A Fair Chance:
Community-led Employment Solutions for Health and Social Care
This report lays out the findings of over 2 years of work with organisations in the West Yorkshire region, with a particular focus on Wakefield as a place partner, in a programme looking at new and innovative ways that the health and care system can tackle health inequalities through the use of employment.
From extensive qualitative interviews with system leadership all the way through to local community members, the programme has compiled an extensive qualitative database of research aimed at understanding the barriers at every level to some of the most prescient workforce issues of the day.
A set of themes coalesced around:
- A call for new and joined up approaches to training and skills in partnership with VCSEs, and creating those pipelines between hiring orgs and training providers;
- The need to move towards flexible shift hours to unlock the many people for whom caring responsibilities must take precedence, but still wish to work;
- Outdated entry requirements causing barriers for people who are more than qualified, and overbearing application processes that aren’t feasible for the long-term;
- The strong desire from people to see that there are options for progression in lower levelled roles;
- And the need for targeted employment support, from the very basics of awareness of roles, to pre-application assurances, to guidance on the application itself, to interviews that allow people to show off their actual ability to do the role, to an induction process that allows for people to ease back into working life.
The programme culminated with a new take on employment issues, suggested and led by local people – a community-designed Job Fair held at a local community centre, attended by 12 system partners, in a show of putting talk into action and directly tackling some of the challenges presented to us by the community.
If you would like to learn more about our work on the project we would be happy to meet with you.
Contacts: Joel Rennie joel.rennie@bbi.uk.com and Jon Bashford jon.bashford@bbi.uk.uk
Report Authors
Dr. Jon Bashford
Research Director
Joel Rennie
Programme Manager
Nic Werran
Partnerships Director
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