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November 2009
> Housing Association Part of £1Billion Government Initiative
Housing Association Part of £1Billion Government Initiative
Harvest Housing Group have announced their success in securing funding for 40 placements as part of the National Housing Federation/Groundwork ‘Future Jobs Fund’ employment scheme.
The Future Jobs Fund is a £1 billion investment by the government, created in the April 2009 budget. Money from the Fund will enable the environmental regeneration charity Groundwork and the National Housing Federation to work with the Department of Work & Pensions to break the ‘no experience, no work’ cycle and will help to generate new jobs for those in greatest need.
The Fund is aimed to deliver real help for young people and those who face barriers to employment, ensuring that people stay connected with the labour market and do not suffer the adverse effects of long-term unemployment. The initiative aims to create 150,000 jobs nationally between October 2009 and April 2011.
As part of the project, 10 new members of staff will be based at Harvest Housing Group’s head office in Manchester and local offices in Trafford and Stockport.
The remaining 30 candidates will work for local employers in either Allerdale or Copeland in Cumbria, including the office of Harvest’s member Housing Association, Derwent & Solway (D&S). These candidates will be employed within Derwent & Solway’s award-winning employment programme, Routes 2 Work.
The jobs created within Harvest Housing Group will be administration positions and grounds maintenance and regeneration posts. The latter have been created as an aim of the scheme is to provide experience in emerging ‘green collar’ sectors.
In the first instance Harvest Housing Group candidates will be referred from frontline staff in Jobcentre plus offices across the North West. Each candidate must meet the Future Jobs Fund criteria, be interviewed by Harvest Housing Group and will be appointed a Harvest staff mentor upon commencing their posts.
Mentors will introduce them to the job, develop and agree a personal development plan and support them throughout the ‘settling in’ process.
Posts on the project are for six months and throughout this period Harvest Housing Group will deliver formal and informal learning and development support to help candidates find and secure the kind of work they would like to do in the longer term.
Commenting, Michelle Gregg, Executive Director of Service Delivery for Harvest Housing Group said: “Our commitment to creating neighbourhoods where people want to live and choose to stay goes beyond providing high quality homes for our residents, it is about investing in the wider community, helping to break the cycle of worklessness experienced by many younger generations and ensuring a more secure future for our local economies”.
Harvest Housing Group Future Jobs Fund candidates will commence their posts by March 2010. Assigned ‘staff mentors’ are currently receiving training.