Equal Access To Employment In Glasgow

New Connections Team

The role of the team is to support the development of the employability agenda within health and social care services. Health and social care services recognise the positive impact on quality of life that helping people become more involved in leisure, education, training and employment services can have. They have a key role to play in engaging with people not currently in work and linking them in with employability services when appropriate.

Some health and social care services are organised through central planning structures e.g. Glasgow Addiction Partnership, Glasgow Learning Disability Partnership, and Criminal Justice Social Work Services. These structures are responsible for the strategic direction of that client group. Services for that group are then delivered and managed in each Community Health and Care Partnership. New Connections have been working with those structures on the following:

Including Employability Elements in the Assessment Processes

The team has focussed on encouraging health and social care workers to discuss service users ‘interest in’ or aspirations for work, training, education or volunteering. Most social care and health services have included questions about employability aspirations as part of their assessment and care management process so that at an appropriate time workers will discuss employability issues with a client and access employability support if appropriate.

Including Employability in Client Information Systems

The New Connections Team has supported Social Work services to make changes to the system that records the support they provide to service users. This system now includes employability elements such as whether a referral has been made to an employability service. This will help services record the support they provide to people to help move towards and into work.

Employability Training and Awareness Raising

As well as building employability elements into practice, training and awareness raising sessions have been taking place to support workers to feel more confident about their role in relation to employability, and to increase awareness of services.

The employability training was originally developed by Equal Access and Homelessness Services and has been adapted for Criminal Justice Social Work services, the Addictions Partnership, the Glasgow Carers Centres/ Projects, and Health Professionals.

The training addresses the attitudinal and personal development needs of frontline workers as identified in the city wide Attitudinal Survey undertaken in 2006. The training includes discussion and information about the employability elements in the assessment and care management processes and client management systems as detailed above. It also details the employability pathway and the service infrastructure in Glasgow.

In order to train all staff in each Community Health and Care Partnership area for each of the services above, a ‘Train the Trainers’ approach was taken with the Criminal Justice and Addiction teams. Senior staff was initially trained and since June, those staff has been delivering the training to their teams in each CHCP. Apart from this being an effective way of delivering the training to large numbers, it has added to the training’s credibility as the employability message has come from within their own service. Local Equal Access Managers have been instrumental in the delivery of the training as have a number of employability services who have attended to talk about the support they can provide. The result of the training has been that workers feel more confident in their employability role and more informed about the support available. To date, 24 sessions have taken place and 260 staff across the city has completed the training.

The New Connections Team is currently evaluating the delivery and impact of the training. A report will be available early next year.

This work has been possible due to the support of the city wide central structures such as the Addictions Partnership, Criminal Justice Social Work Services, Glasgow Carers Centres as well as the CHCP’s.

Work with Employment Services

Given the progress being made with health and social care services, support and resources are now being dedicated to employment services in the city. The New Connections Team together with the Local Equal Access Managers are developing a small scale capacity building programme aimed at frontline staff in employment services.

The aim of the programme is to increase workers awareness of and confidence in working with people who have accessed health and social care support.

As a first step, the programme will focus on the following health and social care issues: Addictions/substance misuse, Offenders and Mental Health. Each session will follow a similar format and will cover the following topics:

Information on the basic principles of working effectively with the group

Issues faced by the client group and how they might impact on employability and employment opportunities.

General information on the responsibilities and support provided by health and social work services to these client groups

Initially the programme will be piloted with the five Local Regeneration Agencies with potential to roll out to a wider audience. A successful pilot session was recently run in the West CHCP entitled ‘Working More Effectively with Offenders’. The session was jointly delivered by Glasgow City Council Criminal Justice Services and an external trainer. The session demonstrated that there is an appetite within employment services to increase knowledge of issues facing different groups and the social care services that support the groups.

Other resources

Finally, the team has developed useful tools such as the Employability Services Directories for each CHCP and has currently nearly completed “Steps Towards Work: A Guide to the Support Available in Glasgow” which details all the services, programmes and financial incentives available for a return to work. This will be a useful resource for individuals looking for work and for staff supporting them.

The New Conenctions teams is made up of Tom Golcher, New Connections Manager; Alison McCrae, Equal Access Manager and Kim Murphy, Equal Access Manager. For more information please contact any of the team at the Equal Access Central Support Unit..

CTA links: Bridging Services document Service User Report Frontline Staff Survey