Renaisi has been commissioned to support the programme management of Hackney’s City Strategy Pathfinder programme, Ways into Work, which seeks to transform the way that the council engages with economically inactive residents. The engagement programme is additionally being backed up by ensuring that individuals benefit from the basic skills and technical skills support as well as providing direct access to employers.
Renaisi is leading on the design, development and delivery of this £870,000 programme.
The key to our CSP’s end to end approach is the engagement of the housing sector in tackling worklessness. Our programme brings together a partnership of the major housing providers in the Borough with the ability and interest to tackling worklessness and uses their trusted status amongst residents and local networks to disseminate information. This is done via their local infrastructure and staff – housing offices, community centres. Additionally, our CSP approach uses housing services to help overcome residents’ barriers to employment, such as re-locating residents closer to their place of work, fast tracking housing benefit claims for residents who lose employment, removing the risk of them becoming homeless.
In the initial stages, the programme commissioned nine housing providers and two employment support organisations to identify and deliver services to unemployed residents in Hackney. As the CSP has developed, additional statutory and private sector partners have been incorporated into the programme, including The Learning Trust, TNG and five ESOL providers.
The CSP programme has been very effective at supporting unemployed people in Hackney back into work. Last year, the CSP helped over 750 people in the borough into sustained employment.
