{"id":5530,"date":"2023-03-13T14:26:59","date_gmt":"2023-03-13T14:26:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.polha.co.uk\/?p=5530"},"modified":"2026-04-08T11:18:35","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T10:18:35","slug":"ahmeds-story-recovering-from-lost-employment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/harbour.scot\/homes\/ahmeds-story-recovering-from-lost-employment\/","title":{"rendered":"Ahmed\u2019s story: recovering from lost employment"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Ahmed\u2019s employment ended, Harbour Homes\u2019 Tenancy Support and Community Works teams stepped in to help him and his family.<\/p>\n

Ahmed had been a skilled upholsterer for nine years in Sudan and Liberia before moving to Edinburgh. As he didn\u2019t have any formal qualifications or references, he had spent the last two years working at a warehouse, which didn\u2019t renew his temporary contract.<\/p>\n

After he received Harbour Homes\u2019 new tenants service email, Ahmed replied saying he needed help. Tenancy Sustainment Officer Leo Paredes contacted Ahmed and visited his home where he saw the beautiful laminate flooring that Ahmed had fitted. Ahmed shared his story of being a skilled upholsterer, so Leo referred him to Community Works to help find work in this field.<\/p>\n

Ahmed and his one-year-old child visited Jane Whiting, Employability Office with Community Works, to discuss his skills and issues with finding employment. He was already working on improving his English with a course at Edinburgh College and given his young family, didn\u2019t have the funds or time to return to studying upholstery, which was only available outside Edinburgh.<\/p>\n

Jane contacted local upholsterers seeking help and potential employment opportunities. Victoria (Vic) from VM Furnishing<\/a>, who teaches upholstery classes alongside upholstering furniture, offered advice on apprenticeships and working for small businesses. This was particularly useful as Ahmed wasn\u2019t at a point of being able to set himself up as self-employed or start his own business.<\/p>\n

A few weeks later, Vic got back in touch with Jane. She had taken on another workshop as she had too many commissions for her current space and needed to hire someone, so thought Ahmed may be interested. After visiting the workshop and showing Vic his upholstery skills and getting on well together, Vic helped Ahmed set himself up as a self-employed upholsterer through HMRC (HM Revenue & Customs) and Business Gateway to help with her extra work in the new workshop space. Ahmed will eventually have a website so he can take on his own work and the pair now have studios next to each other with linked offices so they can easily catch up.<\/p>\n

Vic said:<\/p>\n

\u201cHaving Ahmed to work with is great, because I now have someone to bounce ideas off, help when I have too much on and he brings a different set of skills and a calming outlook. Once I’ve trained him, he will take on his own customers as well as helping me out. Lovely guy, glad to help him get started.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ahmed commented:<\/p>\n

\u201cThank you for introducing me to Vic, I\u2019m happy.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Ahmed\u2019s employment ended, Harbour Homes\u2019 Tenancy Support and Community Works teams stepped in to help him and his family. Ahmed had been a skilled upholsterer for nine years in Sudan and Liberia before moving to Edinburgh. As he didn\u2019t have any formal qualifications or references, he had spent the last two years working at a warehouse, which didn\u2019t renew his temporary contract.","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":5621,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community-works","category-homes"],"acf":[],"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"Harbour Homes","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/harbour.scot\/homes","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/harbour.scot\/homes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/harbour.scot\/homes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/harbour.scot\/homes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harbour.scot\/homes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harbour.scot\/homes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5530"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/harbour.scot\/homes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5530\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9675,"href":"https:\/\/harbour.scot\/homes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5530\/revisions\/9675"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harbour.scot\/homes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/harbour.scot\/homes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harbour.scot\/homes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harbour.scot\/homes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}