Welfare Reform Team Evaluation of European Social Fund pilot project 2014-2015

4. Partnerships
A key aim of the ESF pilot project was to develop a local network of support and
training partners who help participants with a bespoke set of training and support
services. Engaging with these services helped the participants to address their
individual needs and address the issues that are creating barriers to work.
Caseworkers asked participants at their triage meeting to identify what they feel their
personal support needs are, and what they think is stopping them from materially
improving their situation - for example, problems with debt or housing, poor English
language or numeracy skills, a lack of confidence about applying for a vacancy or
being interviewed for a job.
Having identified levels of need amongst the initial intake of participants, the team
discussed potential gaps in provision being provided by the council’s existing partner
network. The Partnership and Communications Officer led meetings with relevant
existing local organisations with the potential capacity to provide the services.
The expanded network of local partners comprises a number of existing delivery
partners and a number of newly engaged organisations. We agreed service level
agreements with delivery partners to formalise our working arrangements and also to
ensure funding guidelines and requirements were met.
Over the course of the project we continued to review participants’ needs and where
gaps were identified we worked with partners to provide the support or training.
On completion of the project delivery partners were sent a consultancy survey to get
feedback on their involvement in the project and ask for their thoughts on how they
could improve this (for a summary of this feedback please see Appendix 2).
When identifying potential new partners, we engaged with organisations that could
support customers through a “business as usual” delivery model. This helped us to
sustain a network that continued beyond the lifetime of the project.
Key Partners
Local mental health charity Restore provided specialist employment counsellors to
work with the casework team. The counsellor met with participants, offering
specialist one-to-one support via meetings at the council’s contact centre and on the
phone, offering practical help around mental health issues and addressing long
underlying mental health conditions that are often a significant barrier to finding work.
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