Electronic's engineer?

CookieCrisp

Hi all

My dad is currently on I/B due to CFA (Chronic Fatigue/ME) he has suffered from this for nearly 12yrs, previous to this he was a senior electronics engineer earning £35-40k p/a+
Previous to this he had a good 20-25yrs exp in Electronics engineering.

He is very hard to motivate and although he won't admit this, I know his confidence has been badly knocked, at the beginning of his illness he had his home repossessed and so much more dumped on him in a short period.

He currently lives with my pop (also with my nan but she passed away recently)
I think he may be worrying about what will happen when pop also passes away (such a sad thought) as although the house will be his and is owned outright he will need to pay everything else on £94 per week. Do-able I know but only just in some cases. He has no social life and finds it hard approaching new people and new situations, he used to be the life and soul but since the CFS/ME diagnosis he has dropped so badly it hurts to even think about the man he used to be.

In the last few convos on the phone with him he has mentioned possibly returning back to college but unsure what to do, maybe a new trade or just "something" to keep him going
I've mentioned possibly a refresher course on electronics engineering? He reckons there is no point, that no company would want to employ a 59yr old with 30+ years exp over a 19yr old fresh out of college

Surely this won't be the case?

Does anyone know of any courses he can do that won't affect his benefits?

How would he explain the 12yrs out of work? He's also very concerned that should he explain about the CFS/ME that he will be deemed a risk and not considered fairly?

Thanks so much

Hammyman

CookieCrisp wrote: »

I've mentioned possibly a refresher course on electronics engineering? He reckons there is no point, that no company would want to employ a 59yr old with 30+ years exp over a 19yr old fresh out of college

Surely this won't be the case?

Does anyone know of any courses he can do that won't affect his benefits?

How would he explain the 12yrs out of work? He's also very concerned that should he explain about the CFS/ME that he will be deemed a risk and not considered fairly?

Thanks so much

There isn't really such a thing as a refresher course. Sadly the pace of technology means you're quickly out of date if you aren't in the job and a decade out of it is like a lifetime. That is not to say that he can't find a job however in areas like mine there is very little call for electronics engineers. Even where there is, there is little outside of design simply because stuff is so cheap nowadays it isn't financially viable to repair it.

One area I would suggest is the amusement arcade industry, in particular suppliers and manufacturers rather than amusement arcades. This is the one area where people tend to get things fixed and his level of knowledge will be just fine as there's not really been any massive advancements there and they're mostly still using the same level of technology as they were a decade ago. I used to work as a bench engineer for a company called Euromax Electronics and the job entailed building videogames and fault finding on boards to component level. The boards were multi-layer and with chip numbers scrubbed so it was quite challenging.

Owain_Moneysaver

CookieCrisp wrote: »

... although the house will be his and is owned outright he will need to pay everything else on £94 per week.

As well as IB has he considered applying for DLA (which is not means-tested or employment-related)?

He might consider doing some voluntary work for organisations such as REMAP. It might be better for him to get his confidence and social skills back before embarking on a college course, and making friends through voluntary work would also give him an informal support network.