For the past three years, GESB has partnered with Good Sammy Academy to offer work experience opportunities to West Australians with disabilities.

Good Sammy Academy provides employment and support services to more than 1,000 people living with a disability throughout WA each year.

It was through their work options program, which helps students with a disability to develop their work-related skills, that we were introduced to Ben Latham.

Ben is 20 years old and has autism – a lifelong developmental condition that affects around 353,880 Australians¹.

Good Sammy Academy was helping Ben to explore his work opportunities and gain independent living skills after completing his studies.

Ben briefly tried work experience in retail but decided his passion was in computers and administration.

After learning about the opportunity through Good Sammy Academy, we offered Ben three months’ work experience in our People and Business Services department in February 2018.

Ben excelled in his role and quickly proved himself as a valuable asset to our GESB team. Along with many other duties, he assisted with the maintenance of our internal website, provided administrative support for our seminars and kept important company records up to date.

Over a short period of time, Ben not only gained useful skills in office administration and IT, but he also built meaningful relationships with his colleagues, increased his confidence, and became more independent in everyday activities, such as catching public transport.

We were delighted to offer Ben a position as our Business Support Assistant at the end of his work experience.

Our People and Business Services Manager, Gus Dhillon, said it has been a pleasure to watch Ben grow over the past two years.

‘Not long after Ben came on board, we realised that he had a knack for attention to detail.

Ben reviewed all of our business policies and identified areas for improvement. He provides excellent support to our department and willingly takes on any task handed to him.’

Gus also acknowledged that Good Sammy Academy offers much more than work experience opportunities.

‘It has helped us to gain a better understanding of the needs of people with a disability and how we can adapt our work practices to help them do their best work.

I look forward to continuing our partnership with Good Sammy Academy and helping to build an inclusive and diverse workforce.’

Find out more

• Learn more about our Disability Access and Inclusion Policy
• Find out more about GESB

1 Autism Spectrum Australia, Autism prevalence rate up by an estimated 40% to 1 in 70 people (July 2018)