The UKSPF People and Skills Programme is currently engaging South London residents, focusing on economically inactive and unemployed cohorts, including women, BAME, 50+, and individuals with SEND.

As the Programme Lead at the South London Partnership, I’m working closely with our delivery partners (Ingeus, Merton, Royal Borough of Kingston, Sutton, Richmond and Croydon) to ensure that we deliver high-quality employment and skills support to maximise the number of people supported into sustainable work.

Each of our projects is unique, offering targeted intervention to best support our borough’s residents. Through the programme, we’re providing the opportunity for South Londoners to access a package of support most appropriate to their needs, which includes intensive and wrap-around one-to-one support to move people closer towards skills provision and into employment through impartial information, advice, and guidance. Interventions aim to tackle specific barriers for some residents to access good apprenticeship opportunities, such as improving their maths and English literacy and improving their understanding of the application process which is impacting social mobility and creating a ‘gentrification’ of apprenticeships.

Aiming to strengthen the supply chain of businesses to support their recruitment challenges, we’re connecting the dots by meeting employer skills gaps and building a broader and more inclusive talent pool. We are addressing and overcoming both structural and skills inequalities that prevent some residents from accessing good and stable jobs, through support and training for employers which focuses on how they can best support new employees.

The South London Partnership promotes greater collaboration between organisations to enhance referral routes, to ensure that residents get access to opportunities that are the next best step for them. We support to fulfil vacancies in sectors where there is an overrepresentation of jobs in south London but significant vacancies gaps. The UKSPF funding has created the opportunity to support good quality placement opportunities for residents with multiple and complex barriers to work, who have limited employment experience which prohibits progression into a job.

UKSPF People and Skills funding supports equality, diversity and inclusion.  We achieve this by offering active engagement and support, meeting local needs, and removing and minimising disadvantages.

Our Borough-led projects provide outreach to our most marginalised residents in our most deprived wards, with a key worker and one-to-one employment support offered, providing job searching, access to local vacancies and community-based learning.  This includes job brokerage services for refugees, migrant workers, and the homeless community, as well as tailored services to support women and the over 50s.

Across the five South London boroughs, we have an established offer of Supported Internships. This project works with social workers, caregivers and wider practitioners to reach more 18-24-year-old residents and within the community to actively engage more residents and enrol on the programme. Participants will then be supported to find employment, if not offered, at the end of their programme.

Employment Support for People with Disability and Learning Difficulties provides employability support and creates work placement opportunities within the health and social care sector.

 

To find out more about how you can get involved, please email me at [email protected]