Tower Hamlets Young WorkPath: Start with strengths, then design the route
A practical taster session helped careers professionals connect neurodivergent strengths with the environments, communication and support that make employment opportunities easier to access.
“What are you good at?” sounds like a friendly question.
For a young person who has spent years hearing what they do slowly, forget, avoid or find difficult, it can also be surprisingly hard to answer. Strengths are not always the polished words on a CV. They may be hidden inside an intense interest, a different route through a problem, an ability to notice detail, a direct communication style or the persistence required to keep navigating systems that were not designed with that person in mind.
Divergent Thinking’s in-person session with Tower Hamlets Careers Young WorkPath focused on that gap between potential and the conditions needed to express it.
The session gave careers professionals a strengths-based way to think about neurodiversity, employment and apprenticeships—grounded in the everyday conversations they already have with young people.
At a glance
Organisation: Tower Hamlets Careers Young WorkPath
Delivery: 21 October 2025
Format: in-person Neuroinclusion Support taster session
Audience: professionals providing careers, employment and training support to young people
Service context: young people aged 13–19, and up to 25 for young people with special educational needs and an Education, Health and Care Plan
Focus: strengths-based conversations, employability, apprenticeships and practical neuroinclusive support
Feedback: the session was described as engaging, insightful and highly relevant to supporting successful employment and apprenticeship opportunities
Follow-through: an internal recommendation led another Tower Hamlets colleague to explore similar training for a further team
The context: careers guidance at a point of possibility
Young WorkPath provides impartial careers information, advice and guidance across schools and colleges in Tower Hamlets. The service supports young people aged 13–19 and extends to age 25 for young people with special educational needs and an Education, Health and Care Plan.
Its work sits at a series of important thresholds: choosing post-16 options, considering an apprenticeship, preparing for work, changing direction or deciding what kind of environment might help somebody thrive.
The council’s guidance on options after Year 11 makes clear that there is no single correct route. Learning can continue through different combinations of education, training and employment.
Neuroinclusive careers practice belongs in that landscape. It helps move the conversation away from “Can this young person fit the usual route?” and towards “Which route allows this young person to use their strengths—and what would make it more accessible?”
Strengths are real, but they are not magic words
Strengths-based practice can become shallow if it simply replaces one stereotype with another.
Not every autistic person is a detail specialist. Not every dyslexic person is highly creative. ADHD does not guarantee entrepreneurial brilliance. Neurodivergent people are individuals, and any strength can be helped or hindered by the task, support and environment around it.
Divergent Thinking therefore framed strengths as something to investigate with the young person, not assign to them from a label.
Useful questions include:
What kind of task makes time pass quickly for you?
When have you solved something in a way other people did not expect?
What do people reliably ask you for help with?
Do you work best by talking, seeing, trying, writing or moving between those methods?
What changes when you are interested in the subject?
Which environments make your thinking easier to access?
These questions produce better information than “Tell me your strengths” because they invite examples. The adviser can then help translate those examples into language that an employer or training provider can understand.
Translate the strength without stripping out the person
A young person may say, “I get obsessed with finding out how things work.”
That could connect to research, troubleshooting, technical curiosity, quality assurance or the willingness to develop deep knowledge. The adviser’s role is not to turn every personal interest into a corporate slogan. It is to help the young person recognise what the example says about how they think and where that way of thinking may be valuable.
The same translation can work across many examples:
“I notice when something is out of place” can become attention to detail or pattern recognition.
“I need to know why we are doing it” can reveal analytical thinking and a preference for purposeful work.
“I make lists for everything” can show a strategy for planning and quality control.
“I talk a lot when I care about the subject” can point to enthusiasm, knowledge and persuasive communication—with the right structure for turn-taking.
“I prefer doing it myself first” may show learning through practice and independent problem-solving.
This is not about disguising neurodivergence. It is about giving the young person a richer vocabulary for what they bring.
Employability is a relationship between person, task and environment
Traditional employability advice can imply that readiness lives entirely inside the candidate: be more confident, make eye contact, answer quickly, cope with ambiguity and present yourself in the expected way.
A neuroinclusive approach asks the employer and opportunity to become more legible too.
The same young person may appear hesitant in an unstructured interview and capable during a work trial. They may struggle to describe a process aloud but produce excellent work when the task is shown. They may need written instructions to begin and then work independently for long periods.
