Solid foundations

NEETs no more

I’d left school in May and had just been hanging around on the streets doing nothing,’ says David O’Neill, a 17-year-old from Coventry. ‘It’s boring.’
Until a few weeks ago, Mr O’Neill was among those categorised by the depressing acronym NEET - someone not in education, employment or training.

But not any more. He has signed up to a scheme, run in partnership between Whitefriars Housing Group (part of West Mercia group) and Coventry Council, which provides disadvantaged young people from the west midlands with structured unpaid training in basic construction skills.
The programme was set up two years ago with a remit to help 104 young people. Its success to date - in retention rates and the achievements of the young trainees - has led its co-funder, the Learning and Skills Council, to recommend expanding to 142 places. The programme is currently oversubscribed.

‘It’s physical activity, not classroom-based,’ explains Nev Wells, head of Whitefriars’ training and development agency. ‘And it’s set up like going to work - [they] start in the morning and work through to the end of the day.’

That may sound a poor fit for the young people at which the scheme is aimed, but demand is high. ‘There is a real appetite [for the scheme],’ says Mr Wells. ‘It fills their days and it gives them practical, physical skills they can use.’

He refers to the scheme as offering ‘pre-training’, providing a much-needed bridge between NEET-status and the world of work. As trainee Ashley Morgan puts it: ‘Every job that is advertised in JobCentre Plus says “needs experience”, so how are you meant to get the experience to get a job? That’s why this position is so good to do, because it gives us the skills while we are young.’

For many of the trainees, it is the first education they will have received since leaving school. ‘Then we move them on to [NVQ entry-to-employment] level 1 training,’ he says.

The community benefits are becoming apparent, too. As well as addressing local worklessness, the trainees work within their communities; walls painted by the young people, for example, are left alone by graffiti artists - there is, says Mr Wells, a sense of pride and ownership.

‘So far, I’ve learned bricklaying and we’re about to learn plastering,’ says Mr O’Neill. ‘I feel better now because I’ve got a good routine and I have something to do which should set me up for the future.’

For more information, visit www.whitefriarshousing.co.uk

Match-making apprentices

The repercussions from the last recession were felt by the construction industry for a decade, according to Nigel Donohue, the apprenticeship programme manager at Construction Skills, the skills council for the construction industry.

‘Training was the first thing to go,’ he says. ‘It took 10 years to recover from that.’ It’s not a situation the sector is keen to repeat. In May this year, Construction Skills rolled out its apprentice-matching scheme across the country.

It’s a simple idea; an apprentice who has become a casualty of the downturn mid-way through their training can use the service to see whether an employer elsewhere can take them on and complete their training.

Construction Skills provides support to both employers and apprentices, and ensures that any grant money attached to an apprenticeship is transferred to the new employer.

There are around 2,000 apprentices on Construction Skills’ books at the moment. Around 600 of those have been helped back into training.

One of the first was Stephanie Shields, who was halfway through the second year of a painting and decorating apprenticeship in Blackpool. When the downturn hit last year, she became an early casualty. ‘The 10 or 11 weeks that I was out of work felt like a lifetime,’ she recalls. ‘I didn’t know what I was going to do next, or where my money was going to come from.’

She didn’t have to wait long, however - the apprentice-matching scheme placed Ms Fields with a local employer, Sherwood Decor, where she was able to continue her training.

It’s not just the construction industry that has a stake in this process and its outcomes. Developing housing associations have a responsibility to promote the scheme among the contractors in their supply chains, according to Mr Donohue. ‘It’s going to be one of the requirements of drawing down public funds - the government has made that clear - that you need to give something back,’ he says.

‘These apprentices are coming from local companies - if they are out of work they add to the NEET burden. It is about social regeneration and investment in communities… we want to make that as pain-free as possible.’

For more information on the scheme, visit www.cskills.org

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