Clancy Dawson (She/Her) 

What do you do at Become? 

I am the Senior Advice & Support Officer for Employment and Vocational Learning. I help young people progress onto jobs and apprenticeships by providing 1:1 support sessions via Teams/Zoom or on the phone, and delivering free ‘skills for work’ workshops for young people. This is a new strand of support from Become, so keep your eyes peeled for updates on when each part of the service will be launching!

Can you say a bit about your past experiences and qualifications? 

I’ve had a lot of different jobs so far in my life – waitress, furniture salesperson, barmaid, carer for a person with physical disabilities – all of which have strengthened different skills within me and helped me identify what I’m good at and what I enjoy. My varied work experiences mean I feel very qualified to say to the young people I work with that a career is rarely a straight line and you never know where you might end up. I studied Fashion Design for Menswear at University and moved to London for a tailoring internship, initially. Since then, I’ve worked as a fashion lecturer in an FE college, as youth work coach in a Jobcentre and as progression coordinator for the Care Leaver Covenant, supporting care-experienced students across two FE colleges.

What do you like about working at Become? 

I like how far-reaching our organization is – I can support young people all across England, not just in my local area. It’s also brilliant that Become covers such a broad spectrum of work, including campaigning with young people to make the care system a better place, providing fantastic services and support to young people and training other professionals to support young people better. The thing that motivated me to apply for my role was seeing how central the voice of young people with lived experience is to Become: co-designing our website, interviewing our staff, co-delivering training and in campaigns like #GoneTooFar and #EndtheCareCliff via ‘Become the Movement’. Oh and everyone in the team is super friendly and passionate!

What drives you? 

I love being involved in other people’s journey towards improving their circumstances and feel extremely privileged that I get to share the highs (and lows) along the way. I get enormous satisfaction seeing a young person evolve into a more confident, assertive version of themselves through our work together, especially if it leads to exciting development opportunities! It is extremely important to me that every young person feels like someone is in their corner with them, not just their social worker or personal advisor, but members of the wider community.

What do you enjoy doing when you are not working? 

I love illustration and sewing and in my spare time I use old clothes and secondhand fabrics to make quilts, which I’ve had the opportunity to exhibit. I’m very passionate about responsible design and creativity and love darning and doing visible mends on clothes (although I end up doing this more for family and friends than I do for myself). I’m quite a sporty person and have been playing tag rugby the last couple of years, which has most of the fun of rugby with 10% of the injuries! I live in Devon now and so love getting out in nature for walks and going wild swimming – yes, even in winter (I’ve got Viking blood)!