Hello, my name is Vicky Meyer I work for IFYS which is Integrated Family Youth Service and I manage a program called Beyond Expectations. The program is all about supporting young people in the child protection system to achieve their career aspirations. I've worked for IFYS for a total of eight months so far. So only a short career with them but have worked in the community service sector for my whole career, so in housing, disabilities, youth justice, child protection. I'm not sure there are many areas I haven't worked in, yes, and this is where I am at the moment working in the child protection area.

I think I've got the best job in the world. So, I support young people to achieve their career aspirations. So, body of evidence which suggests that children in care tend to have low aspirations in terms of their career, so my job is really is to give them the opportunity to dream, to develop a career aspiration, and we support young people to become job ready and really follow that dream. I have the absolute joy of working with adolescents every day, as well as the challenge, and really trying to make sure that they're thinking about their future. We support them to develop a career pathway and then really get them ready, so we do some very practical skills, like resume writing, setting up bank accounts, tax file numbers.

My role predominantly is working with businesses and that work is about trying to engage the business sector around a sense of community and social responsibility. And encouraging them to open the doors so I do things like set up industry experiences to support young people to see what a certain industry is like. And I think you can see first-hand, on the ground the difference that you're making, you're very close to clients and seeing the outcomes. For me when I see a young person who suddenly gets the idea of work and, you know, is really motivated. When they get their first job, you know, the light bulb goes on and you see that moment of pure satisfaction, they get their first pay slip. There's nothing better in the day when you see that and, you can, you know that the work that you're putting in and support that you're offering somebody has got them to that next step. Very much about empowering young people to do that for themselves. I think that's probably the best part about my day, no day I don't think has ever been one where I thought gosh I wouldn't want to go back tomorrow, they're all good days.

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