Friday 3 July saw the official launch of the new ‘Fast Forward’ service piloted by Wheatsheaf Trust across South Hampshire.

Speeches by the Rt Hon. John Denham MP, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, and Jonathan Cheshire, Chief Executive of Wheatsheaf Trust, welcomed this exciting new initiative, which will provide careers advice, help with personal development, and ongoing support for anyone aged 19 and over through a network of drop-in centres in Southampton, Havant, and Gosport.

Other pilot schemes are running elsewhere in the country with the ultimate intention of establishing a national careers and advancement service for adults.

Much of the design of the national programme was based on study visits by officials from the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills* to Wheatsheaf Trust’s employment access centres in 2007.

In his speech John Denham praised the Trust’s long record of successful work with unemployed and disadvantaged people. He said he had pushed hard for South Hampshire to be a pilot area for the new Adult Advancement and Careers Service, a policy he had first proposed after talking to parents outside local primary schools. He was pleased that the local authorities and voluntary organisations in the area were working hard to make it work.

Jonathan Cheshire said, ‘Wheatsheaf has been demonstrating the effectiveness of free-access centres of this sort for nearly ten years. We know that the concept works, and it is gratifying to see it now being recognised by public funders. The degree of cooperation by local authorities in the PUSH are has been very impressive.’

 * Now absorbed into the Department for Business Innovation and Skills

Two of Wheatsheaf’s young clients have recently been taken on do their apprenticeships in Painting and Decorating at the Southampton branch of maintenance contract company, CLC.

A third client will be joining the company on three months’ work experience.

Lizzie Chainey, Wheatsheaf’s Work Related Leaning Coordinator, and who organised the arrangement wit h CLC said, ‘Without forward-looking employers like Brad Seall of CLC it would be very difficult for us to enable young people to progress into real employment.’

This type of partnership also enables employers to draw on a previously unexplored market for recruitment, at very little cost to themselves in a ‘try before you buy’ scenario, which works well for both the trainee and the employer.

All the clients were supported via Wheatsheaf’s   E2E programme , funded  by LSC  (now REAcT!), and were able to attend training sessions in basic construction skills  at Wheatsheaf’s in-house workshop, as well as tailored  individual learning  sessions, which included literacy and numeracy.

The aim of the relationship is to enable young people who have previously been unable to get into employment to gain work experience, and see first-hand what is expected in a working environment.

Wheatsheaf’s Chief Executive, Jonathan Cheshire commented, ‘There is no substitute for real work experience in preparing people for employment.’

Wheatsheaf is delighted at this new partnership with CLC which should see a rolling programme of young clients from Wheatsheaf able to benefit from the advantages of experiencing working life and receiving training in valuable employment skills with such an established company.

If you are an employer and would like to discuss involvement in a similar arrangement with Wheatsheaf, contact Lizzie Chainey on 023 8022 0390.

Since January 2009 the project has engaged with 177 young people in Southampton, Hampshire and Portsmouth. All are NEET (not in education, employment or training), were often extremely difficult to engage, and also often at risk of involvement in antisocial behaviour, such as offending and substance misuse.

One-to- one and group work sessions help those on the programme to learn basic life skills. Participation in creative activities and outdoor pursuits help build social skills, increase self- esteem and develop confidence.

Each month we send out a newsletter containing education, training and employment opportunities to all young people engaged on the Youth Inclusion Programmes with Motiv8 and Youth Options, helping the participants to progress and move on.  A number of career-focused events including construction fairs and vocational one-day taster sessions have been organized to give the young people an insight into what the job market and educational facilities can offer. 

At Wheatsheaf Trust we believe that in order for young people to reach their full potential their family will often also need support.  Outreach workers have been working with families and significant others whose lives have an impact on the young person. Individual one-to-one support for these family members includes counselling, and we also organize fun and leisure activities for the family, taster sessions and workshops to gain new skills, and provide job information and advice

In providing this support the aim is to: significantly reduce youth disengagement; tackle the long-term causes of youth disengagement through supporting parents on to our Entry to Employment programme; reduce the numbers of workless households; and raise the aspirations of the young people, their families and the local community.

The project is innovative and pioneering in its approach and we want to ensure its success by making a real difference to the lives of young people and their families now and in the long term, and to create a positive culture through motivating and empowering people to make their own positive life choices

In the coming months we are organizing many fun and exciting activities across Southampton, Hampshire and Portsmouth for young people on YIPS and their families/significant others including ladies’ pamper evenings [the photo shows family and friends at the most recently organised evening],  family fun days, Music DJ taster sessions, and interest-led workshops such as cookery, construction and  mechanics.

Keep a watch on the website for more information!

Much talk of risk these days – risk in the financial sector, risk in the wider economy, environmental risk, terrorist risk; ‘moral hazard’; ‘youth at risk’. Every organisation it seems must have a ‘risk management strategy’. We’re told that fears about health and safety and litigation have made organisations ‘risk averse’

The only place where risk was spoken of more positively was in the world of high finance, where risk-takers were regarded as superheroes. However, even these Masters of the Universe haven’t been getting a very good press recently.

