By Mary Anne Gill
It is Mykal Dimond-Grey’s birthday. A morning tea shout, birthday card and a rousing version of Happy Birthday puts a beaming grin on his face.
His work colleagues at Achievement House in Cambridge surround him as he gets the birthday card from programme supervisor Shelby McClelland.
But minutes later, it is back to the floor. This is a workplace where smoko time is just that, enough time for a drink and snack in between completing clients’ contracts.
Interim manager Karen Scott is quick to say Cambridge Disability Enterprise, which owns Achievement House manufacturing plant in Wilson Street, is running a business which just happens to be a charity.
Describing its aim as “not for loss” rather than the usual “not for profit” descriptor hints at how the organisation is reshaping itself as it closes in on its 50th anniversary.
Established in 1976 as the Cambridge Disabled Sheltered Workshop — it dropped sheltered workshop in recent times as it no longer describes who they are or what they do — Scott’s role is to grow the organisation.
And that means picking up more contracts like the ones they have with Shoof and Industrial Fittings and looking at jobs in the community for the 40 staff who all have a disability of some sort but the work they do is vital to the organisations who utilise their skills.
“They’re just doing it at their own time and their own skill ability and that’s what we’re here to support them with,” says Scott who was appointed to the board in August last year and asked to step in as interim manager soon after.
“We have our existing commercial customers, but we want to expand,” she says.
“We are a manufacturing plant for people with disabilities which enables them to work.
“Getting disabled people into employment is really exciting.”
She describes the work they do as putting parts of things together which a robot or processing plant cannot – bolts, sockets, plastic bottles, lids and parts – adapting the process to suit staff.
“So, if someone for example isn’t able to count, we have a board they put out and they fill those and then they’re packaged up.
“It’s adaptive employment within supported employment.
“I never think of it as tokenism. I think it’s giving people an opportunity at their abilities to do a job. It’s a stepping stone for individuals to get a routine in a safe environment, but this is a workplace. You don’t come here and not work.”
Some staff sign employment contracts, fill in time sheets, ask for annual leave, call in sick and most importantly, get paid.
“They are working in a workshop style environment, and I think that’s what makes it different to many other disability services,” says Scott, who lives in Cambridge with husband Roger and son Oliver.
Her career in the sector began as a 17-year-old support worker and she went on to be a project manager working with the police on youth and alcohol-related harm and in recent times chief executive at Enrich Group in Te Awamutu.
She now works as a contractor in the sector.
Within Achievement House she wants to increase the organisation’s role into more health and wellness aspects.
“That’s what we really need to be mindful of. We’re talking about people that haven’t got the same access to (other) full time employment.”
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Acknowledgement
This story was first published in Cambridge News on January 30, 2025, and is reproduced with the publisher’s permission.
He aha te mea nui o te ao? He tāngata! He tāngata! He tāngata!
What is the most important thing in the world? It is the people! It is the people! It is the people!
