What next for welfare to work programmes for homeless people?

In a letter to Yvette Cooper, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, OSW and partner organisations state what needs to be done to support homeless people into sustainable employment.

Download the letter to Yvette Cooper (147 Kb)

[05/06/09]

Train to Gain: Go Get It!

New opportunities, more flexibility, so let’s make it work together

After a major advertising campaign and substantial investment by Government and the Learning and Skills council, Train to Gain by and large has not stimulated or engaged the third sector very successfully.

Feedback from the third sector has indicated that there have been three main reasons for this: 1) The inconsistency of the brokerage service and arranging Train to Gain provision; 2) The complexity involved in getting people started on the programmes; 3) The limited nature of training opportunities due to the entry criteria for taking up the offer of funded training.

However, despite these apparent barriers many third sector organisations have used Train to Gain to develop their staff and volunteers.

From January 2009 Train to Gain has had new opportunities, more flexibility and different entry criteria added for all organisations that employ less than 250 staff. In summary these are as follows:

1) Leadership and management training. This can be for either non accredited or accredited training for organisations that have 5 or more employees. It can be any type of training that develops your leaders and managers. Organisations can choose who they want to purchase the training from. A total of £1000 is available; the first £500 is available on a grant basis the second £500 must be matched by the employer.

2) As many level 2 or 3 NVQs as your staff team need. Vocational NVQs e.g. Business administration, youth work, community development, health and social, management, IT. They must be LSC / Sector Skills Council approved qualifications. There are no restrictions on the numbers or if staff want another qualification at the same level.

3) A unit or units of a qualification in ‘business critical areas. Bite sized training in any unit or units of qualifications that can be classed as business critical. E.g. finance, team-working, communications. There is a long and growing list of LSC / skills sector council approved qualifications that are available.

Organisations can also apply for a wage subsidy to support staff backfilling and any pressures that may be caused by staff attending training.

The Go Get It! project is now raising awareness of these new opportunities for the third sector by holding a series of events, workshops and engagement activity from January through until Easter 2009.

The project is aiming to raise awareness and take up of the training under Train to Gain and develop greater understanding of the sectors needs by Brokers and Training providers.

There has never been so much training and support on offer to the sector so let’s go get it! And make Train to Gain work for you, your staff and your organisations.

Email gogetit@sllc.org.uk or call 020 8774 4040 for information and to book a place on one of the many workshops or events.

[25/02/09]

OSW gains funding for The WILLOW Project

OSW has been granted two years funding from the City Parochial Foundation to run a programme of work to influence the government’s welfare reform agenda. The project, Welfare Influencing in London: Lobbying on Worklessness (also known as The WILLOW Project), will specifically gather the ‘voice’ of smaller and specialist organisations within the London area who work with vulnerable people, with an aim to:

• Create a network of approximately 50 organisations across London who have an interest in the government’s welfare reform proposals;
• Influence the flexible New Deal contract delivery, to ensure that smaller and specialist organisations have a role in supporting the ‘hardest to help’;
• Broker a minimum of five relationships between DWP prime contractors and members of the Network. These relationships may lead to flexible New Deal contracts, or the introduction of useful client referral mechanisms;
• Create a fully ‘searchable’ online resource library, providing a tool for sharing relevant evidence, and provide access to Network members and other organisations to use for planning, bidding and influencing;
• To ‘de-mystify’ the welfare reform complexities, and particularly in relation to the benefits system;
• Create a client reference group to gather the views and experience of service users and ex-service users, to provide a vital ‘reality check’ on government policy;
• Hold regular seminars and forums for Network members, with an aim to constructing a joint, unified response to future DWP welfare reform consultation processes;
• Utilise the expertise of existing OSW partnerships, to support engagement with organisations and disadvantaged people, to influence policy and practice; for example – Homeless Link, the Employment Related Services Association, the London Voluntary Sector Training Consortium and Race on the Agenda.

If you are interested in finding out more about the WILLOW project, or becoming a member of the Network, please contact the project manager, Michael Fothergill, on 020 7089 2732 or email at michaelfothergill@osw.org.uk.

[07/11/08]

Letter to Secretary of State for Work and Pensions

OSW have coordinated a response on behalf of homelessness charities raising concerns about the recommendations in the Welfare Reform Green Paper. The response broadly supports some of the elements of the consultation, but also raises some issues that we believe are unlikely to support those individuals at most disadvantage. The response has been set out in a letter to James Purnell MP, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.

Download the letter to James Purnell (106 Kb)

[22/10/08]