News and events

Weston College, a leading further education institution, is proud to announce its participation in The Education Training Foundation (ETF) Leadership Mental Health and Wellbeing project. This project aims to create space for leaders to reflect on and share their journey towards self-awareness and positive mental health, through a trauma-informed approach.

The project offers various resources such as webinars, podcasts, and blogs. Since January 2023, different leaders from FE have shared their journey on how they’ve changed the culture within their organisation. Through listening, learning, and leading by example, a culture shift can be embedded, starting from the top.

The podcast series "ETF Leadership Mental Health and Wellbeing: Changing your culture to embed mental health and wellbeing at the heart of further education," showcases real stories from FE leaders who have approached “reflection and resolution” within their own individual practice and wider organisational approaches, specifically addressing how to avoid burnout and be equipped to deal with stress. Polly Harrow, Assistant Principal Student Experience, Kirklees College and Chair of Executive Board, National Association for the Managers of Student Services (NAMSS) interviews a series of guests about how they’ve been on a journey of creating a culture change within their organisation.

In the second podcast episode, Polly talks to Sir Paul Phillips CBE, Principal and Chief Executive, and Dr. Georgie Ford, Strategic Lead – Healthcare and Nursing at Weston College about their experience and learning from their trauma-informed approach to mental health support. The interview focuses on their experience and learning from their trauma-informed approach to mental health support, particularly on how they support staff mental health and wellbeing and the impact this has had on changing the culture of the organisation. They discuss how they have created a supportive environment for staff, including training, regular check-ins, and open communication channels, and how this has positively impacted the overall mental health and wellbeing of staff and students.

The podcast provides valuable insights into the importance of creating a culture shift towards mental health and wellbeing in education institutions, as well as practical advice for leaders looking to implement changes within their organisations.

This program is delivered by Association of Colleges, commissioned by the Education and Training Foundation on behalf of the Department for Education.

To listen to the podcast series, search "ETF leadership mental health and wellbeing" on your podcast provider app or click here for the episode on Spotify.

Weston College is proud to be part of this project and hopes to continue promoting a positive culture towards mental health and wellbeing in the education sector.

Here at Weston College, our employer relationships and how we can benefit your business, is a huge part in the role we play. Our Business Growth Team work extremely hard on the employer engagement, so we are excited to launch a new series of blogs from members of the team, allowing you and your business to find out how to benefit from Weston College.

To kick off this series, we have caught up with Kirsty Woods, to explore her role and responsibilities within the team.

“My name is Kirsty, I am a Business Partnership Manager, and I started this job on the 3rd October 2022. My role is to engage with businesses from the Construction industry, identify how the College can support them with training and recruitment, and create opportunities for our learners. I act as the first link between Weston College and the Construction Industry!

It’s a fast-paced role which I love! There is no such thing as a typical day; I find gaining a detailed understanding of a business, their challenges, and the opportunities for us to support them really interesting. We’re lucky to work with a fantastic group of businesses and the interest from employers to work with the College continues to gather momentum.

Predominantly, I work with employers within the construction industry, but they hugely range in size and discipline. For example, I can be speaking to some of the largest organisations in the country one minute regarding their training and development needs but then, supporting a local SME to access funded or commercial training to taking on their first apprentice brick layer the next! It’s just so varied which is why I find it so rewarding. According to the latest Construction Industry Training Board report, we will need an extra 38,200 workers in the South West alone by 2027 so my role supporting Industry to link with education and their future workforce whilst raising the profile of construction as a career path is crucial.

Without a doubt, my favourite part of the job is organising industry events or securing progression opportunities which directly benefit our fantastic construction learners. As a highlight so far, I worked with colleagues to create a BACE Talk series as we have had an ambition to highlight the breadth of careers to our construction students this year, as showcasing careers through our Career Excellence Hubs is a key part of the College ethos. I also love getting to meet so many different people all with a shared passion for developing the next generation by showcasing Construction for the brilliant and varied industry it is. There are so many opportunities to develop a rewarding, sustainable career and it needs to be shouted about!

