Person X was active in the project 5 months. X attended the project group 2-3 days per week.
X is a young person with an unknown level of competence from the start, because it had not been possible to find an internship or offer to test B through. X himself therefore also had a lack of practical experience of being in a workplace. X is evident in his developmental disorder, through, among other things, atypical social interaction with surroundings. From the outset, it is considered doubtful whether X could be included in a workplace in practice.
During the internship, the mentors discovered that had a number of specific things X did that were difficult to reconcile with being in a workplace and would present challenges in a general workplace. Such as understanding how to attend meetings, using a mobile phone during working hours, greeting culture when coming and going, etc. X underwent a great development of social skills during the preparatory process, and even at the end was able to articulate the behavioral adjustments he had made and why.
X was tested on ability to ride a cargo bikes, as it was presented that B was able. It did however prove irresponsible for X to drive a cargo bike in traffic in a big city. This was important to clarify that tasks such as transport and delivery tasks were not a suitable task, as X would have experienced defeat had this not been clarified, as well as a great waste of resources for a company. The types of tasks that require a lot of social interaction, such as customer contact or have many changes or need adjustments in the situation, were also clarified as not being suitable worktask.
X learned all the routines of harvesting and cleaning to a greater extent than we thought possible. The routine tasks within harvesting and cleaning (all in-house tasks) solved the person at a very high level. The focus was on learning to use guides as a tool, to become self-reliant in problem solving. B learned to use guides. Using guides undoubtedly supported X’s learning curve, but it was also about ensuring that B could use guides as a tool and would be able to learn other work routines in the future and adapt to changes in guides. Experience from X’s use of guides meant that we made a shorter guide after B was familiar with the tasks, as it otherwise proved too difficult to motivate to use all the steps in guides because it was too extensive. With gradual introduction to Nabofarm, the transport out there and the people in the production, we managed to avoid a large stress response of the person who was able to perform the task at the same level at NF. As part of the clarification of abilities, the person has made posters and other internal communication material, supported by a peer person with pronounced responsibility for supporting in this task.
The conclusion was that the person would be able to solve the routine tasks to be solved in NF, with a lesser degree of extra support/increased attention from colleagues. It will be necessary to have a basic understanding of staff in NF, to provide the right support as well as a good handover of specific points of attention.
X very much wants a paid job and was very proud of his development. Through a good introduction process and the right delimitation of tasks, this is realistic. Most importantly, however, the preparatory course provided an extraordinarily good clarification of competencies and ability to work as well as willingness within different types of tasks, and that the efforts to help X enter the ordinary labour market have been significantly upgraded through the developed process.
*All interns have given permission to share their stories. Specific details that would make interns easily identifiable in the stories are, however, deliberately not given or removed from the text in order to protect them. These are details such as real names, age, starting date and end date of internship, specific diagnosis or specific incidents.