That suggests practical adjustments to the route into work:
give interview questions or themes in advance;
explain the stages and timings of the process;
use a work sample where it reflects the actual role;
describe what “good” looks like rather than relying on social inference;
allow time to process a question;
confirm important information in writing; and
distinguish a genuine role requirement from a familiar recruitment habit.
These are not shortcuts around standards. They are better ways to see whether the person can meet the standards that matter.
Supporting disclosure without making it the only door
Careers professionals may be asked, “Should I tell the employer?” There is no single answer that fits every young person or every situation.
The useful work is to help the young person understand their options, what support they might want and how to describe that support in practical terms.
A conversation can separate three things that are often bundled together:
Identity: how the young person understands and describes themselves.
Impact: what a particular task or environment makes easier or harder.
Adjustment: the change that would help them participate or perform.
Somebody might choose to name dyslexia. They might instead say, “I understand instructions best when the main steps are written down.” Both can lead to a useful conversation. Baseline inclusive practice also means that clear instructions, predictable processes and respectful communication are available without requiring every person to share private information.
Feedback that returned to the purpose
The strongest feedback connected the session directly to the work of Young WorkPath.
Janice White wrote:
“Excellent information on the Divergent Thinking programme and how to promote individual strengths and help them to be more successful with employment/apprenticeship opportunities.”
Other feedback described the speaker as engaging and encouraged colleagues across Young WorkPath to attend. Macie Wheatley, who supported the session, called it “incredibly insightful” and welcomed the positive response from participants.
That feedback matters because it does not praise the topic in the abstract. It identifies a practical use: helping staff promote strengths and support better access to employment and apprenticeships.
When useful learning travels through an organisation
Several months later, a colleague elsewhere in Tower Hamlets contacted Divergent Thinking after a recommendation from the WorkPath team. He explained that the team had heard about the recent delivery and wanted to explore similar training for its own staff.
An internal recommendation is a valuable form of evidence. It means somebody remembered the session, judged it relevant to another context and was willing to attach their professional trust to the introduction.
It also demonstrates how a taster session can create a shared language that travels. One team encounters the ideas; another recognises a connected need; the organisation has a more informed starting point for future conversations.
The public lesson is not that one workshop transforms an entire service. It is that practical, respectful training can become recommendable—and recommendation is often how good organisational learning begins to spread.
A practical strengths conversation for careers teams
Teams can use a simple sequence when supporting a neurodivergent young person:
1. Notice
Ask for real examples of interests, tasks, achievements and strategies. Listen for the conditions surrounding success.
2. Name
Help the young person find language for the skill or quality in the example. Offer possibilities, then let them decide what feels accurate.
3. Locate
Explore where that strength may be useful: a type of task, course, apprenticeship, role or working environment.
4. Design
Identify what would help the person demonstrate the strength during application, learning and work.
5. Practise
Rehearse a short example the young person can use in a CV, interview or conversation with a provider.
This sequence keeps aspiration connected to evidence and support. It avoids both deficit-only thinking and vague strengths language.
What councils and employability providers can take from this case
Neuroinclusion training is most valuable when it is tied to the decisions staff make every day.
For a careers service, that means working with real application questions, employer conversations, vocational routes and learner scenarios. It means helping advisers recognise that a difficulty may reflect a poor fit between person, process and environment—not a lack of motivation.
It also means leaving staff with questions they can use after the trainer has gone:
Have we made the route clear?
Are we measuring the skill the opportunity really needs?
Does the young person have more than one way to show what they can do?
What conditions bring their strengths into view?
Which helpful changes could become part of the standard offer?
These questions support better individual conversations and stronger relationships with employers and training providers.
Potential becomes visible when the conditions are right
The Young WorkPath session ended where good careers guidance begins: with a fuller picture of the person.
Divergent Thinking helped staff connect neurodivergent strengths to employability without turning people into stereotypes. The feedback showed that participants saw the relevance to employment and apprenticeships. The later internal referral showed that the value was memorable enough to travel.
The central idea is hopeful and practical. A young person does not need to become less divergent before they can move towards work. The route can become clearer, the conversation can become more precise and employers can become better at recognising the strengths already present.
Planning neuroinclusive careers or employability training
Divergent Thinking designs neurodiversity training and workshops for councils, careers services, employability programmes, apprenticeship teams and education providers.
Sessions can focus on strengths-based guidance, inclusive recruitment, disclosure and adjustments, employer engagement or supporting neurodivergent young people through transitions.
Contact nat@divergentthinking.uk to discuss a session shaped around the conversations your team is already having.
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