Two Islingtons: Understanding the Problem - Islington Council

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4.2. In terms of poverty around 40% of 0-15 year olds are living in families on means tested workless benefits, which represents 14,055 of a total of 35,453 Islington children aged 0- 15. There are over 16,500 children and young people aged 0-19 living in workless families. Older people from BME groups are more likely to live in households below national income level (31% compared with general figure of 20%) and are far more likely to experience problems claiming benefits than White British (only 11% BME have NOT had problems compared with 42% White). In Islington, the highest rate of people never having worked is amongst the Bangladeshi community around 29%. This rate is proportionally nine times that of White British residents and significantly higher than the Islington average with is around 6%. A range of activities and actions has been in place to mitigate the impact of the recession upon residents including 4.3. Islington Working, Islington Working for Parents and Adult and Community Learning provide Islington’s main support services to helping local people become skilled, employable and confident about finding work. The services work closely together to ensure that there is a progression route towards getting and keeping a job and at the same time offers a recruitment service to employers. 4.4. The Islington Working package of training and employment support assists a wide range of Islington clients, offering paid work and work experience placements to Islington residents. The worklessness programmes are targeted to address the needs of disadvantaged communities with BME clients making up 68% or over of the total of those receiving employment support or starting a paid job. Disabled clients make up 15% of those receiving employment support. Activities have included Islington Working link officers working with ‘Connect’ to roll out neighbourhood outreach and referral door knocking in Finsbury Park while community ‘employment coaches’ are also working with out-reach health workers and health centres. There are eight specialist parent advisers to delivery new services to support lone parents with children under 7 and other parents with children under 4 to help them work towards employability and to start planning towards employment. The staff work very closely with benefits advisers, health workers and children’s centre staff to ensure that parents receive their maximum benefits entitlement and ‘better off’ calculations before entering work. To date the team have supported 627 parents and 141 have been referred for training. 4.5. During 2009/10 Islington engaged with 2,000 clients who were 44% female, 10% disabled and 67% BME of which 50% had been out of work for 6 months or more. Over the year, 689 clients were successful in securing either paid employment or a substantial work experience placement. 539 clients secured paid employment of 16 hours a week or more through Islington Working, including 167 through the Future Jobs Fund project; a further 20 secured paid employment for less than 16 hours a week and 130 secured a work experience placement. During 2010/11 to date a further 579 clients are being supported including 142 parents with 102 gaining work. The service to deliver on this project is through Islington Working for Parents. 4.6. The Adult and Community Learning (ACL) programme helps residents in the development of functional and employability skills, including language skills, and referral to projects that can assist with vocational training, job hunting skills and introductions to employers with vacancies. The main educational partner is City and Islington College (CIC). ACL and CIC are working together to deliver a new ESOL, literacy and numeracy project funded through the Islington Strategic Partnership’s Social and Economic Well- 8
Being Board (SEW). ACL also works in partnership with voluntary organisations and other statutory services. ACL’s mission is to improve the quality of life and life chances for Islington’s most disadvantaged and vulnerable adults and their families, many of whom are furthest away from the labour market. Most of these residents have been disengaged from education and would not access provision in mainstream educational settings. In 2009-10 ACL courses were attended by 2,182 learners, with a total of 5,123 enrolments across the year. Additionally the number of Islington residents achieving Pre Entry, Entry Level, Level 1 and Level 2 skills and qualifications totalled 1,502 throughout 2009/10. 4.7. Further employment and training opportunities are gained through S106 planning agreements and are used to secure construction training placements for local residents, as well as a range of opportunities for training in the end use of the employment developments. Developers have also signed up to the Council's local procurement programme through which £7m of contracts have been awarded to Islington and Camden firms in the first year of the current programme. Local companies employ a higher proportion of Islington residents compared with outside firms and so this helps to create further local employment opportunities. 4.8. The Child Poverty Innovation Pilot aims to help those children living in poverty within the borough. There are 3 arms to child poverty: development and analysis (using data to effectively target those families and children in poverty with services), delivery (the principle underlying this approach is early intervention) and sustainability (training the 3rd sector). 4.9. The project has also been imbedded via the service planning process which has so far secured over 70 commitments across the council to improve child poverty. These range from commitments to reviewing strategies to ensure that the needs of low income families are considered, through to a commitment to train frontline staff to be able to provide employment advice when they come into contact with people. Assessment of progress will be made at the end of the financial year to measure the impact of the commitments made. Availability of up to date data on child poverty within the borough, in comparison to other authorities regionally and nationally, is limited and therefore the high-level impact of the pilot in terms of data analysis won’t be available for some time. 4.10. In 2007 Age Concern Islington undertook research with the Islington benefits team to identify the barriers experienced by older people from BME groups when trying to claim benefits they are entitled to. The aim of the research was to develop solutions to overcome these barriers, for the benefit of all older people. The final report ‘I never beg me bread yet’ recommended a number of actions. Some of the projects implemented as a result included creating mechanisms for word of mouth referrals, training for staff, and improvements to communication material to target older people. As at March 2010 the Joint Visiting Team and Islington Benefits Team had increased income maximisation for all older people by £3 million. Since 2007 the average annual value generated by take up of key benefits by people aged 60+ increased by £303 to £2,632, an increase of around 6%. 4.11. As with educational attainment inequalities, inequalities experienced by residents of the borough in relation to access to work and employment is a significant challenge. It is difficult to assess the impact of many of the projects and activities in place to tackle worklessness when nationally the recession has had a significant impact on employment and income. However, we do know that Islington is narrowing the gap with the rest of England in relation to the National Indicators on reducing child poverty and reducing the 9
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Two Islingtons: Understanding the Problem - Islington Council

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