Trainee electrician placement plea response 'insane'

Sophia is on a level 3 electrician apprenticeship course at Bournemouth and Poole College

A trainee electrician said she received an "insane" response after posting online that she had lost a crucial work placement.

Sophia is studying at Bournemouth and Poole College, but said she had been let down by a local firm.

Without completing the mandatory module, the Poole 17-year-old would have been left having to restart her college course.

Hoping to find her daughter a new placement, Sophia's mum Lucy posted an appeal on the networking site LinkedIn which garnered an "overwhelming" response.

Sophia found out the firm she had planned to do her mandatory placement with had cancelled the work experience just before Christmas.

She told BBC Radio Solent that the situation was "not good".

"It would have meant that I would have lost my place at college and I would have had to start again in September," she said.

There was "just total confusion" over the firm's "shock" decision to pull out of the placement, her mum Lucy said.

In the hopes of finding a new placement in just 12 weeks, Lucy posted an appeal to her network on LinkedIn.

Since it was posted the plea has received more than 1,000 reactions, 571 reposts and 323 comments.

The response had been "insane" Sophia said, adding: "I just couldn't have ever imagined that happening."

She said: "When we got like 8,000 views we were just like 'oh my god - it's got mental', and then we woke up to like a hundred thousand [views] and we were like 'what?!'"

Since the post, Sophia has attended two trial days at firms that went "went very well".

Lucy said the support from the post had been "overwhelming".

She added that since the post last week, Sophia had been offered a "huge amount of help", adding: "Everybody's feels passionate about this."