Case Study

Like nan, like mother, like daughter

29 Nov 2024

Like many Ingeus colleagues, Ella has her own very personal drivers for wanting to help change lives. When her father died when she was 11, she benefitted from the services of a child bereavement charity, prompting a passion to support others. Directly seeing the impact she could make – both her mum and nan are counsellors – and unknowingly living with dyslexia, Ella’s destiny to fight barriers and help others was set.     

“I don’t take ‘No’ for an answer easily,” says Ella, who graduated in 2024 with a first-class honours degree in Psychology. “I think you can do anything if you set your mind to it. My dyslexia wasn’t diagnosed until the second year of university but I’ve always lived with it. I guess it’s pushed me to think of things differently, to be resilient and overcome challenges.”

Ella juggled her studies with part-time support worker roles helping young and homeless people. Following in family footsteps, she trained and volunteered as an active listener and has volunteered for five years at the bereavement service which helped her in her childhood. She’s no stranger to hard work and says she loves to learn, especially now the stakes are so high in her new Ingeus role as a finance, benefit and debt advisor for people on probation in Dorset.

“People place their trust in me to help them. Some face severe difficulties so it’s important not just to do my job but to keep ahead of changes and constantly look at ways to improve. I love seeing the progress people make and the relief from them when they do,” says Ella.

Three weeks of intensive training made Ella feel ‘so secure’ coming into her role. Disclosing her dyslexia to her manager resulted in screen colour changes, interactive videos, summaries of the more detailed training materials, and additional training on some of the inevitable form filling that her job entails. iCareer – Ingeus’ internal development platform – has also been her go-to for career-crafting assessments, as she explains:

“I’ve been so impressed with the range of tools on iCareer. The questionnaires help you understand your motivations, preferences, values, and working style. It offers tips for improvement and there’s topics on everything from communication to resilience. It’s helped me understand myself and it’s great to have it there to refer to. I find the system really easy to use, you can book onto training in advance and plan it into your working day, and there’s always a prompt of further places to find help.

“You can’t not benefit from learning. iCareer is helping me shape my new job to achieve better outcomes and I’ve only just scratched the surface. It’ll be interesting to see where it leads me next.”

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