Weston College is renowned regionally for excellence and I am proud to be part of it. I fully subscribe to our ethos of delivering careers not courses. I was born in Weston-super-Mare but moved to Bristol aged 7 so it really does feel like I’ve come home!

There are so many opportunities for Construction employers to benefit from working with us. From taking on an apprentice, to commercial training for upskilling their existing staff, and employers can be part of our Construction Careers Excellence Hub to engage with future talent through offering guest lectures to our Learners or offering work experience or T Level Industry Placements.

There are still major skills shortages in construction and employers are increasingly aware of the need to build an early talent strategy. The challenge for employers is often knowing where to start.

That’s my job – to identify the shopping list, offer solutions and build long-term employer partnerships. It all begins with a conversation. Employers can email the Business Growth Team at employers@weston.ac.uk to start that conversation…

Bede is a 3rd year Engineering Degree Apprentice working at Airbus. Bede has shared his experience of being Neurodivergent:

"Imagine walking into a shop and every item is blank. Packets, jars and boxes, unbranded and unidentifiable. It would be so hard to understand what you wanted to buy. Labels are often useful to identify and choose what we want, to be selective. But this can be flipped – they can also be used to single people out, to shame or discriminate – this is why I did not want labels at the start of my diagnosis journey.

At the age of 11 I was diagnosed with dyslexia, privately because the school I was at sadly deemed me not ‘dumb’ enough for a test. My dad is severely dyslexic and sometimes reading his text messages is a real mental work out – the phonetic spellings often so far from reality they make you laugh. So as I entered secondary school with a diagnosis and it was a positive neurodiversity (ND) support experience.

I was provided with regular support and lessons on the skills I needed to succeed in a neurotypical world. I think the thing it compounded most in my head was the feeling I was being ‘fixed’. Although no one explicitly told me this was the case, the world we live in orientates around the medical model of disability – the idea you have a ‘problem’ to be fixed.

By the end of the struggle and gruel that was school, I had some of the toughest years of my life - I was struggling mentally and felt lost about what was ahead. I had a place in university that I ended up dropping out of after three weeks. People laughed at me, because let’s be honest, who gives up the chance to study at Cambridge? I was unhappy and needed help to live my life better but I was too scared of labels which put me off of wanting to find the problem.

I wanted to be ‘normal’ and I did not want to feel like a burden or a list of forever stretching ‘problems’.

It took me a couple of years to work out what to do, a pandemic nearly sank all of my plans but by the end of 2020 I was in Bristol and starting the next stage of my life. Education is not built for me, or more generally it is not built for ND people. But I knew I needed a degree to progress to where I wanted to be in engineering, hence the Airbus apprenticeship scheme was ideal. It provided a balance between the work I loved and the difficulties of education.

Fast forward a couple more years and I received an email about the Neurodiversity Community in Airbus. To set the scene, it was August 2022. I was nearly two years into my engineering apprenticeship and struggling. I had split up with my long-term partner, started therapy once a week again and grown apart from old friends. I was in a place where I didn’t understand how to proceed in life without the risk of destroying everything I had built.

As with many things in my life, I threw myself headfirst into the community. It felt like something positive, mentally and emotionally. Each meeting felt as if I was helping not just myself but those around me. The sharing of employee’s struggles and stories around their ND drove me forward to be proud of my ND instead of hiding it or trying to fix it.

I think the biggest change for me was gaining an understanding of the different ways to view disability. Society taught me to see disability by the medical model, but instead the social model lets us view people as being disabled by barriers in society, not by the ‘problems’ that society sees in them.

I wanted to be ‘normal’ and I did not want to feel like a burden or a list of forever stretching ‘problems’.

It took me a couple of years to work out what to do, a pandemic nearly sank all of my plans but by the end of 2020 I was in Bristol and starting the next stage of my life. Education is not built for me, or more generally it is not built for ND people. But I knew I needed a degree to progress to where I wanted to be in engineering, hence the Airbus apprenticeship scheme was ideal. It provided a balance between the work I loved and the difficulties of education.

