Community Renewal Fund

Medway Diversity Forum (MDF), as part of the “Medway Together” consortium, used Community Renewal Funding (CRF) from central government (via Medway Council, CYMCA and University of Greenwich), asked Brighter Futures Social Investment (BFSI) to deliver an employer-led, employability programme – called “Creating Life Chances” (CLC) – to young people, from hard-to-reach communities and British Ethnic Minority backgrounds.

Programme Summary

• 32 young people signed up for the programmes: one for catering & hospitality industry, and the other for the Care industry.

• 11 young people started the programme and 7 completed them. Four of those seven young people were offered jobs by catering and hospitality employers. They were all still in those jobs after 6 months.

• We approached 68 employers and engaged in detail with 11 of them. Some provided insights into useful content from an employer’s perspective, in our 3-day training course. These focused mainly on soft skills in the workplace, such as: communications; customer service; problem solving; working in teams; self-confidence and using initiative.
  

• We worked closely with Job Centre Plus who provided us with most of our young people. We also had young people referrals from Medway Council Care Leavers and Forward 2 Employment.

• The training programme was very interactive and catered for different learning styles. The young people worked in small groups, did numerical exercises, fun exercises to learn industry jargon, and role-playing exercises to resolve customer complaints.

• The 3-day course was delivered from 3 different employers’ premises: Spice Fusion, restaurant, Rainham; Beefeater, Rainham and Holiday Inn, Rochester.

• 5 catering and hospitality employers also hosted seven young people for up to a week of work experience and provided them with reference letters to confirm that they had worked diligently.

• Every young person who completed the course, then had up to three job interviews each, with the five catering & hospitality employers. This resulted in three of our young people getting jobs. Subsequently, another young person (recently arrived from Ukraine) had a job interview and due to her confidence from our training, and also successfully secured employment.

• The programme culminated with a celebration event at the Holiday Inn, where each young person was presented with a Certificate from MDF, Amazon vouchers (bonus prize) and reference letters or letters of employment from the employers. Medway Council and funders were also invited and several MDF Directors also attended.

Lessons Learned

• Need to understand better the motivations of employers, to get more engagement. Most of them engaged because they wanted to help young people in the local community.
  

• Young people need a lot of vigilance to keep them motivated and focused on securing a job.
  

• We need longer to build trust and relationships with referral organisations (and employers).
  

• There is scope to offer an “after-care” service to young people who did not get job offers.
  

MDF are looking for further funding to roll-out more CLC programmes in the future.

To view the full report, please click here.