Communities for the Future
Context
The Regional Skills for Productivity Alliance (RSPA), in the European Social Fund South East Regional Framework 2007- 2010, identifies 10 ‘hot-spots’ of NEET groups (those not in education, employment or training) across the South East. In these areas, ‘worklessness’ is often generational and many young people suffer from a poverty of ambition and opportunities. 9 out of the 10 areas are in Coastal Communities.
The draft report, Coastal South East: a Framework for Action (SQW January 2008) highlights that over 22% more Coastal South East residents of working age have no qualifications than would be expected if the regional average were applied. Development of the Coastal South East is ‘seriously constrained by poor workforce skills’. The report also identifies the important role that the cultural and creative economy, and associated visitor economy, could play in tackling worklessness and inspiring young people to choose different career pathways. Government funding is mainly channelled into working with 14-19 year olds, with the provision for younger age groups (11–14) expected to be picked up statutorily through the education system.
Groundwork, The Prince’s Trust and SEEDA have been working together to pull together a partnership approach to try to meet this problem head on. The partnership’s hypothesis is that if interventions occur earlier in a young person’s upbringing it is likely to have a greater affect on their engagement in curricular activity and employability in later life.
Activities and Outcomes
The principle objectives for this ‘pilot and development’ year (2008 – 2009) include:
- To set up a multi-agency steering group
- To develop and deliver 4 pilot projects in coastal locations
- To build our knowledge of existing provision in the pilot project locations
- To scope out year 2 project locations and engage local delivery partners
- To draw in match funding and make links within the creative and cultural sector
- To develop and test approaches for monitoring and tracking
Over the course of this year (2008 – 2009), we will deliver 4 pilot projects: Southampton, Gosport, Newhaven and Swale. We will continue to build on this work next year in those areas and will work to extend this project into 3 new urban areas: Brighton, Hastings and Margate.
The young people have been identified by their schools as being at risk of exclusion and/or criminal beahviour and are aged between 11 and 14. Interventions range from regenerating local public spaces, improving school grounds, delivering community events, boat building, design and craft, internet design – a range of local business will be engaged to provide a local employer link to practical work based skills. Our aspiration is that this project will link into the cultural, creative, employment and regeneration plans of SE statutory bodies and to link to other voluntary sector approaches, allowing the modest budget to be extended.
The ultimate aim of this project is to work out which types of intervention work. We want to utilise the findings of this work to encourage changes in delivery locally. It is our intention to make these programmes replicable so that they can be adopted and delivered by other organisations.