We seem to have very confused feelings about risk and young people. We constrain their activities (‘no ball games’; ‘no skateboarding’; ‘deep water – no swimming’; stranger danger) and then are shocked when they take up other risky behaviours such as drug-taking, gang membership, or joyriding.

There is a respectable body of opinion that believes that the drive to take risks is hard-wired into the human brain. My theory is this,: that amongst our distant ancestors some were open to taking risks and others were not. Of the ones who took risks, some took the wrong risks and ended up as tiger food, while others took the right risks (or were lucky), managed to kill their prey, ate, survived, and bred. The ones who took no risks at all didn’t get the antelope burgers and starved. Therefore we are descended from the smarter risk-takers and all, to a greater or lesser extent, have an inbuilt drive towards risky activity.

Modern culture, with insurance against everything, health and safety procedures, street surveillance, and the assumption that there is an individual responsible for anything that goes wrong, leads us to believe that life can be virtually risk-free. While we may be less likely to die of smallpox or get eaten by a sabre-toothed tiger, we face other newer risks such as climate catastrophe or mental illness. Life is not risk-free.

What does this tell us about working with ‘at risk’ young people? The best youth workers create situations where young people can take decisions that affect their lives, including the possibility of risk, in an environment where they can experience and understand the consequences of their actions without coming to serious harm. Adventurous outdoor activities provide excellent examples of situations where participants can do things that appear to them to be dangerous, require courage, responsibility, and trust in others ( all with the potential to go wrong), but are managed –  discreetly –  by leaders who can ensure that no one dies.

With environmental disaster, terrorist threats, and economic collapse on every front page, it is hard to argue that we live in a risk-free world. Indeed, the illusion that we did almost certainly caused, at least in part, the unreal consumer-led spree based on one-way bets on the housing market.

That being so, the sooner we begin to encourage our young people to grow into educated risk-takers rather than panicking every time we see them experimenting with the unknown, the more likely they are to end up looking after the world rather better than we have done.

Wheatsheaf Trust in partnership with Southampton City Council and Job Centre Plus will be delivering pre-employment training on 14 and 16 July 2009 for unemployed people in Southampton looking to apply for employment with The Range.

The Range will be opening at Antelope Park, Thornhill, Southampton, on 10 September 2009 and has approximately 75 NEW job opportunities.

Places on the training course have now been filled, but look out for details of further courses which will be posted on the website.

Until recently Lynn was a client at Wheatsheaf’s Havant Employment Access Centre, but on Monday she starts a new job with a Security company. 

After five years working as a manufacturing supervisor for a local company Lynn had been made redundant.

Because of the recession there were few job vacancies in production and so Lynn came to the Havant Employment Access Centre looking for career advice and a helping-hand with producing her CV.

She applied for ‘every job going’ but had no success and during this time suffered bereavement twice, along with a loss of confidence and self-esteem. 

Lynn was encouraged to look at her skills - what she had to offer a potential employer and where she wanted to go next. As a result she joined Wheatsheaf as a volunteer to gain office experience and took an IT course with Highbury College at the Centre before deciding that Security was the career for her. 

Wheatsheaf’s Employment and Training Adviser, Mary Cameron, said, ‘Lynn has worked extremely hard to gain qualifications and knowledge to enhance the skills she already had. At Havant College she gained the Security Industry Authority (SIA) qualification required for working in the Security industry, with a 99% pass! Lynn’s job-search journey is now at an end as she has been offered a position in her new-chosen career.’

Lynn was supported via the Reach Out programme, a Department of Work and Pensions/European Social Fund community outreach service Wheatsheaf provides through working with Vosper Thorneycroft (VT) Careers Enterprise. Reach Out Funding paid for Lynn’s SIA licence following her qualification success.

Mohammed Khan, Project Manager for Reach Out at VT Enterprise commented, “When the ESF funded Reach Out service was rolled out for Hampshire & Isle of Wight in June 2008, VT as the Prime Contractor decided from the outset to set aside some of the budget for a discretionary funding element which Key Workers can submit requests to on behalf of their participants. I am really pleased that the Reach Out service discretionary budget was able to fund Lynn in acquiring her SIA licence which has helped in the success of her being offered full-time employment.’

Lynn is looking forward to beginning her job on Monday. Of Wheatsheaf Trust in Havant she said, ‘The girls here have been brilliant. Wheatsheaf has changed my life around.’

Check out the story of how four E2E (Entry to Employment) trainees built a wall at the Motiv8 centre in Portsmouth.

The Confidence with Jobsearch course is a programme designed to support people who are over 50 and looking for employment. Check out the comments from past course participants and look at the type of topics covered to see if this is a course for you!