Fast forward a couple more years and I received an email about the Neurodiversity Community in Airbus. To set the scene, it was August 2022. I was nearly two years into my engineering apprenticeship and struggling. I had split up with my long-term partner, started therapy once a week again and grown apart from old friends. I was in a place where I didn’t understand how to proceed in life without the risk of destroying everything I had built.

As with many things in my life, I threw myself headfirst into the community. It felt like something positive, mentally and emotionally. Each meeting felt as if I was helping not just myself but those around me. The sharing of employee’s struggles and stories around their ND drove me forward to be proud of my ND instead of hiding it or trying to fix it.

I think the biggest change for me was gaining an understanding of the different ways to view disability. Society taught me to see disability by the medical model, but instead the social model lets us view people as being disabled by barriers in society, not by the ‘problems’ that society sees in them.

I faced a wake up call. I received a behavioural warning from my Early Careers managers near the end of 2022 from a three day training course we were sent on. I remember the three days well – it felt like school again – impossible to listen and to focus. It was somewhere I wanted to escape from as quickly as possible. As a result I was regrettably disrespectful. All the evidence I could see and feel in my life was pointing me towards ADHD. There were several champions in the community who would share common ADHD struggles – I felt them . There were members in the chat that would share common ADHD behaviours – I felt them. There were champions and members who shared their diagnosis stories. I listened, learned and felt understood.

I want to say that 2023 is going to be a good year. However, to be honest, it has been tough. The days I have felt overwhelmed and burnt out are more common than the days without. I have often felt excluded and actively struggle with this time of year. The weather, the cold, the dark and the rain makes me lack energy and happiness.

All this mental pressure has meant getting an answer from my ADHD diagnosis could not come quickly enough. I felt like I could self-diagnose, but the irrational doubt in my brain wouldn’t let me. Without the ability to label myself as ADHD, it means I often fail to be kind to myself when I experience common negative ADHD symptoms. I was able to ‘own’ and forgive my difficulties from dyslexia – “ah you have lots to read … give yourself breaks … take it easy”. But I struggled to own my feelings about being hypersensitive to bright lights or loud noises. Or feeling like I could never follow the time. Or understanding why I felt burnt out after any of my successful productive days. Or feeling demoralised when I hadn’t been able to focus at all.

I can now confidently say I have ADHD. My diagnosis is finished, I have combined impulsive, inattentive and hyperactive ADHD and my doubt in my NDs is gone (well I have been recommended an Autism diagnosis - which was expected…!).

How do I move forward with this? I’m not sure - this is just the start of my journey. However now I can explore the world of ADHD research, tips, tricks and even medication without the reluctant thought of ‘does this apply to me’.

I still struggle with labels but I have recognised just like in the shop we need labels sometimes to understand how to proceed. The controversial nature of labels is something felt by many and is explored by the amazing Genius Within here: https://geniuswithin.org/labelling-neurodiversity/

This year I want to continue to focus on building the community that has supported me so much. Sharing thoughts, troubles or successes helps celebrate positives and is a powerful encouragement through struggles. The warmth from people listening and sharing in a safe space is remarkable and transformative. There are many people inside Airbus and external who I have to thank for my progress. I think it is always important to remember that you are never alone, we have an amazing community here in Airbus, and many supportive employees."

One of Bede's lecturers here at Weston College, told us:

"I was Bede’s lecturer in Dynamics Modelling and Simulation. This involved Programming and Mathematical Simulation of Engineering Problems. 

He was one of the best students and a real talent in programming.

Although undiagnosed at that time, I believe his ADHD played a significant role in his programming skills, problem solving and thinking out of the box abilities.

He never asked for support due to learning difficulties, but on several occasions, he was messaging me to share a ‘’crazy idea’’, as he used to say, usually in regards with some really challenging problem I had set to just a few of his cohort. A very bright mind indeed!"