related projects
Brokerage for Vulnerable Groups
Client: Skills Funding Agency, formerly Learning and Skills Council (East of England)
Project Overview
Running on a mixture of European money and regional development money, this 18 month long project will shape five further sub-programmes (in Cambridgeshire, Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk and Hertfordshire) valued at approximately a quarter of a million pounds each, and aimed at developing new methodology and learning for specialist cohorts of up to 50 young people. The young people are currently described as NEET (Not in Employment, Education or Training), and thought unlikely to succeed in changing their life chances through the current service arrangements. Each cohort will contain young people who have at least one, and often more than one of the following additional characteristics:
Involved with the youth justice system ( young offenders);
LAC (Looked After Children in, or leaving the care system);
LLDD (having complex additional needs as a result of disability or learning difficulty);
Mental health issues;
Young parents.
Five local delivery partners commissioned by the LSC, will be responsible for local recruitment, needs assessment, individual programme planning and brokerage for the young people in their area. The project will be under the oversight of the 14-19 Board for the region.
CPC’s Role
Working closely with the five delivery partners who will work with specific targeted groups of young people, CPC’s role is to provide overall professional leadership and project management. CPC will work with partners to develop project plans, benefit profiles and an approach to ensure young people fully influence the shape and design of the programmes and contribute to its evaluation. CPC will also develop the wider stakeholder engagement required to increase the likelihood of the innovation being mainstreamed after 2010.
Client Benefits
On behalf of LSC, CPC will focus on the following outcomes:
- Maximise practice based learning to provide explicit choices to young people with specific and complex needs;
- Identify specific effective methods for each of the five target groups, learning from practices that do not/did not work;
- Young people involved achieve enhanced / better than targeted success;
- Positive engagement (towards ‘mainstreaming approaches) with brokers and stakeholders across the five participating Local Areas;
- Develop brokerage good practice guidance across the five delivery partners.
- Support for the role of LSC as an established innovator and leader in learning and skills mechanism during a period of organisational transition and transformation.
