Michelle Sims

Getting back to work when you’ve been at home bringing up kids is never easy. So when Michelle Sims found out that her housing association could help bring her skills up to date, she jumped at the chance.

Her landlord, Affinity Housing Group, is one of a number of agencies supporting New Directions, a Reading council agency that runs courses in her local community centre.

Michelle took a computer course, and followed it with a workline course, learning the techniques of application forms and interviews. She also had an interest in bookkeeping, so also learnt accounts package Sage.

"Although I had worked since I was 14, I had lost all confidence," she says. "It was so much easier to go to the courses at the community centre."

Her new skills – and confidence – helped her land an administrative job with her community association which holds fun days, an after-school club for the holidays and chill-out sessions amongst its various activities.

And now she’s begun a bookkeeping course and plans to take a payroll course at Thames Valley University next year.

"It was hard at first," Michelle says, "and if it wasn’t for the courses I don’t think I would have gone back into education."