Equal Access To Employment In Glasgow

Creating Conditions

As the Glasgow City Strategy gathers momentum, Equal Access is streamlining its activities to ensure that there is alignment and improved effectiveness.

• We are building the capacity of health and social care staff to work with employability organisations and vice versa.
• We have an ongoing programme of training team leaders and trainers and they in turn will roll out training to many more staff. Recent events include the training of Addiction Team Leaders, Physical Disability Workers and Carers and the development of a Criminal Justice Team Training Pack.
• We are working with partners to agree common definitions, evidence requirements, reporting and tracking systems. Equal Access has developed a tracking system (Gtrac) on behalf of the City Strategy and is now testing the input of data. As part of this process, we have worked with providers to agree common definitions and evidence requirements in collaboration with Scottish Enterprise Glasgow.
• We are continuing progress on making health and social work provision more linked to the employability agenda. Equal Access have worked closely with partners to ensure that employability questions are now included in the assessment processes of the Addictions Partnership. Other care groups are set to do the same.
• We are developing an information pack for individuals, setting out in plain English, the process of coming off benefits and moving into work. This can be a scary process for people and we are working with partners and a wide range of different groups to ensure that the pack is practical and easy to understand and use.
• Equal Access is working with partners to provide support for employers on recruitment diversity and retention. We are working with the Employer Coalition and Healthy Working Lives to encourage recruitment diversity and retention.

Key Actions Delivered

An example of European Objective 3 funded activities from May ‘05 to June ‘07:

• 73 networking and capacity-building events were held via Objective 3 funding
• 623 workers from 175 partner organisations received training via Objective 3 funding

Examples of European Equal/ RE:Focus funded activities up to June ‘07:

• 22 projects were completed, of which 16 projects took place with target groups, 2 focused on employers, 2 were research-based and 2 were city-wide via RE:Focus delivery
• There were 1000 beneficiaries (713 unemployed people of whom 58% were unemployed for more than 3 years)
• 178 people moved into work (78 into voluntary work)
• 128 people went into further education

Sharing Experiences With Others

Glasgow’s pioneering ambition to join up Health, Social Care and Employability has attracted attention at a local, national and international level. We have shared our experience with a wide range of people and at a variety of events, including:

• Scottish policy makers and practitioners
• Workforce Plus Team
• Welfare to Work Convention, Glasgow
• UK policy makers
• Office for Disability Issues
• Disability Employment Advisory Committee
• Welfare to Work Convention, Birmingham

We have had visits and positive feedback involving delegates from Birmingham, Belfast, Finland and Sweden.

We have also drawn on the experience of the wider Equal Access network in consulting on the Welfare Reform Green Paper and on the developing City Strategy. This ensures the views of service users and of frontline staff continue to be heard in shaping these critical developments for Glasgow.