“Look at me Dad, look at me… no, no Dad look at me.”

It was difficult for ISS Australia’s apprentice chef Robert Jackson to talk. His three adoring children were climbing all over him, chatting to him, laughing with him and clamoring for his attention. Dad was home now; they had missed him and were not going to let him go.

“Sorry, I’ve been away working for two weeks and my kids are excited to see again.”

Robert Jackson, a Noongar man from the southwest corner of Australia, has just returned home from two weeks work on the Rio Tinto mine in Wickham in the Pilbara region in Western Australia. He is six months into his chef apprenticeship where he works two weeks on and one week off.

At just 16, burdened with family problems, Stephen Thorpe was living alone in Adelaide. For a while he tried to navigate the complications of running a household alongside his school studies. The pressure mounted and Stephen eventually dropped out of school, beginning what he describes as a cycle of poor choices and missed opportunities.

It was only in the middle of last year, when a friend suggested he take a look at the Australian Employment Covenant (AEC) website that he found something that sparked an interest; a traineeship with Programmed.