Cafe Assistant

Applicants sought for an experienced and very special Café Assistant to help young people with autism that want to work in the catering industry gain valuable work experience at The School House Café in the heart of West Bermondsey.

CareTrade is a forward thinking and innovative Charity. Our ambition is to transform the lives of school leavers and young adults with autism by creating innovative and inspirational work experience and apprenticeships to increase employment opportunities.

The Café Assistant will be an enthusiastic, positive individual who has previous experience of working in a customer-facing catering environment. You will be based at The School House Café, adjacent to Spa School.

Up to 3 Trainee Café Assistants with autism (aged 18+) will be working in the café at any one time to get experience in a range of café tasks including food preparation and customer service. It is essential that the Café Assistant is able to support the development of these Trainees.

We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of all adults who use our services and as such expect all staff and volunteers to share this commitment. All our posts are therefore subject to a satisfactory Enhanced DBS (Disclosure and Barring Service) checks.

Applications are sought from all suitably qualified sections of the community.

This post is up to 8 hours per week (over every weekend during term time) and fixed term for 36 weeks. It is subject to a 4 month probationary period. The salary is £9.15 per hour. The job will start in March 2016.

Essential:

- Food Hygiene and Food Handling Certificates
- Working knowledge of Health and Safety requirements
- Knowledge and understanding of Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- Ability to help others meet their maximum potential
- Ability to work independently and use own initiative
- Excellent organisational skills
- Computer literate
- Understanding of and commitment to safeguarding relating to vulnerable young people and adults
- Proven experience of working in Catering
- Ability to communicate effectively with other staff, trainees and customers
- Experience of cooking skills and knowledge of food
- Self-motivated, able to use own initiative and a strong work ethic
- To be passionate about empowering young people with autism
- Possess considerable patience, to be tactful and diplomatic
- To have a flexible approach and to be creative in responding to needs of trainees
- Able to work alone or as a member of a team
- Excellent time keeping skills and ability to work under pressure
- Loyalty and commitment
- Commitment to Equal Opportunities
- Commitment to ongoing personal training and development

CareTrade was founded by Katharine Dore OBE and Karen Edwards, parents of young people with autism and vice presidents of Ambitious about Autism. The staff team is highly experienced in supporting adults with autism into the work place.

At CareTrade we do things differently. The main focus of CareTrade’s current work is to enable young Londoners with autism to transition successfully from the classroom to employment and to equip them to lead more independent lives. The majority of all learning happens in real environments and hence building strong and supportive partnerships with employers is a key component of our work. In our first 5 years we have developed four leading employment focused projects (The Autism Project, Employment Opportunities, Access to Work and Weekend Café Project at the School House Cafe). To date we have supported 84 young people with autism.

Our ambition is to enable all young Londoners that want to work to be in work.

About The School House Cafe:
Last year we ran a weekend pilot project at the School House Café offering real work experience placements for young people with autism from Southwark, funded by Southwark Innovation Fund. This was very popular with young people and the local community. With the support of London Community Foundation, Red Nose Day, Evening Standard Dispossessed Fund we are able to re-establish this project and to open up new employment training opportunities to young people with autism from across London. Our primary aim is to help young people to develop skills and gain work experience that will help them towards and into paid employment.

The School House Café is adjacent to Spa School, Monnow Road in Bermondsey. Spa is a specialist secondary school for children and young people (aged 11-19) with Autistic Spectrum Disorders (ASD). The school runs the café during school hours and provides high quality food and coffee to the community as well as work experience for students. The School House Café is a 23 seat café serving a simple range of food mostly consisting of delicious sandwiches, salads, pastries, cakes and hot and cold drinks. Much of the food will be prepared on site, although some food will be brought in.