Vanguard celebrates employment success
FOR 12 years, Vanda Storie lived in isolation.
A range of heath complications including anxiety, rheumatoid arthritis and fibro myalgia made it difficult to find and keep a job.
As the years dragged on, the 58-year-old convinced herself she would never work again. “I was in a rut,” she said. “I would stay at home not doing anything because I had all those illness,” she said.
Ms Storie signed up for a range of job seeker support agencies but found they were mostly ineffective.
That is until she joined Vanguard Laundry Services, a social enterprise business that celebrates in three-year anniversary today.
Rather than sit Ms Storie at a computer writing resumes and applying for jobs she was not qualified for, the Vanguard staff focused on the cause of her unemployment – namely her mental health.
She was given a job at the laundry washing, sorting and folding linen.
Importantly she worked alongside people again.
The job gave Ms Storie a reason to leave the house and slowly she broke down the selfimposed mental and emotional barriers she had built.
“A lot of my co-workers were going through similar issues,” Ms Storie said.
“I had been on my own for so long I didn’t know how to talk to people.”
The job support staff put Ms Storie in contact with businesses in need of her skills and helped her re-enter the workforce.
“It was the face-to-face stuff that I needed help with – to have the confidence to do an interview,” she said.
Ms Storie “graduated” from Vanguard about a year ago when she landed a job running the Top of the Range Auto Gas and Mechanical office.
She said full-time work had changed her life.
“I’m not trapped anymore,” she said. “I am out of government housing, I can afford to travel and I buy things I want to buy. I still get stressed and still get anxiety issues, but health-wise I am fantastic.”