Pauline's story

Careers support helped Pauline take her next steps with clarity as the 200,000th customer of Working Wales.

When Pauline took voluntary redundancy from her media production role earlier this year, she found herself at a crossroads. After years in media and a budding interest in yoga teaching, she was unsure what her next step should be.

“After I left, I thought, oh well, what do I do now?” she says. “I’d heard about the ReAct+ scheme from a friend, which sounded really helpful, and I wanted to see if it was an option for me.”

Pauline made an appointment with careers adviser Gareth Richards at her local careers centre in Cardiff, where she was taken through all of her options and the support available through ReAct+.

Talking to an adviser

Pauline said: “It felt worth coming in to see Gareth, just being able to talk to somebody and work out what I wanted to do. By the end, I had a bit more of a clear idea of the sort of courses I wanted to do.

“Coming in and discussing potential next steps almost made them a reality rather than a sort of, you know, ‘oh, that would be nice if I could do that’.”

She’s now waiting to hear back about funding for further training, but the process itself has already been empowering. “There are so many directions you can take yoga in, the different skills, different people you can help. Talking it through helped me see how I could shape that into something meaningful.”

Previous support

Pauline’s redundancy wasn’t the first experience she’d had of support from Careers Wales. Over a decade ago, her daughter also received support after struggling with her GCSEs.

Pauline added: “She hadn’t really got the results she was expecting. She wasn’t in a good place mentally.

“She came out thinking she would go on to college, and that wasn’t going to be an option for her at that stage. It’s kind of a big, scary world out there. But they were very good about creating what your options are.

“It wasn’t just about going straight out and getting a job. It was about taking the right steps to what would be further down the line. The adviser was just really good.”

200,000th customer

Now, as the 200,000th customer of Working Wales, Pauline is proud to share her story. “It was just nice to talk through with somebody the fact that I’ve taken redundancy, and to look at where I was at and where I was going to go.

“It’s about giving people confidence that they are okay. Everybody has something to offer when they walk through those doors, it’s just finding out what that is and how confident they are in those.”

If you’ve been affected by redundancy, please visit redundancy support or contact us.

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