Staffordshire: Heantun Housing Association

Offender employment

Staffordshire County Council were keen to be part of the National Provider Development Programme and are committed to supporting and empowering the third sector in Staffordshire. Three innovative third sector organisations in Staffordshire were selected to be part of the programme, and providers, commissioners and service users have successfully worked together to help shape future service development.

"Staffordshire County Council have worked closely with the Department of Health to build capacity to make sure that voluntary sector organisations who are close to the community are really playing their part, their unique part, in helping people change their lives". County Councillor Matthew Ellis, Cabinet Member for Adults and Wellbeing, Staffordshire County Council

Heantun Housing Association provides general housing in the Wolverhampton and Walsall area. They specialise in supporting the elderly, people with mental ill health and learning disabilities, young people, offenders and those at risk of domestic violence or hate crime, palliative care and nursing homes.

The Staffordshire offender employment project aims to assist clients to gain voluntary or paid employment. The work has included:

• Meeting with local employers to try to break down the barriers.
• Helping clients to prepare c.v's and support them to prepare for interviews.
• Develop partnerships with local organisations offering training and work experience/placements.
• Publicise and administer an interview fund to provide small grants to assist applicants in attending interviews i.e. haircut, clothing or travelling expenses.

The project is in the early stages of finding their clients opportunities, but by January 2011 there have been a number of successes:

• four people who have secured paid employment.
• local partnerships have been developed with Open Door (for four applicants), Grow Well and Lichfield District volunteer service (one person on placement).
• one client is receiving support from the Prince's Trust and they now have a business plan in place.
• one person who has been accepted for an interview for Oxfam.
• one person waiting for a suitable placement via Tamworth volunteer centre.
• potential partnership with Tamworth College which will offer pre-employment courses for our clients.

About us

Heantun Housing Association is an exempt charity and a Housing Association registered with the Tenants Services Authority. We develop and manage housing for people in need and provide support services to enhance quality of life and independence.

The organisation provides general housing needs in Wolverhampton and Walsall. We provide specialised support services for the elderly, people with mental ill health and learning disabilities, young people, offenders and those at risk of domestic violence or hate crime, palliative care and nursing homes.

In Staffordshire we also provide:

• floating support for high risk offenders and low/medium risk offenders.
• housing and support to mentally disordered offenders.
• a small project providing housing and support to offenders.

The Heantun Group website is www.heantun.org (opens new window)

What people told us

We used the Working together for change process in February 2011 to work in partnership with local commissioners, other providers and some of the people we support to look at information from people's reviews to see what it told us about our service and about what is important to people. This information included the things people said were working well in their lives, things that were not working and the things that were identified as most important for the future. The group worked together to identify themes in the information. The two themes that were most important for use were:

• People become demotivated because of failure to access meaningful work either paid or voluntary.
• People want to be respected and treated as equal citizens and feel that by having a job they would be able to lead more productive lives.

We then thought together about what some of the root causes of this were for people we supported. These included:

• Employers are reluctant to employ offenders.
• Lack of confidence.
• Lack of motivation.
• Lack of opportunities.
• Lack of skills.

Having identified some of the root causes we then thought about what success would look like from different perspectives. These included:

• having enough money to live on.
• having self respect and the respect of others.
• more motivation.
• having choice.
• using time in a meaningful way.
• not re-offending.

In the second Working together for change workshop we developed an action plan for what we would do to try and put this right for people. From a range of ideas, we used the Working together for change process to agree a project. We decided to put more time into looking at the issues and trying to address them in a positive way by developing a project to help people find work.

What we did

The work has included:

• Meeting with local employers to try to break down the barriers.
• Helping clients to prepare CVs and support them to prepare for interviews.
• Develop partnerships with local organisations offering training and work experience/placements.
• Publicise and administer an interview fund to provide small grants to assist applicants in attending interviews i.e. haircut, clothing or travelling expenses.

We have been in the process of setting up the project which required a lot of liaison with other organisations and this will be ongoing in order to maximise the opportunities for our clients. Here is what we did in the first stage of the work:

• Held small group meetings to plan our strategy.
• Wrote, published and distributed leaflets and A3 posters publicising the interview preparation fund.
• Developed partnership with Open Door to secure two voluntary placements for our clients, agreed to act as a referring agency to enable ex-offenders who are no longer on Licence to access places.
• Planned an event early next year to brief council managers about our project to encourage more placement opportunities.
• Partnership with Acorns training to access placements for our clients.
• Publicised the project on the e newsletter Staffordshire and Stoke on Trent Consortium and Infrastructure Organisation.
• Met with Lichfield and District Community and Voluntary Sector Support and Grow-well and have agreed to write a project brief to develop a new project working with offenders and to apply for funding.

The next stage is to identify and make contact with local employers to break down some of the barriers and hopefully build relationships of trust so that we can work together in ensuring people are given employment opportunities.

It has proved hard for people to use the interview fund mainly because interviews are arranged at very short notice. We are working with Staffordshire Offender Service to look at other ways in which small grants could help people get into work.

Outcomes

While it is still too early to identify all of the benefits of this work or to fully measure the impact, we have identified the following outcomes:

Successful partnerships formed

We realized that opportunities for our client group were extremely difficult to find, we therefore developed a relationship with the Grow Well and Lichfield District volunteer Service. In partnership, meetings were held and a bid jointly put together to develop a project offering work placements to our client group through working in conservation. Regrettably funding hasn't been secured yet for this.

The project team have sent five referrals to Open Door, (one secured a permanent job prior to his application being processed.) Open Door is seeking suitable places for the other four applicants.

Initial support has been provided to one person wanting to set up their own business, with Business Enterprise Support, they will help this person to devise a business plan. This support will be followed up again once the business is up and running. Information has been obtained and provided on possible grant opportunities. Staff are supporting and assisting with applications in conjunction with the business plan to demonstrate its viability and eligibility for funding. We have made contact with East Staffordshire council who has provided us with an up-to-date grant listings.

We have now extended the remits for funds to pay for CSCS (Construction Skills Certification Scheme) cards and the CSCS manual (for clients to use). These were requested by people using the service and was seen as a barrier to gaining employment, this has been taken up by two applicants already. The CSCS manual is updated yearly and will help people prepare for the CSCS exam. We now offer to pay college registration charges and financial support to people intended on developing their own small business.

Clients who have secured work, or placements:

• Four people who have secured paid employment.
• We have one person who has been accepted for an interview for Oxfam.
• We have one person waiting for a suitable placement via Tamworth volunteer Centre.
• We have one client receiving support from the Prince's Trust and now have a business plan in place.
• We have one person on placement with Lichfield Volunteer Service.
• We have a potential partnership with Tamworth College which will offer pre-employment courses for our clients.