The purpose of this roundtable was to provide high level thinking from councils around the opportunities and challenges in developing young people strategies that will help them in contributing to their local economies.
- Date: 8 February 2022
- Chair: Rebecca Davey, Assistant Director for Employment, Business and Skills at London Borough of Waltham Forest Council
Introduction
The purpose of this roundtable was to provide high level thinking from councils around the opportunities and challenges in developing young people strategies that will help them in contributing to their local economies.
The roundtable was chaired by Rebecca Davey, Assistant Director for Employment, Business and Skills at London Borough of Waltham Forest Council who also shared a scene setting case study about a project launched in Waltham Forest to support young people into employment.
London Borough of Waltham Forest Council case study about the borough’s Futures Programme
The Futures Programme is a project funded and led by the London Borough of Waltham Forest Council and is aimed at young people aged 16 to 24 to equip them with knowledge of the jobs of the future and support them in pursuing a career in these sectors. The project is delivered by three Kickstart employees and participants are provided with support to help them build their portfolios and develop their project management and collaborations skills.
There are Five projects delivered under this umbrella programme. These are:
Future Enterprise – An annual project providing an opportunity to pitch for funding and has supported 25 new young businesses.
Future Creatives - Pre-employment scheme aimed to give young residents a better awareness of the variety of creative roles available.
Future Tech - Building a focus on using residents transferable ICT skills that will benefit their future careers.
Future Insights - Understanding the barriers that young residents are facing to find employment and promoting employment and training Initiatives across the borough.
Future Innovators – Helping young people develop an interest in building a career within the zero-carbon sector and understand how sustainability is linked to most industries.
The project was launched in 2019 and continued to be delivered virtually throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. The project has been very successful and so far, 200 young people have been supported through the programme of which 62 per cent are from BAME backgrounds. 47 businesses, stakeholders and partners have also supported the programme and 76 per cent of the Futures alumni have moved into employment, education, or self-employment.
The key findings from the discussion
The key points discussed at the roundtable are highlighted below:
- The employment, skills and training provision landscape is very complicated and lacks consistency which young people find challenging to navigate. Councils need to work in collaboration with key partners to deliver simple and effective programmes for young people.
- There is a lack of sustainability around the programmes that are offered as a result of uncertainty around future funding streams.
- Councils need to work more closely with Further Education (FE) partners and other key organisations and partners to tap into the broad range of national skills funding packages to maximise investment in local areas.
- There is an opportunity to utilise community volunteers through community hubs to deliver training, skills, and work programmes for young people.
- Coordinating skills and employment provision with local schools and council education teams can help ensure that young people are prepared for future career pathways and raise aspirations at an early age.
- There is an opportunity to take advantage of the demand for green skills. In the present retrofitting skills are particularly in demand and councils can work collaboratively with colleges and housing providers to create new qualifications to fill this demand.
These points are expanded below.
The employment, skills and training provision landscape is very complicated and lacks consistency which young people find challenging to navigate. Councils need to work in collaboration with key partners to deliver simple and effective programmes for young people.
There is a wide range of employment, training, and apprenticeship programmes offered for young people at a local, regional, and national level. However, this has resulted in a complicated landscape which can be difficult for young people to navigate. In Westminster, the council has carried out interviews with young people enrolled on the Kickstart programme to try and understand their experience of finding employment. Findings from these interviews highlighted a lack of consistency and that there is not a clear path that young people have taken to acquire work experience and training.
Delegates at the roundtable highlighted that there needs to be coordination between different partners at the local, regional, and national levels to avoid duplication, and make the system easier and more accessible for young people.
An example was shared in West Suffolk where working with local colleges has had a positive impact. The council funded a programme that is delivered and led by West Suffolk College. The programme, One Step Closer, works with young people who are Not in Education, Employment, or Training (NEET) to provide them with full, comprehensive development and training that will prepare them for employment and any training. The programme employs talent coaches to work with these young people and liaise with partner organisations such as Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) as well as local community and voluntary organisations who can support these individuals with specific requirements. The council has effectively worked as a coordinator to bring in key partners to deliver this project and ensure that young people have access to a one stop shop of support.
There is a lack of sustainability around the programmes that are offered as a result of uncertainty around future funding streams.
There is a lack of consistency across different regions and localities around how programmes are funded. In most places it is likely that there is a cocktail of funding with some core funding in places, but the majority is likely to come from external or European funding. This leads to uncertainty around the long-term sustainability of individual programmes. Delegates highlighted that there is already a large portfolio of projects delivered in their council but in order to maximise funding, they need to bid into competitive funding rounds which are ringfenced and have to devise new programmes rather than fund existing programmes. This leads to an expansion of an already wide provision and rather than streamlining and focusing on maximising the benefits of existing programmes it adds another layer of complexity which may not lead to the best outcomes. If councils were able to secure more sustainable funding, improved long-term outcomes could be possible.
