for all of us to
get out and about again.
We are only in March and 2020 has seen life deal most of us lemons! Now feels like the time to find an adaptable lemonade recipe that can be made around current Coronavirus restrictions.
