European Social Fund in England

Working for opportunities (WfO)

This provider organisation, which supports and trains people with physical disabilities in issues concerning disability, disability rights and the workplace, was concerned that they were not reaching significant numbers of people from BME groups.

From within a capacity building project under Measure 1.2, they commissioned research from the University of Reading, which was brought to the report stage successfully within the course of 2004.

Completion of the research was used by WfO to trigger off public presentations of the research findings, to public and voluntary sector organisations concerned with disability and training - including a large number of other ESF providers. The presentations were geared to a series of collaborative workshops, which enabled participants to put remedial action in place for their own service recruitment and to set their initiatives in a wider strategic context, of local PCT and Social Services planning.

The result, from the perspective of EOs and Co-financing, has been the production of five detailed action plans among ESF providers, which set out significantly more effective marketing and recruitment strategies for people from these target groups. And there is added value in the linkage of this activity with local strategic plans.