Juliet England: Meet highly commended deaf apprentice Sam Goodbody

Electrician Sam Goodbody, 21, is urging other young people who, like him, have a hearing loss to follow his footsteps into the construction industry after being recognised in a national apprenticeship awards scheme at the House of Commons late last year.

The young Londoner saw off hundreds of other entries to be highly commended (along with two others) in his age category (18 to 24) in the Young Builder of the Year awards 2019. The scheme is run by Youthbuild UK, which works to provide training, qualifications and employment to under-represented young people in the construction industry.

Now in the final year of his apprenticeship, Sam aims to qualify as an electrician through his NVQ this summer, and is looking forward to following a career in construction. Although he wasn’t born unable to hear, he lost his hearing progressively and was profoundly deaf by the age of four. He’s thought to be one of just a handful of deaf people working on construction sites in the UK.

He says: “I am the only member of my family who is deaf, but all my family have learned to sign, so that makes it easy for me to communicate at home.

“I’m really proud of this award, and for receiving recognition for facing adversity at work. It’s always been my dream to become an electrician, ever since I was small, but I always thought an apprenticeship was out of my reach.”

Having left secondary school after Year 11, Sam completed a City & Guilds Level 3 course in Electrical Installation at a local college. He then took part in a construction training boot camp, a six-week voluntary scheme run in partnership with Greenwich Local Labour and Business.

This led to joining Lovell London, which builds new homes, thanks in no small part to the efforts of training adviser Sophia Bruce. She ensured Sam was able to start work on one of south-east London’s biggest regeneration construction sites, Trinity Walk, which incorporates hundreds of new-build homes near the new Crossrail station at Woolwich. It is due to be completed later in the year.

Bruce says: “We got everyone involved and on board from a health and safety point of view, not just our own staff but sub-contractors as well. We held a series of meetings before Sam started work so that he was prepared along with everyone else.

“We incorporated a number of special provisions, including marking his hi-viz jacket ‘deaf’, not to label him or single him out, but so everyone on site was aware. We also installed a special alarm system and partnered him up with a ‘buddy’ worker.”

Sam adds: “I am grateful to Sophia and Lovell for giving me the opportunity to become an electrician. It is not always easy to be the only deaf person to work on a big site with communication and Health and Safety on site, but they found a way to make it happen for me.”

He now hopes other deaf young people will feel encouraged to follow him into the industry and take up construction and similar apprenticeships.

Meanwhile Lovell London construction director Chris Wallace has admitted that, while the company is delighted at Sam’s success, more needs to be done across the industry as a whole to give people like him career opportunities.

Other successful deaf apprentices include 22-year-old Safyan Iqbal, who had a cochlear implant fitted when he was a boy. He was chosen from hundreds of applicants for a Creative and Digital Media apprenticeship with ITV Wales, after completing a BTEC in creative media production.

Skills Safyan has learned while with ITV Wales have included camera operation, and that’s where his ultimate ambitions lie.

He told journalists last year: “I love what I’m doing and each day you learn and do something new. It’s very different from school or college.”

Policy changes announced just over three years ago mean that deaf young people who communicate with BSL have the same opportunities to complete apprenticeships as their hearing peers. BSL qualifications are accepted as an alternative to English, and the move followed work from campaigners who believed the system previously discriminated against some deaf young people.

However, at the start of this month, some business leaders were calling for a shake-up of the apprenticeship system after official figures indicated the government could fail to meet its targets for new apprentices.

Some are calling for small businesses in particular to receive more funds to take on and train apprentices, and argue that more should be done to promote the available opportunities. Figures show new apprenticeships fell between August and October last year, down nearly 5% from 132,000 during the same period in 2018.

• National Apprenticeship Week 2020 ran until February 9, with the theme #LookBeyond