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Employment mentoring project
Mentoring is widely used to support individuals who are facing disadvantage in their lives. Although the benefits of using volunteer-based mentoring to support disabled or disadvantaged people into sustainable employment is largely untested, the evidence in relation to supported employment processes in general is very positive:
“Supported employees who were trained by co-workers maintained their jobs an average of 44.51 months compared to 32.15 months of supported employees trained by job coaches.” (Cimera, 2007)
There is also evidence from projects working with disadvantaged people that point to the valuable role that mentoring can play e.g. a survey of 285 homeless people by St Mungo’s showed that:
“74% considered one-to-one support or mentoring to be a critical success factor for moving into long-term employment.” (Off the Streets and into Work, 2005)
One of the objectives of this pilot project is to develop a more accessible and cost-effective approach to mentoring thereby adding value to other existing supported employment initiatives within the Work Programme.
The Work Programme will give providers longer to work with individuals and greater freedom to decide the appropriate support for them. It will offer significant new opportunities for contractors from the private and voluntary sectors to deliver truly flexible and personalised support, building appropriate partnerships to do so.
Almost all funding under the Work Programme will be exclusively or largely for delivering results with payment only being made after the results have been delivered. Therefore, innovative and cost-effective solutions are required which would support the concept of linking payments to potential benefits savings.
The pilot project’s aim
To determine whether, through the use of volunteer-based mentoring, the chances of supporting disabled or disadvantaged people into sustainable mainstream employment can be improved.
To get involved in this work please email Paul Wainhouse, programme co-ordinator or call 0161 813 1132.
