Meeting with Beth Madigan in Leeds to Learn more on Supported Internships.

Amy Sandiford
Dec 1, 2025
3 min read

Updated: Dec 3, 2025

Discussing all things supported internships and the success for people with intellectual disabilities and/or autism in bridging the gap for people with disabilities from school to work.

Supported Internships in the UK work with school-aged students to be able to enter the workforce on an internship basis based on their Vocational Profiles. They are designed so that students can finish their schooling within a workplace. They have access to job coaches that support both the academic needs to finish school and also support the students with work skills.

There are 2 job coaches that support 8 - 12 students with disabilities; one is focused on academic needs for graduation while the other is focused on the skills needed in the workplace.

There is also support for individuals with disabilities in areas such as workplace feedback, communication skills, appropriate relationships, and also support for families in how they can help their young person at home.

Job coaches also work in partnership with employers to iron out any kinks and support scenarios, especially those that can be unexpected.

While a job placement is not guaranteed through the internship, there are often cases where it leads to employment within the workplace of the internship. Even without the employment directly coming from the employer from the internship, there is a significantly higher percentage of young people that find employment after completing an internship.

70% of people with intellectual disabilities that complete an internship receive paid employment, in contrast to 4%, which is the national average in the UK.

https://youtu.be/gpCZCmBsp5E

Project SEARCH

Do Supported Internships (such as Project SEARCH) Implement Customised Employment Frameworks?

Concise Response: They adopt similar methodologies, but do not fully implement the Customised Employment (CE) model as practiced in Australia. There is significant overlap, particularly in the use of vocational profiles, discovery-style assessments, and job carving within host employers.

1. Project SEARCH & Supported Internships – Their Actual Practices

Project SEARCH (along with most UK Supported Internship programs) incorporates:

Vocational Profiling
Skills & Interests Assessment
Job-Matching within the Host Employer
On-the-Job Training and Systematic Instruction
Job Carving within Departments
Fidelity Frameworks (Project SEARCH adheres to strict global fidelity indicators)

Although these practices closely resemble Customised Employment, they are not officially branded or trained under the US DoL Customised Employment model utilized in Australia.

2. Where the overlap with Customised Employment is strongest

Supported Internship programs commonly use:

CE Element	Is it used in Supported Internships?	Notes
Discovery	Partially	They conduct interviews, observations, preference assessments and “getting to know the intern,” but not the full CE Discovery process with home/community observations.
Vocational Profile	Yes	Core part of Project SEARCH; similar to our CE profile.
Job Carving	Yes	A structured part of Project SEARCH—roles are carved within departments.
Employer engagement based on strengths	Yes	Project SEARCH teams co-design roles with managers.
Negotiated job matches	Partially	Job development is mostly internal with the host employer, not across the open labour market.
Long-term career planning	Less emphasis	Focus is on transitioning to competitive employment post-internship.

3. Key difference between CE and Supported Internships

Customised Employment is:

A person-driven model
Starts with Discovery in home & community
Creates opportunities with any employer
Builds a Negotiated Job Description
Individualised at every step

Supported Internships (e.g., Project SEARCH) are:

A program-driven model
Based at a single host-employer ( M-L), Employers with various departments to allow job carving within departments. Project Search has multiple employers to support it, being beyond fitting individuals into businesses that don't match vocational profiles.
Students rotate through set departments
Still highly individualised—but structured within that workplace
Use job coaches, vocational profiling, and adjustments, but do not require CE certification