TG: drug users, homeless, (ex) offenders
Activities: peer involvement, training

Addiction Worker Training Programme

“Trainees provide an inspirational role to service users, showing them what can be achieved if they persevere in recovery, which is particularly helpful for those struggling to engage, who feel the cultural gap between professional services and their own lifestyles. Trainees can often provide critical words of encouragement which are listened to because of their own background, or help to diffuse problems by reassuring service users who might have barriers to talking to staff.”

Organization

The Addiction worker Training Project is managed and co-ordinated by the Scottish Drugs Forum. SDF is a voluntary, membership based organisation with nearly 300 organisational and individual members across Scotland. SDF primarily focuses on improving the quality, range and effectiveness of service and policy responses to problematic drug use in Scotland, reducing future and recurring problematic drug use and promoting and sustaining recovery from drug problems.

Scottish Drugs Forum’s Addiction Worker Training Programme (AWTP) is a unique, multi-agency funded initiative which trains, and prepares individuals with a history of problematic drug and alcohol use to work in social care whilst receiving an intensive package of support. The project was launched in 2004 to help former substance users prepare for employment through in-work placements and formal learning. Scottish Drugs Forum works in partnership with accredited learning providers and alongside frontline services to provide training for students who include former homeless people and ex-offenders who have previously experienced multiple barriers to employment. Course participants must be two years drug free, including substitute prescribing and two years problem drinking free.

Trainees are supported to complete two full time six month work placements with partner organisations, complete an industry standard qualification, and have access to a variety of training and workshop opportunities related to issues in the care field. Trainees are supported to be involved in the day to day duties that placement staff carry out, and attend placements three to four days per week, with a day for study or learning. Placements are accessed in social care projects with a key focus on addictions. Project partners offer trainees invaluable work experience in residential, community, and outreach based projects with a range of service users, and offer additional training to supplement that provided by SDF. Initially, trainees shadow other members of staff, building relationships with colleagues and service users, and learning about the project policies and procedures. In subsequent weeks and months, trainees are supervised to participate in the tasks of support workers. Tasks include, but are not limited to: working with service users, liaising with other agencies, carrying out assessments, key-working, group work, accompanying service users on journeys, accessing and updating client files and records and community outreach.

Results

SDF currently has 14 Trainee Addiction Workers on the 2013-14 course in Glasgow, and 8 Trainee Addiction Workers in the East of Scotland. Since 2004, the lowest number of trainees has been 11, with the highest number reaching 22.

Nearly 90% of those who start the course complete, with 85% of those completing moving in to further employment, the vast majority to full time jobs in the Social Care and Addiction fields. The AWTP provides a resource of motivated and highly trained staff for the care sector, and an opportunity for people with direct experience of services to inform practice as project participants and ultimately as staff members. Overall, the project has resulted in more people previously outside the labour market are employed as trainee addiction workers (127 people since 2004), more people who have recovered from substance misuse have improved their employability skills and achieved an industry standard qualification (114 people since 2004), and more people who have previously experienced multiple barriers to employment related to their past substance misuse have moved in to further employment post project completion (97 people since 2004).

AWTP has a direct impact on trainees and their families, however wider beneficiaries include placement agencies and their service users. Through their placement experience, one trainee can support and provide interventions to up to 85 people experiencing problems with substance use over the duration of the course.

More information

Website: http://www.sdf.org.uk/moving-on/addiction-workers-training-project-awtp/

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Country: United Kingdom
Target group: ex-offenders
Activity: commercial, training, hard skills, integrated services,

Blue Sky

“Giving someone a job has been described as the greatest charity that anyone can perform and as one former member of our management team (an ex-armed robber himself) colourfully put it: 'you may not like ex-prisoners, but absolutely no one in their right ming wants them to re-offend'. “

The organisation

Set up in 2005, Blue Sky is a charity and a social enterprise that tackles the issue of re-offending by focussing on employment. They win commercial contracts from local authorities and private companies and exclusively recruit ex-offenders into small teams to fulfil the work. Blue Sky employs them on 6-month contracts offering training, housing support, mentoring and onward job brokering. Since operations began they have employed over 750 ex-offenders accross the country and only 15% has gone on to re-offend – that is a quarter of the national average.

At any one time they can be employing 30 to 60 ex-offenders on 6-month contracts. Much of their work is seasonal so they take on more people over the summer months. Each year they employ over a 100 ex-offenders around the country.

