I am truly grateful for the support I received from Catapult Employment Service while working towards getting back into employment and rebuilding my confidence.

As a former client, I had the opportunity to work with Mark as my Employment Consultant. His guidance and support made a real difference. He was professional, encouraging, and helped keep me focused on my goals when I needed it most. I also appreciate him referring me to a service that supported me in gaining my full driver licence, which I successfully achieved in late October 2024. I hope now with permanent part time employment I can carry on working towards my end goal of a new car, a purple car of some kind. Yet to decide?
For now I have the option of public transport and walking to my work.

I am also really proud that I pushed myself to reach out and stay committed to my work, because it has led to something meaningful. I have improved my life by securing permanent part-time employment and transitioning from casual work in under two years. It is even more encouraging to know my boss is hoping to offer me more hours in the future.

With that support—alongside my own determination and effort—I have built stability and made real progress. It may seem like a small step to some, but for me it represents something I have worked incredibly hard to achieve.

I am proud of how far I have come and thankful for the role Catapult played in my journey. If you are thinking about reaching out for support, it really can make a difference. Thank you again, and to all the team at Catapult.

- Pamela

I can’t thank Catapult enough for everything they’ve done for me over the years. I’ve worked with them twice through some really difficult periods in my life, and both times they supported me with patience, understanding, and genuine care.

I’ve always struggled with confidence around interviews and employment, but Catapult helped me grow so much. The first time I was with them, they even gave me the opportunity to work cleaning for them, which helped build my confidence, time management, and gave me a real sense of purpose.

The second time I returned was after being made redundant, and I really struggled explaining that to employers. Catapult helped me rebuild my confidence and supported me through the whole process.

Because of their support, I’ve been able to grow into a much more confident and capable person both professionally and personally.

Years later, they still feel more like family than an employment service, and I’ll always be grateful for the support they gave me during some of the hardest times in my life.

- Andi

I have been lucky to learn of Catapult.  It has been a very positive enviroment for my daughter and I feel that she has a much better chance to succeed with this crew in support.  I fully endorse and recommend to others”.  


- Donald

Child Care
Rachel’s aspiration was to start a career in child care. She had some work volunteering for a local child-care centre, in animal care and customer-service at Orana Park and at a riding school. She also had worked as a house cleaner. Catapult developed a CV for her, composed and aided her in writing cover letters, and guided her in interview preparedness and presentation. She approached many employers and applied to most jobs sent her and she got interviews. Rachel is now launching her career in her chosen field having landed a job at SKIDS St Teresa’s Burnside, an early-primary aged child care centre. She found this job on her own, applied for it and attended the interview without requiring any further assistance from her Catapult consultant. Additionally with Catapult’s encouragement she is looking to intern with PORSE (child care programme) in the New Year. Well done Rachel!

- Rachel

IT
Shane started on a voluntary basis with Callaghan Innovation, who develop and research technologies for assisting people with disabilities, to gain experience in a work environment. He started out doing various small programming tasks for some of the research projects that they had running. They found that he fitted into their environment quite well and they managed to achieve a Mainstream funded programme for him. As a result of the longer term contract they were able to involve him in larger projects that were strategic to their research studies. Shane’s particular expertise is his flexibility with working in a range of programming environments and this skill they find very valuable as they are a small team working across a broad range of platforms. Shane has created a particularly elegant application that was tested in a major study based at Hillmorton High’s Upland Unit. This app was used to test the use of large touch tables as a teaching tool for encouraging groups of children who have autism to interact together. Callaghan Innovation feel that Shane’s input to the project has been very important and his enthusiasm to the project is part of the reason for its success.

- Shane

Community Support Worker
Rohan had a solid work history including jobs in an insurance call centre, in a liquidator service, and has worked self-employed as a painter and gardener. Going back to the early 1990’s, he held roles in insurance companies as an insurance officer and underwriter. He also did volunteer work including telephone counselling at Lifeline and involvement with Mensline. When he was asked if he had considered looking into work as a community support worker his eyes lit up and although it wasn’t something he had yet considered, he said he was interested. After more discussion with our consultant, he really embraced the idea and saw how he could use his tools from his more counselling and support type positions. He applied for a role as a Community Support Worker and was very excited when he got called up and asked to come in for an interview. A week or so later he called us to say he got the job!

- Rohan

A great community based service – supportive and engaging with friendly consultants who really know their stuff

- Greg

Always warm and friendly we love Iwa the resident chihuahua

- Angela

The work these guys do for our community is second to none!

- Alex

…Thank you for working with me these past months; you have really helped me keep up my spirits and perspective while job hunting, and while not successful, I feel more confident about approaching organisations … So thank you for your expertise and encouragement.

- Denise

Friendly, Easy to talk to, helped me with cover letters and preparing for interviews. I would highly recommend this service

- Anita

Just like say thank you for finding job at Welsey Care for me and I been there this week working couple days and it going well thank-you for ever thing

- Jackie

Your services are excellent and I’m really grateful. One of the reasons I work hard is to honour the effort you put into supporting me in my career.

- Carlton

I highly recommend anyone to come and see any of the consultants … they are welcoming and they are the people to talk to if you are looking for a job. Just come and talk to them

- Marsha

I found that the consultant immediately picked up on where I’d been and what I needed. He bought me back on track

- John

Thanks, you made me feel a whole lot better about myself; I wouldn’t have been able to do it without you, thanks again

- Nicky

I appreciated everything you guys did for me. You were easy to understand and everything you taught me came in useful.

- Mark

Shelley says it worked so well for her having both services in the same place, “rather than being sent here, there and everywhere to sort it all out, I could get it all here in the same bubble… it felt like a supportive bubble. Because it’s under one roof – you get to know the people around. It felt good coming into Catapult each time because I’d sort of got to recognise everyone working there even if it was just by seeing them around the place

- Shelley