Changing lives
Phil Meek explains the thinking – and some of the success stories – behind Tai Calon’s employment initiatives
I HAVE BEEN ASKED by people not in the housing sector ‘why do you bother offering training and employment opportunities?’. In fact, tenants of Tai Calon Community Housing sometimes don’t understand why we do either.
Admittedly, I can see their point. Our overriding priority is to provide affordable, well-maintained homes in communities where people want to live. However, our responsibility to tenants cannot end there.
Sadly, Blaenau Gwent features on a number of league tables for all the wrong reasons: high levels of unemployment and poverty, poor life expectancy and poor literacy skills. According to the latest figures we have, unemployment in the county borough is 11 per cent, while nearly seven out of ten Tai Calon tenants claim housing benefit.
To ignore this – and the daily struggle to survive that many tenants face – would be wrong and immoral. We have families who can’t afford to switch on their heating, let alone put food on the table. In January a South Wales church delivered 65 food parcels to a neighbourhood in Tredegar. They were gone within two hours! We have even heard of tenants eating baby food because that was all that was left at the food bank.
We offer tenants advice and support in claiming benefits, managing debts and budgeting. However, we must do more – and help them climb out of the poverty trap. That is why we offer training and employment opportunities – and why we ARE making a difference, changing lives for the better.
Jo Jones is just one example of how we have helped tenants into work. She had applied, in her words, for ‘umpteen’ number of jobs, often without even getting an acknowledgement to her application. However, everything changed when Jo started attending the weekly Work Club at Tai Calon’s office in Blaina, which is run in partnership with Communities First.
She was offered a work placement with us and enjoyed it so much that when it came to an end she stayed on as a volunteer. Jo was given help with her CV and in interview techniques. When a job for a full-time, permanent member of staff at Tai Calon was advertised, she applied and beat off the competition to be appointed as a customer services advisor.
Her confidence has grown to such an extent that she agreed to do an interview with BBC Wales Today explaining how she had been helped back into work. Here is a link to the story: www.bbc.co.uk/news/ uk-wales-30716898.
Others have come through the Work Club and our other courses to gain employment with Tai Calon. Nicolle Rowson has also been working as a volunteer in customer services. She and three other tenants were lucky enough to benefit from an exciting new project that involved them having their own clothes stylist for the day!
The Wear 2 Work scheme is run by law firm Blake Morgan LLP and department store John Lewis. It aims to help housing association tenants into work by giving them a make over and employment training. The tenants spent the day at John Lewis in Cardiff. During the morning they explored their skills, goals, and aspirations before taking part in mock interviews. They were also given advice on how to dress for an interview – and having had help to choose their outfit, it was then theirs to take home.
This is what Nicolle said about the experience: ‘I think the Wear 2 Work scheme has definitely given me the confidence to get a job in the future. I certainly look the part in my new clothes. It was such a brilliant day, I really enjoyed it.’
In the past 12 months 180 tenants and residents attended our employability and ‘soft skills’ courses – 24 are now in employment and 13 in voluntary work. I together with Andrew Pugh from Communities First are regular guests on Tai Calon on the Radio, our weekly radio show on BRfm, 97.3fm talking about Work Clubs and other training opportunities.
A very successful course is our OCN in Customer Services developed in partnership with Bridges into Work. It is truly inspiring to see the confidence of the students build as the weeks go by. By the end of it, they are carrying out our tenant satisfaction surveys. Natalie Egan, another tenant, attended the OCN course before getting a job with us as a tenant liaison officer. She is now a community involvement worker in our communities team.
We also work with local schools to support and give young people career advice before they leave school and enter the labour market. At Abertillery Comprehensive we are a business ambassador supporting and guiding pupils in completing a business project. The idea is that the skills they learn will help them in their future careers. We ran another project at the school where youngsters taught other close family members how to use a computer and get online. We are also involved with the pupil referral unit at Ebbw Vale. The youngsters are given a tour of the business and we explain the different roles within housing and paths into employment. The feedback we have had from the teachers has been very positive and they would like our involvement to continue. Green Earth is our environmental team
that maintains our green spaces. Each year we take on a minimum of seven people to train people in horticultural skills over the six months of their Jobs Growth Wales (JGW) contract. Clean & Green is an offshoot that offers modern apprenticeships. At the moment we have six young people on a local environmental services modern apprenticeship.
Another three on JGW will progress into apprenticeships and in the past year we have created 12 placements, all of whom have gone on to full-time employment. This apprenticeship is a module we have developed ourselves. It is designed to offer quality training geared to the needs of the apprentice and us as a housing association. We are very excited about how much we have achieved. One of our current apprentices has just successfully applied for a job as an assistant community involvement worker on a 12-month contract.
This year, as in previous ones, we invited in our apprentices to celebrate National Apprenticeship Week. You can hear what they had to say on our YouTube channel, www.youtube.com/taicalonhousing. There is also a video featuring Nicolle Rowson talking about the day she spent at John Lewis.
Some of our biggest successes have been with people considered to be unemployable. The majority of people we come across want to work, but don’t for a variety of reasons. One young man we supported had a passion for digital media and theatre, so we arranged a work placement at BRfm, our local community radio station which is sponsored by Tai Calon. He was so enthused by the experience he started applying for jobs in a part of England where friends lived.
We helped him update his CV, BRfm gave a character reference and he attended a session about preparing for an Interview. We also gave him financial help to attend an interview for a job that he subsequently was offered and accepted. He said his placement at BRfm gave him the confidence, belief and motivation to move away from home to gain employment.
Our bursary scheme is open to tenants and those living with them at home. They can apply for grants up to £250 to help them with their studies. In the last year we have paid out £4,500 towards course fees, IT and other equipment. A young mother had enrolled on a hairdressing course. However, she couldn’t afford her ‘hairdressing kit’ and without it was told she’d have to leave her studies. She successfully applied to the bursary and was able to continue her training.
It is from a single acorn that a mighty oak tree will grow – and I believe that from every one small step we take in helping someone into work we are getting that little bit closer to lifting more families out of the poverty trap.
Phil Meek is employment and enterprise coach at Tai Calon Community Housing