Councils need to work more closely with partners such as FE partners to tap into the broad range of national skills funding packages to maximise investment in local areas.
It was suggested that working together with training providers and FE partners can help maximise local impact and streamline the skills provision offer whilst enabling councils to tap into the national skills funds. Local councils are often left out of conversations around skills provision, but their local knowledge can be invaluable in delivering an effective support programme on a local level.
An example was shared of an initiative in Waltham Forest where the council worked with training providers delivering skills bootcamps for an HGV driver programme to deliver training in the borough. The council was able to provide 50 participants for the programme therefore saving time and resources for the provider. This collaboration was successful, and they are now looking to scale this up to other boroughs.
Similarly in Devon the council worked with universities, FE colleges, and the NHS to create a care skills escalator package using the hospitals apprenticeship funding to deliver a variety of training packages covering basic skills up to level 3 apprenticeships to support private care providers to try to fill their vacancies.
In addition, delegates highlighted that working more closely with key partners can lead to more successful funding bids particularly where the impact can be scaled up regionally.
There is an opportunity to utilise community volunteers through community hubs to deliver training, skills, and work programmes for young people.
It was suggested that there are opportunities to utilise volunteers to help deliver support programmes. Some examples were shared of projects that were delivered through community volunteers. One example was the launch of community hubs in Somerset West and Taunton which was initially set up in 2016 by the council. The five hubs which were funded by DWP supported anyone looking for employment support by offering a holistic service which aimed at not only delivering employment outcomes but building confidence and basic skills training to get them ready for work. The council worked with over 45 partnership organisations who both signposted clients to the hubs and delivered services in the hub which led to a person-centred support offer. This model was very successful and let to the council securing more funding for five new hubs, two of which are youth hubs. These youth hubs are delivered in youth community centres to maximise engagement, and the DWP young people team now deliver its services in these youth hubs.
Coordinating skills and employment provision with local schools and council education teams can help ensure that young people are prepared for the future career pathways and raise aspirations at an early age.
It was suggested that there needs to be more engagement with students at all levels including in primary schools and Key Stage 3 (KS3) students in secondary schools. This will help raise aspirations in students from disadvantaged backgrounds by raising awareness of future career pathways at a young age.
Some examples were shared of where this has worked well:
In Ipswich, an initiative was carried out in partnership with local employers to deliver Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths and Medicine ( STEMM) related activities and weekend workshops in primary schools for students from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Another initiative was delivered in Southend, which brought a group of headteachers together from primary schools with the highest percentages of disadvantaged students to deliver an information session about different careers and sectors every half term for KS3 pupils. Individuals working in different sectors delivered the sessions and talked to students about their jobs. The council was able to identify contacts to deliver the sessions and through the programme were able to reach 1000-2000 students.
There is an opportunity to take advantage of the demand for green skills. In the present retrofitting skills are particularly in demand and councils can work collaboratively with colleges and housing providers to create new qualifications to fill this demand.
It is widely anticipated that there will be a large number of jobs created in the green sector which presents councils with an opportunity to develop a skills pipeline for these jobs. There is already a wave of green jobs being created as a result of the increasing need to retrofit existing commercial and housing stock. An example was shared in Devon, where the council is working with district councils, housing providers and FE colleges to offer qualifications in retrofitting. This is delivered through a retrofit academy utilising £1.1 million of community renewal funding to develop a train the trainer model to deliver retrofit qualifications from level two to level four in FE colleges. They are also working with businesses to prepare them to offer apprenticeship schemes to ensure the sustainability of the model.
In addition to an increase in demand for retrofitting skills it is anticipated that in the long term there will be a proliferation of demand for electrical skills and electrical engineering qualifications as we increasingly shift towards electric transportation and the infrastructure requirements that this will shift will create. Therefore, councils should look to investing in skills provision programmes that equip young people to pursue a career in these sectors.
LGA support offer and additional resources:
The LGA has released guidance for councils in supporting young people into employment:
Education to Employment – Supporting Youth Participation
Re – thinking youth participation for the present and next generation: education to employment
A number of case studies are also available to read on the LGA’s webpage about work that other councils are doing to support both young people and their local working age population into employment. If you would like the LGA to showcase a case study on your own best practice, please fill out our form .
The LGA will be hosting more events including roundtables and webinars as part of our Economic Growth Support offer. For more information on all of our upcoming events and publications on Economic Growth please visit the Economic Growth Support Hub webpage .
For further information about the LGA’s Economic Growth support offer, please email [email protected] .