Hello again and welcome back to Happy Hour. Today. We have in our studio one of your favorite co-hosts, Sarah. Hi, Sarah.

Hiya~

It's lovely to have you in the studio again.

Thank you very much for inviting me back.

And if you listen to the previous episodes we did with Sarah, we talked to Sarah about her interesting experiences of living in France for many years, actually having the dual nationalities and being completely bilingual and also bicultural and this time I thought we actually get a little bit more into her experience in France, but her professional experience. So first of all, Sarah, could you tell us about your unique work experience in general? What did you actually do in France?

When I was over there, I was teaching English as a foreign language like I've done in China. But the setting was very very different to what I experienced that university. I was working in a vocational rehabilitation center.

Vocational rehabilitation center. Vocational means career， right? Work related.

Vocational is related to practical work skills really.

And rehabilitation, isn't that for patients? So what does it mean? Vocational rehabilitation.

Well rehabilitation, vocational rehabilitation in this sense, basically means that we're trying to help people with health problems to stay out work or to return to work after a period of absence.

When you said health issues, do you mean just any patients, anyone who's ill enough to leave their jobs? Is that what you mean?

Each country has their own system which manages it. But in France, anybody who has a recognized disability, according to the French definition of disability, can access vocational rehabilitation courses. So it can be a physical health condition or it can be a mental health condition.

So disabilities. And one thing I've got to ask, so the word disabilities, in English exactly how do you use it? So in English can you say disabled people or do you have to say people with disabilities？

When it comes to political correctness? I think there are lots of rules that we're meant to follow. But I think the reason why it exists and why it should exist is because you're trying to be respectful towards another person. I think you can, generally people with disabilities seems to be a widely accepted term, but depending on the person you're talking to, they might prefer a different term and also people with disabilities and disabled people, it's not a homogenous group of people. So I think the best thing to do is ask the person who you're talking to how they like to call their situation.

I see, and did you experience any language related difficulties when it comes to how to address this particular group? Because obviously French and English, they bound to be some differences. Right?

Absolutely. With regard to translation was sometimes a little bit awkward because when French people translated the typical French term which is handicapées, it translates literally to handicapped, which is quite an old fashioned term which is not really used anymore in English. If you translate directly from English to French, it gives the impression that we think they have lost their abilities. And it sounds like they've been deactivated like a broken computer or a broken machine. Some people may take offense at that translation as well.

I think in Chinese we used to have an older term that was more focusing on like obviously disabled part that not able part. But obviously nowadays we're more calling it some form of impairment. I think that's the difference.

Right, I've also heard the term differently abled. There are lots of terms out there that people have started using.

I see. So back to your experience, was that an organization that you were working for or was it just a school or is it one part of a larger organization?

The status of the organization is a little bit complicated, but I think the easiest way to describe it is there's a network of vocational rehabilitation centers which are affiliated with the government. Each one is technically a private NGO, so non governmental organization. So they have a kind of unusual status. But we work with governmental organizations to provide training and support for people who are trying to get back into the workforce.

I see. So working with the government, but also independent from the government.

It's a bit of an unusual status.

Obviously it is a very important job that you guys were doing there. But I'm just wondering because it's such a specific area. It's also quite unique area of work. How did you first get into it? Like, what sparked your initial interest, was that the first time you did this job in France, or did you volunteer when you're back in the UK?

So this job I initially got it as part of my year abroad. So it was work placement during my degree. However, I had been interested in this issue before because people in my immediate circle of friends had suffered some very serious mental health problems. And I realized that I didn't always know how to cope with it. I sometimes felt scared and frustrated and lost and I wanted to know more about how to help when somebody is living through this kind of, sometimes a crisis or maybe a chronic mental health condition. So when I saw that there was this job opportunity, it was very different to all of the other work placements were available to me at that time. So a lot of them were in large cities, in large multinational companies which of course also fantastic job placement opportunities for young students. I was particularly attracted to this job because it was very different and I think it would be meeting some of my needs with regard to this quest to find out a little bit more about mental health.

