Great tackle! Our groundbreaking approach to tackling worklessness

Posted by MST on July 8, 2009 | No Comments |  Print This Post |  Email This Post

We recently began piloting “My Future”, a new approach designed to offer guidance and practical support to all service users in moving towards employment.

Each participant in the pilot is supported to devise a personal vocational plan (called “My Future”) and receives signposting to employment options, including training, volunteering and paid employment and basic benefits advice.

We’re currently carrying out the pilot across eight services and early results are encouraging. Kenneth Gibbons, the manager of Hartington House – a hostel for homeless people in Derby that is taking part in the pilot – reports that, “A positive future is beginning to emerge.” Residents at the hostel are beginning to enjoy a new range of volunteering opportunities, both in-house and in the wider community. Recently, ten residents, almost one quarter of the house, joined in horticultural work taster sessions lasting between one and three days. These were arranged by Spirita’s* social firm Red Welly at a local college where attendees worked alongside trainees from Rolls Royce in clearing land and refurbishing poly tunnels.

In Harrow, floating support services team manager Simon Cohen and his team have been impressed by the quality of employment services available in their local community. Eight out of twenty people involved in the pilot, none of whom had been previously looking for work, have signed up with local supported employment agencies Reed in Partnership and Kennedy Scott and are actively seeking paid work.

My Future is inspired by the recovery approach developed at South West London Trust and St. George’s Trust’s Springfield Hospital in south London in which employment is the main vehicle for people to regain control of their lives. In piloting My Future, we’re engaging in groundbreaking work, applying the approach in a community setting with a range of vulnerable people who have experienced social exclusion.

Contact Karen.Roberts@mst-online.org.uk to find out more about our approach.

*Spirita is one of our partners in Metropolitan Housing Parntership. Visit www.mhp-online.co.uk to find out more