Government Ministers have recently highlighted the issue of social housing by suggesting that many tenants are finding it difficult to gain employment due to a lack of adequate training and support. One Housing Association aiming to challenge this opinion is Derwent & Solway, a member of the Harvest Housing Group, who introduced an initiative in 2005 intended to reduce unemployment by engaging residents in learning and training.
Routes 2 Work is a successful partnership which has delivered a ground breaking people based regeneration initiative throughout West Cumbria. The initiative helps and supports individuals, groups and whole communities in reducing worklessness and the negative social impacts that worklessness fuels. The delivery of Routes 2 Work breaks through this employment barrier by helping people into employment through various training projects and learning support programmes.
Commenting on the initiative, Robert Porter, Director of Derwent & Solway Housing Association said:
“Since 2005 we and our partners have been committed to developing and delivering regeneration activities focused on maximising opportunities that enable greater social inclusion and an enhanced quality of life for excluded individuals disadvantaged by unemployment.”
Recent comments made by the Chartered Institute of Housing have also stressed the importance of supporting social housing tenants, especially young people, in developing their skills and seeking employment. The CIH pointed out the very clear role that housing organisations have in supporting their tenants out of worklessness and the D&S inititative aims to fulfil this role by providing: training and economice development facilities, job shops, retail training projects and jobs fairs to residents.
Julie Wedgwood, Project Manager at Routes 2 Work, adds:
“Routes 2 Work has been extremely successful in engaging with unemployed people in the area and we would like to thank Allerdale Borough Council and other partners, as we recognise without their excellent commitment to collaborative partnership working we wouldn't have been able to achieve what we have done to date”.