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Employment and Employability
For many homeless people, work is a key part of moving out of homelessness and social exclusion. But many find it hard to get work while they are homeless, especially those who are still struggling to overcome the difficulties that are linked with their homelessness. At the same time, the high cost of hostels and other temporary accommodation removes most of the financial benefits of working. This briefing looks at what Homeless Link's members and other partners are doing to help homeless people move into training and employment.
Specialist employment and employability agencies
OSW (Off the Streets and into Work) is a London-based charity, which supports people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness to break out of poverty and exclusion. It runs a series of programmes, including Tackling Multiple Disadvantage in London by Improving Employability, funded by the EQUAL programme. It has a Volunteer Development Project and has published a guide to help homeless people volunteer, many of whom see volunteering as a step towards paid employment. It has also developed an Employability Map to help individuals think about where they are on their journey towards work or further train and to help agencies help them. Its Transitional Spaces Project provides financial incentives for homeless people to get into work and settled housing and operates in London and Tyneside.
Business Action on Homelessness (BAOH) is a part of Business in the Community. Its key programme, Ready for Work, is focused on working with businesses to equip homeleless people and those at risk of being homeless with the skills to gain and sustain employment. Its collaboration with Homeless Link member Shekinah Mission (below) is seen as a model for this type of partnership.
The June 2005 edition of Connect magazine contains an article about this collaboration. BAOH also takes part in Marks and Start, a Marks and Spencer scheme which gives work placements to people who face barriers to work. The scheme featured in a 2006 Guardian article.
Skills training at Shekinah Mission
Employment and employbability in homelessness agencies
St Mungo's runs 20 different work and learning programmes as part of its 'Getting a Life' life skills training. St Mungo's also collaborated with the City Literary Institute on the Rolling Shelter Project, an arts-based learning programme for homeless people in central London. This established that such activities could play a vital role in successful resettlement and enabling homeless people to regain a sense of self-worth.
Thames Reach's training and work projects include Streetshine, a shoe care social enterprise and Moving In Moving On, a painting and decorating training scheme.
Shekinah Mission in Plymouth runs skills training for the building industry. When the firm building its new centre went out of business, its service users helped finish the job.
Research and Pilot Projects
In 2005 OSW published No Home, No Job, the report of of an extensive research study into the barriers to training and employment for homeless people. OSW is also launching a new project where dual-facing work advisers look at the needs of both the labour market and homeless people.
In 2004, Crisis, and think tank Demos collaborated on Survival Skills, a research project that looked at how life skills have successfully been used to tackle social exlcusion. A more recent collaboration, Firm Foundations, explored the connections between being homeless and being unemployed. In June 2005, Demos published a report called Include Me In, which called for a dedicated fund to be set up to encourage and support companies to employ homeless people. Two previous papers looked at What role can life skills play in helping homeless people prepare for employment? and What obstacles do homeless people face when it comes to finding and sustaining employment?
Working Future is a pilot project that seeks to tackle worklessness among families in long term accommodation. It is a partnership between the Greater London Authority, OSW, East Thames Housing and the London boroughs of Newham, Redbridge and Waltham Forest. The idea is to use a government grant to reduce the rent paid by people in privately leased housing so that they have a real incentive to find work. The project also involves a survey of 1,000 households in leased accommodation to establish the level of worklessness and the ability and willingness of households to work.