Employment and Skills Week - Leading the Learning

The impact of welfare reform to date and impending Universal Credit means the impetus for landlords to move workless households closer to the job market has never been greater.  Yes, we need the unemployed to take up work-related activities to prevent benefit sanctions (figures from the DWP show the highest number of sanctions against claimants since jobseeker's allowance was introduced in 1996).  But the breadth of the work the sector is currently undertaking is nothing new. In fact, a recent straw poll I undertook with our members on Yammer found that all of the housing associations who responded were core funding their employment programmes and had been doing so for many years.

Employment activities provided by the sector do not extend to just providing work placements but cover the whole spectrum of work-related activity, including tackling basic literacy issues and encouraging tenant involvement, to funding qualifications, providing work placements and providing practical support to tenants who might otherwise have slipped through the net.

It’s therefore really important that the sector links in with adult learning organisations, both at a local and strategic level, to make sure we are able to feed into and influence developments. 

In partnership with CIH Cymru and NIACE Cymru, 22^nd – 28^th September will be “Leading the Learning” week.  During this week we will be holding a seminar with NIACE, the national voice for life-long learning, the details of which are yet to be announced.

Further opportunities to raise the profile of what the sector is doing in this area are available via Welsh Government’s Lift programme. The programme aims to provide 5,000 training and employment opportunities for people living in households where no-one is in work.  At the moment, the programme is being delivered in nine of the Welsh Government's Communities First clusters until the end of 2017.  The sector will shortly be asked to make a commitment in terms of what it can deliver.

In the meantime, do get on board with our Leading the Learning Week. It’s an opportunity to showcase what we’re already doing and, equally, if your organisation is seeking to increase activity in this area it’s an opportunity for you to participate in some of our suggested activities, which range from tenant shadowing to holding your own work and skills showcase event. 

For more information on Leading the Learning, the Work and Skills Information Sharing Group (which meets in September) or how to get involved on Yammer, please contact clare-james@chcymru.org.uk.

Clare James
Housing Services Policy Officer 

Working with the Young Foundation's Accelerator Programme

 “Charity is injurious unless it helps the recipient to become independent of it.”

                                                                 John D Rockefeller

Is there an advice or support agency out there who doesn’t agree with this sentiment? It has long been acknowledged that an environment which fosters co-dependency is counter-productive, both for the service user and service provider, whose resources are invariably becoming ever scarcer.

This is mirrored in the relationship between service provider and funding organisation. Gone are the days when advice providers, or any third sector organisation for that matter, can expect indefinite hand-outs from funding bodies. Everyone is being asked to do more for less and with the increase in the number of social enterprises; the expectation is that most organisations will eventually be able to 'wash their own face'.  

This was the situation CHC’s money advice service, the Your Benefits are Changing (YBAC) team, found itself in as we moved far too quickly towards the end of the 3 year funding allocation we had received from the Big Lottery (Thanks BIG!). YBAC is an awareness raising campaign. We aim to raise awareness of changes impacting on the most vulnerable in our communities and offer practical, workable solutions and advice. The YBAC team has spoken to over 4,000 people at community events this year. 

Luckily for us, the Young Foundation happened to be in town and a couple of months ago we found out that, along with 8 other projects, we had been chosen to take part in the Young Foundation’s first Welsh Accelerator programme.  

Every couple of weeks, the projects meet up with experts brought in by the Young Foundation for an intensive two days. We are all at different stages of development but everyone seems to agree on one thing: we know our customers well.  

Nevertheless, the tools which have been bestowed upon us by the Young Foundation have allowed us to look at YBAC under the microscope and spot the gaps in our business plan. And access to people who make funding decisions in their daily work allowed us to ponder on some of those really difficult questions. 

We are just about to reach the half way mark in the process, at which point we can expect to hear news of which mentor we have been matched with.  This is particularly exciting for me as it is the bit I have been looking forward to the most.

But what does this mean for YBAC? It means that by January we will have a water-tight business plan with which to approach funders. It means that we will have skills and expertise at our disposal to develop our products which will make us more attractive to funders – funders who ultimately want to know that we have put measures in place to enable us to become a self-sustaining enterprise, and eventually independent of their charity.  

To date the YBAC team has:

• Advised 3,625 customers

• Helped 740 people in fuel poverty to claim £105,000 via the Warm Home Discount scheme

• Helped people manage over £1.2m of debt

• Identified over £1.3m of unclaimed welfare benefits

• Identified £1.6m of water debt, reducing annual billing for 360 people by over £100k per annum and giving 600 people the opportunity to write-off £800,000

• Identified 216 appropriate trust funds to help people find grants suitable for their need

If you would like to know more about the work Your Benefits are Changing is doing with the Young Foundation, contact clare-james@chcymru.org.uk


Clare James
Housing Services Policy Officer, CHC