Fair Shot is a social enterprise and charity cafe that’s mission is to provide training and employment support for young adults with learning disabilities so that they can enter sustainable paid employment.

Our Cafe is located in Covent Garden and acts as our training centre where learners are taught alongside our dedicated team skills that they can then transfer into employment.

Once our graduates finish our programme we job carve roles with suitable and vetted employers to ensure sustainable and long term employment. 

Fair Shot was started because of the high unemployment rate of 95% for adults with learning disabilities. There are very few real life work experience programmes that offer both a supportive environment and rigorous employability skills training. The need to support adults with a disability into employment and the employer for a smooth transition is also just as high.

Fair Shot exists to create a more inclusive society where misconceptions and stereotypes are broken down, equitable opportunities are a priority and support is given to young adults, parents/carers and employers to help London become more inclusive.

We launched our first programme in September 2021 and our first cafe in Mayfair in December 2021. This is now our fourth cohort. We have been in our current Covent Garden location since 2023.

Each year we host a virtual open evening around January/February time of every year for anyone interested in applying to our Supported Internship Programme. After the open evening  if you would like to apply we will provide you with an application form.

Fair Shot and Mencap will work together to make sure that the programme is suitable for each candidate, if successful we will invite you in for an interview and then offer you a place. Due to the size of our cafe we only have 15 places each year, this is to make sure that each learner gets the support they need. 

To join our programme, you’ll need to be aged 16-25 and have an EHCP (this stops at age 24, so you’ll need to start before turning 25). You’ll also need to become travel independent within 6 weeks—don’t worry, Mencap offers travel training, or you can secure your own transport funding through your council. You should be able to travel to Covent Garden 3-4 days a week and to Barnet 1 day a week. Our shifts run from 8 am-1 pm or 1 pm-6 pm, so you’ll need to be comfortable with these hours.

This programme is designed for young adults who, along with their parents or carers, are aiming to move into paid employment within the next 12 months. It’s especially suited for those interested in hospitality or customer-focused roles.

The programme is extremely structured to be able to give them the space to grow, take breaks and learn at every opportunity - The learners are in the cafe ¾ days a week (either 8-1 or 1-6) their shifts are 5 hours long with 30 min break in between. Every day they are in the cafe and they are on a different station (either milk, coffee, till, food, floor). Each station has its own curriculum which we use to create bespoke development plans for each learner to make sure they get the most out of the program and reach their full potential. When they are training they are always supported by a cafe team member and/or a skills coach. They then spend one day a week in a classroom in Mencap centre in Barnet to continue their certain level of English and Maths and employability skills. 

Our programme is focused, with a direct line of sight to employment. Creating an in house employment programme where we support employers to become inclusive employers.

We have created a process that allows for our employment partners to feel like they can genuinely take this step via an extremely curated, bespoke and person centred programme. Following the programme, we work alongside our graduates to help match them with jobs that they could only ever dream of before with like-minded organisations who are keen to carve jobs out for our graduates.

Once we’ve matched our graduates up with industry partners, we keep supporting all parties involved for between 6 months to 1 year. So far the places that we have found employment for our trainees are - Daylesford, Gentlemen Baristas, The Office Group, ABFoods, Treehouse hotels, The Ivy, Bain & Co, MJMK, Lina stores.

We want to spread our impact and decrease the 95% unemployment rate for adults with learning disabilities. In order to do so our turnover rate must be extremely high. If we employed every graduate the impact would not spread beyond our 4 walls. The way that our programme is structured means that we are able to take on 15 new learners every year and get around 70 young adults with a learning disability into employment. Our employment programme means that our learners will enter paid employment with a supportive employer and we can continue doing what we do to keep making this happen. 

Unlike other registered UK charities we are lucky enough to have a sustainable stream of income via our cafe in Covent Garden and our catering and events. Nevertheless, our cafe and event’s revenue can only pay for 60% of our costs without it having an effect on our training programme and our learners professional and personal development.

The missing 40% amounts to the costs that make the delivery of our life changing training and employment programmes possible. It is this 40%, which amounts to around £350-400k a year, that needs to be fundraised every year to enable us to continue delivering our programmes and keep changing 70 lives every 5 years.