Jackie Carpenter, Assistant Director of Strategy at Derventio Housing Trust, has welcomed the Trust’s new Skills for the Future project
Young people who fall through the net and end up being homeless and unemployed are being offered the chance to put their lives back on track by signing up to a new scheme launched in Derby.
Social landlord Derventio Housing Trust has just appointed the first of three workers to run its new Skills for the Future project, a two-year scheme aimed at helping 18-to-25-year-olds who are classified as NEETS – meaning they’re not engaged in education, employment or training – get onto, or back onto, a career path.
The scheme, which will operate across Derbyshire, is part-funded by a grant from the European Social Fund for young people and will provide everyone who takes part with one-to-one personalised support.
To qualify, participants must be aged under 25, not in education or any form of education of training and facing challenges such as homelessness, mental ill health, substance abuse or an offending history.
The scheme formally started last month and is headed up by work mentor Joe Michael, who is getting the scheme up and running for Derventio before the other workers come on board.
Joe has worked in a variety of roles at Derventio for the past few years and says that although jobs and careers are the final destination for the participants, it is the work that they do in the interim which he is looking forward to getting involved in.
He said: “There are very many youth employment and training programmes but what excites me about Skills for the Future is that it will allow us to take a flexible approach to what we’re doing.
“You can’t decide within just a few minutes what job a young person who has the complex needs as those we work with would be best suited for, which is why we will look at their lives in a more rounded way which might, in the early days, not focus on their career at all.
“Many young people fall out of training or education not because they lack the drive or discipline but because they don’t know what direction they want to take and may end up getting into trouble as a result.
“If you can get their trust and find what it is that they really enjoy and what fulfils them then everything changes, because they go from living day to day to looking to the future, and having the ability to do that makes a huge difference.”
The scheme’s work will follow in the footsteps of a series of other youth employment schemes which Derventio has launched and operated over the years as part of its commitment to giving homeless people the support they need to rebuild their lives, beyond just giving them a roof over their heads.
Jackie Carpenter, Assistant Director of strategy at Derventio Housing Trust, said that the Trust has a proud history of helping young people to turn their lives around and says that much is expected of Joe and his new scheme.
Among those previously helped through similar schemes is one man who put a life of offending behind him and set up his own business as a dry stone waller.
Jackie said: “His example is just one way in which the focussed work that we will undertake on the new Skills for the Future will benefit participants because it takes an individual approach rather than a cookie-cutter approach.
“It isn’t about getting somebody into just any form of employment in order to tick a box, it’s about looking at their background and working with them to find something that really enthuses them, so that the work they do is sustainable and will see them establish themselves in a new role for the long term.
“Because of the issues that the people we work with face, that is far from a simple and quick process.
“Joe and his team will need to be there to help them through many ups and downs and it will take much commitment on both sides, but from the results we have seen in the past we are confident that this approach will help to change their lives.”
For more information on Skills for the Future and Derventio Housing Trust, visit www.derventiohousing.com.
