Keywords
Citation
(2001), "Job scheme offers hope to hardest to help", Education + Training, Vol. 43 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/et.2001.00443aab.006
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2001, MCB UP Limited
Job scheme offers hope to hardest to help
Job scheme offers hope to hardest to help
Keywords: Unemployment, Training
A programme which offers training in regeneration skills to the long-term unemployed is achieving significant success rates in some of the country's most deprived communities, with more than 40 per cent of those taking part moving into permanent jobs. Transco Green Futures has been developed with environmental-regeneration charity Groundwork and Transco, with funding from the BG Foundation. It offers unemployed young people the chance to take part in community-regeneration projects in their own neighbourhoods as a way of boosting their confidence and gaining new skills and qualifications.
The programme has so far offered training to almost 400 people in Manchester, Leeds, Derbyshire, Barnsley, Liverpool and Nottinghamshire. Of the 239 who have already left the programme, 102 have moved straight into work. Transco Green Futures builds on the Environment Task Force option of the Government's New Deal programme by offering participants a wage for up to 12 months while they are being trained, together with extra support to improve literacy and numeracy, communication skills and teamworking. Groundwork chief executive Tony Hawkhead said: "The programme aims to give those furthest from the labour market the confidence, skills and self-esteem to start turning their lives around. By training the long-term unemployed to regenerate deprived neighbourhoods we are building stronger communities, stimulating enterprise and tackling social exclusion".