These UK Shared Prosperity Fund projects in Edinburgh are under the People and Skills theme. This theme reduces the barriers some people face to employment and support them to move towards employment and education.
It has two main elements:
Employment support for economically inactive people (benefit and non-benefit claimants)
Funding skills provision to provide people with the skills needed to progress in life and work. This includes supporting local areas to fund local skills needs.
Apex helps those with a history of offending or at risk of offending to progress into training and work. Apex delivers a new sector-based skills academy called Strides, targeting sectors that are experiencing recruitment challenges.
Individuals get one-to-one support, life and career skills, and access to training and sector-based placements.
The project also engages with employers to understand their needs and skills gaps.
Capital City Partnership is funded to provide MacMillan Skills Hub. The Hub offers a local corridor of support in an area of high deprivation, with the focus on delivering access to training, careers advice, and job matching to opportunities that will be created through the significant regeneration plans at the Waterfront development.
A proportion of the grant is given to support employer engagement approaches, ensuring that links to local businesses are created and maintained.
The Challenges Group delivers the Making Work Work – for Edinburgh Women programme (MWW). This aims to reduce economic inactivity among women returners and support women in work to upskill and increase earnings through qualification-based training and one-to-one support. The programme has five elements: Skills Refresh, Events/masterclasses, Mentoring, Accreditation, and Ongoing support.
Volunteering opportunities for women to support those affected by sexual violence. Volunteers develop transferable trauma-informed skills and knowledge. Each person takes part in a bespoke rape crisis training program and completes a supervised long-term placement at ERCC.
Works4Women is an employability programme that supports women who have experienced domestic abuse. It is run by Edinburgh Women's Aid in partnership with Shakti Women's Aid (which serves women in the minority ethnic community).
Works4Women will continue to offer support to women in terms of hard and soft employment skills. This is offered through group work, one-to-one support, and mentoring, and peer support. Participants are empowered to identify and achieve their own learning and employment goals.
Networking Key Services (NKS) are funded by UKSPF to deliver holistic support for those from South-Asian communities.
NKS empowers South Asians through building capacity and resilience and by using a person-centred and bespoke approach where people can develop their skills to improve their life chances.
Examples of activities include digital skills, confidence building and welfare rights advocacy with bi-lingual support.
Action for Children are funded to deliver Youthbuild, a structured seven-week programme designed to equip young people for sustainable employment in construction. The target group is 16-24 year olds with multiple barriers who face poverty or disadvantage, with priority given to care-experienced young people, young ex-offenders, and those lacking skills and qualifications. Action for Children work to ensure progression pathways for young people to enter college, apprenticeships, and employment.
Barnardo’s Best offers flexible appointments for young people to attend and work on anything they are struggling within the employment field. Support is offered in CV writing, cover letters, increasing confidence in applying for jobs and career research. The opportunity to complete a work placement or volunteer is also available. The young person also has the opportunity to complete a first aid course or help with gaining a CSCS Card.
The King’s Trust is delivering employability and enterprise support to support 15 - 30 year olds into
the labour market. This includes:
Where appropriate, young people will also have dedicated one-to-one support offering assessment and action planning, support with barrier removal and co-ordination with other provision such as support with housing or debt. Keyworkers will also facilitate motivational goal-setting and links to work experience opportunities where appropriate.
The King’s Trust will work to engage employers to ensure that training opportunities are closely linked to vacancies. Aftercare and ongoing support is provided to individuals, as well as the
offer of career planning support, to enable young people to progress in the labour market.
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