To be honest, I think based on my experience of talking to different people, I think a lot of people they got into particular line of work because of something they have experienced earlier in life. But sorry to hear about your friends. But you went for like a work placement, but obviously you stayed on for longer. Right?

So after I graduated there a work position became available this organization and I applied for the job and I was accepted. It was a little bit difficult in the beginning because I was the youngest member of the training team. Everybody was significantly older than me.

Was significantly older.

Yes, at least I would say 10 to 15 years older than me. Most people at least.

Is that because that most people wouldn't really choose this as their first job?

Potentially. But also I didn't have any background in mental health disability practice. So perhaps my education didn't fit perfectly with the job role. And I think also because it actually turned out to be quite a high stress environments in the beginning.

I can imagine.

Initially wanted people with much more life experience as well.

Yeah what they probably were looking for because for very very young freshly like university graduate, perhaps this would be too much to handle.

I think that was one of their worries, especially being a non native as well.

Before you actually started your work placement. Were you nervous? Were you worried about because it was completely unknown territory. Like you said you did not have any academic background in like mental health and all that. Were you nervous?

Absolutely. I was nervous but I think I would have been more nervous if I'd really known what I was getting myself in for. Yeah, I think there's such great diversity amongst the trainees that we were working with. I wasn't really sure what to expect at all. All I knew was that I was going to be working with people living with disabilities and trying to get back into the workforce. So that's such a broad description. I didn't really know who I was going to be working with. I put a lot of trust into the people who were my colleagues basically at the organization to support me as I worked with these different groups.

But you're saying that rehabilitation meaning that they wanna get back into the workforce. So does that mean that none of these were disabilities that they were born with? It's mostly like accident or illness or mental illness later in their life when they are adult.

There was a large variety of people originally vocational rehabilitation was for soldiers who had come back from the war, to help them get back into civilian jobs. But that's changed over the last hundred years. So some of the people we worked with did have disabilities that been living with for a very, very long time. Others it was accidents at work. Some were degenerative diseases that had just got worse and worse over time. There was a huge variety of conditions that people were dealing with on a daily basis.

What about the age range?

It was anybody between 18 and 60. All in the same classroom.

That's difficult enough. If you're teaching people who are completely healthy, I cannot imagine how difficult it must have been for you. But tell us about your expectations. You said you were a bit nervous, but you probably would have been more nervous if you knew what you were getting into.

I try to be conscientious and caring as a teacher. I'm not sure if I always succeed, but I try to be.

I'm sure you are.

I think one of the things I found really difficult was trying to meet everybody's individual needs. And I think I tried to do more than, was appropriate at the beginning. So I think I felt I had the weight of the world on my shoulders from all the people I've been speaking to and trying to...

Caring too much. Perhaps.

I think I maybe took on a little bit too much work in the beginning and I don't think, I didn't know when to stop really and when to say I can't solve everybody's problems and I can't help everybody. I just have to do my best. And I think the first year was really hard because I didn't know where to put that boundary.

I think especially young sort of driven and then you probably we're feeling this overwhelming sense of mission that you needed to do something.

Sure.

For your students. Was there anything that I know that you said you didn't really know what to expect. But was there anything that was drastically different from what you thought it was gonna be like?

Yes, I probably say the levels initially much lower than I thought they were going to be, for various reasons. One of the reasons was that a number of the trainees that we had working with us had actually left school at quite an early age. Bearing in mind, I was working as an English teacher. They might have gone into manual jobs quite early, meaning that they maybe didn't get...

Foreign language education.

Foreign language learning or teaching. So some people did come in with particularly low levels as if there never studied English, which I thought they would have studied a little bit.

Are you saying that it's a multilevel class as well? So people with different language levels all in the same. Wow.

Some people they didn't know how to say hello and some people were practically bilingual in the same class. So that was quite challenging as well.

That sounds extremely challenging. So today we talked to Sarah about her unique working experience in France, next time we are going to get into more details about her life story. Thank you Sarah for coming to the show.

Thanks for having me.

I'll see you next time. Bye.

Bye.

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