European Social Fund in England

Matching Ability With Jobs (MAWJ) - Portsmouth City Council

The project ran from March 2004 to February 2007 and received ESF funding of £629,000. Project Partners included Portsmouth City Council, Department for Work and Pensions, Disability Matters and Loughborough University. It covered Hampshire and the Isle of Wight.

Broad target groups included: long-term unemployed people especially returners to benefits; people who lack appropriate skills to return to work, or who have no or outdated qualifications; and economically inactive people of working age including lone parents and people on incapacity benefits.

The project aimed to help participants improve their employability through a range of assessments and activities. It provided a professionally designed and tested series of occupational psychologist interventions to help them prepare for employment.

Particularly successful were the intensive Work Psychologist interventions and the flexible structure of the six-week programme, which was tailor made to individual needs. By year 3 the basic structure was well established with an initial 4-day induction followed by 5 weeks of at least one group day plus 1-2-1 intervention. Other activities included work experience placements and tasters, and mock interview sessions.

323 people accessed the programme. 96 entered sustainable employment and a further 43 accessed Jobcentre Plus work-based training. The remainder had opportunities to improve vocational and key skills.

Work 4 U

The project runs from January 2007 to March 2008 and has been awarded £250,000 ESF funding. Project Partners include: Portsmouth City Council, Southampton City council, Gosport Borough Council, Isle of Wight Council, The Wheatsheaf Trust, Portsmouth Housing Association, Tourism South East.

The project targets lone parents in selected wards across Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. It aims to remove barriers to employment and improve skills to a level so they can gain employment or enter further training.

Using the MAWJ model, a similar structured six-week programme has been developed taking account of the needs of lone parents. In addition to work focused workshops, the programme includes: motivation, confidence building, advice and guidance, and short vocational courses such as Food Hygiene and Customer Service.

Currently 113 lone parents have accessed the programme, 26 have entered employment and 11 have engaged in vocational training.