Blue Sky's mission has always been to reduce re-offending and challenge negative perceptions about people with a criminal record. If society wants to cut the levels of re-offending it should focus on finding jobs for those ex-prisoners who want to work. In Britain, which has the second highest re-offending rate in Europe, it has been proven empirically that a stable job reduces the probability of re-offending by up to 50%. Yet 75% of all prisoners are released to joblessness, and an ex-offender is eight times more likely to be unemployed than someone with no criminal record.

Results

Since 2005, Blue Sky has always measured itself on three key performance indicators: the number of employees who receive an accreditation, the number who leave to onward employment at the end of their six-month contracts and the number who re-offend. Over the past eight years they have employed over 750 ex-offenders and of these 52% have left with an accreditation or qualification funded by Blue Sky (e.g. a construction certificate, a health and safety course, a forklift driving license). Moreover, 49% of their leavers have subsequently moved into onward full-time employment. This is quite an accomplishment considering the economic climate and unstable jobmarket. Blue Sky's resettlement officer works closely with all employees from month 4 onwards to establish their career goals and aspirations.

Only 15% of their employees have re-offended – a quarter of the national average. Considering that for every 10 Blue Sky employees there are, on average, 17 dependents who are taken out of living in a workless household, the positive impact is felt by many more.

In addition, Blue Sky is always keen to participate in research to verify their social impact. A social return on investment analysis carried out by the Impetus Trust concluded that they create £17.40 of social value for every £1 invested in Blue Sky. They were also part of a pilot programme with the Ministry of Justice Data Laboratory. Using the employee database they analaysed their employees against a control group to determine the re-offending rate. The analysis shows with a 95% confidence level that ex-offenders working in Blue Sky teams re-offend 50% less than a control group with similar characteristics.

More information

Website: www.blueskydevelopment.co.uk

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TG: people with mental health problems
Activities: commercial, training

Travel Matters

“Training in a relaxed, work environment is more effective than in a college. Work experience is on real bookings and so the sense of achievement is higher. The friendly, relaxed environment is very important in building confidence. At the beginning students can be unable to talk to anyone or even make eye contact; in just a few weeks they are interacting with their peers and on the way towards a more positive engagement with friends, family and the community.”

Organization

Travel Matters is a not-for-profit social enterprise, which provides high quality, competitively priced travel services, plus IT training and work experience for vulnerable groups, in England. Founded in 1996 as a project within the National Health Service it became an independent operation in 2006. Over the past seventeen years they have developed into an ongoing business with real social capital. The project was originally set up to provide a work opportunity for people with mental ill health and other complex needs, and to service the holiday and travel requirements of residential care homes for people with complex needs and the elderly/disabled. In 2006, when Travel Matters became an independent company, it continued to provide training programmes but broadened its target customer groups to include general business and leisure travel. This project’s focus is people with mental ill health, but is has also had referrals from other groups, such as people recovering from physical disabilities or drug/alcohol abuse.

Travel Matters’ product – the travel business – itself has a particular focus on vulnerable groups, with more than 50% of its clients being people with physical or mental disabilities, or complex needs. The project's income is a combination of payment for training from the health authority and profits from the travel business, which currently breaks down to around 80:20 (that is 80% training and 20% travel.) Historically this was more like 70:30 but travel business has dropped as a result of an overall fall in consumer spending and increasing use of the internet, plus the closure of residential care homes/restriction of funding for holidays

Results

There are 60 half day training sessions per week, with around 40-50 trainees at any one time. Trainees stay for different lengths of time, from a few months to a maximum of two years. In the last 12 months around 40% of those who left moved into employment, further education or training. These results are far higher than those achieved by the government’s Job Centre (4%) and other public providers. Trainees who have made progress, but would benefit from the continuity of longer support, can go on to become mentors for other trainees. It works very well with trainees who appreciate input from peers. Although IT courses are available at a local college, they do not offer the high trainer to student ratio of Travel Matters (maximum of 1:5), nor specialist, experienced trainers. Travel Matters is unique in providing training in a commercial office environment, with work experience featuring research and administration of real travel bookings, as well as providing a specialist IT training. Work experience trainees acquire transferable customer service skills while IT trainees gain industry recognised ECDL qualifications.

Despite their multiple funding problems (e.g. reduced funding from the health services, no structural funding from grants, the shrinking market of travel agencies, and a structural lack of funding for marketing and communications) the business has survived so far and they aim to secure their future sustainability in various ways. Besides maintaining a high quality level of training and the synergistic partnerships they have with others working in the field of mental healthcare, they will for instance build their income from the travel business, using the growing interest in businesses with genuine social values as a “stand out” factor in promotion to new business targets.

More information

Website: www.travelmattersuk.com

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