Tackling Poverty Action Plan

More documents

Recommendations

Info

the creation of up to 1,700 new jobs and the safeguarding of up to1,600.Requiring contractors to provide local employment and trainingopportunities as well as seeking to use local supply chains – throughhelping Welsh Government and the public sector to fully adopt theWelsh Government ‘community benefits’ procurement policy to allappropriate contracts over £2m. This will meet one of the LocalGovernment Compact commitments.We will make efforts to strengthen the economic benefits from routineexpenditure. National Health Service (NHS) capital spending has beenlinked to developing apprenticeships and the impact of the NHS capitalprogramme on job creation is monitored closely. The NHS has beenclosely involved with the efforts to squeeze greater benefits fromprocurement, and the NHS has trialled ways of using its recruitment toprovide training for people with relatively low skills to gain new skillswhich are transferable elsewhere in the economy.We will maintain a focus on health at work to help people hold on tojobs and avoid becoming unemployed by providing a range of supportand advice to individuals, employers and health professionals onimproving health at work, reducing the impact of ill health at work; andencouraging early intervention to support people who become ill atwork.Within our Strategic Equality <strong>Plan</strong> there is an objective to reduce thenumbers of disengaged young people including actions tailored toreduce the over-representation of certain ethnic groups, care leaversand of disabled people among those who are disengaged. Otheractions include monitoring traineeship / apprenticeship by ethnicminority and disabled young people as well as young men and youngwomen.What we will do in additionWorking with businessWe will review the evidence of success of recruitment and wagessubsidies as ways to incentivise businesses to employ individualsdisadvantaged by severe or persistent poverty and propose actionsaccordingly.We will assess our business support activities to see if more can bedone to lift people out of poverty and consider, where appropriate,linkages to Community First areas.As part of our appraisal process for grant support to business, we willintroduce positive weightings to allow for the impact of bringing harder15
to reach groups back into work. We currently take into account thesalary levels of jobs in assessing the quality of projects and allowenhanced cost per job limits in disadvantaged areas. We are alsorevising the appraisal process to better reflect the broader economicbenefits of projects and to be sensitive to key factors of poverty. Thiswill allow the investment process to better support individuals in severeor persistent poverty.We will review the model for supporting social enterprise; consideringhow this sector can provide social services and cultural activities tobuild capacity and skills, and actively boost the economy throughimproving the employment prospects of the economically inactive andworkless.We will be expecting any business seeking support to sign up to ourprinciples of Corporate Social Responsibility which includes acommitment to good employment practices, such as flexible workingarrangements to encourage the creation of jobs that are accessible forparents and other carers.We will take integrated action under the next round of Europeanprogrammes (2014-2020) to promote social inclusion and combatpoverty. The Structural Funds and the Rural Development Programmewill need to be flexible and adaptable, but with a single-minded focuson delivering sustainable growth and jobs for businesses and peopleacross Wales and helping people into work while under the RuralDevelopment Programme there will be a further focus on ruralemployment, Small and Medium Enterprises and community renewal.Community benefit requirementsWe will strengthen the ‘community benefits’ procurement policy andensure the expenditure covered by the Welsh Infrastructure Investment<strong>Plan</strong> incorporates this approach. We will track the outcomes fromadoption of the ‘community benefits’ procurement policy.We will ensure that contracts for our significant investment in transportinfrastructure and services include community benefit requirementsthat deliver local work and training opportunities for unemployedpeople.With a clearer focus on tackling poverty, the importance of removingbarriers to employment is fully recognised within the new CommunitiesFirst programme. The programme has a stronger focus on ensuringthat local action will benefit those who are most vulnerable in deprivedareas, including those who are furthest from the workplace.We will establish an internal Working Group on employmentopportunities from across the Welsh Government’s capital programmeschaired at Ministerial level.16
Page 1 and 2: Tackling PovertyAction Plan2012-201
Page 3 and 4: ContentsPageForeword 1Introduction
Page 5 and 6: Given that many of the factors that
Page 7 and 8: Section 1: Preventing poverty and m
Page 9 and 10: Early support for children and fami
Page 11 and 12: for patients with mental health iss
Page 13 and 14: increase the reach and impact of ma
Page 15 and 16: undertake a more detailed analysis
Page 17: government, the third sector, the W
Page 21 and 22: Section 3: Action to mitigate the i
Page 23 and 24: The Community Food Co-operative Pro
Page 25 and 26: Our flagship Supporting People Prog
Page 27 and 28: Our environmental and sustainable d
Page 29: We will work through existing fora

Tackling Poverty Action Plan

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?