Equal-Works ezine December 2008
Equal-Works.com is a searchable web site offering easy access to the products, processes and good practice developed under the ESF Equal programme in Great Britain. Although Equal Development Partnerships have ceased operation, Equal-Works continues to track the outcomes, achievements and lessons learnt.
This electronic newsletter highlights some of the thousands of enlightening resources available on the site.
Editorial: Life after . . .
If you’ve ever spent much time reading evaluations of development projects and programmes, especially learning and development initiatives, you’ll know that only rarely do you hear what happened after they’ve finished.
That’s one of the points of Equal Works: to focus some attention on the results of all the cash and effort.
Evaluation wonks should recognise the name Donald Kirkpatrick: an American academic who did his 1959 PhD on evaluating learning. He said that to understand learning initiatives you should collect four kinds of information.
First you need to check the reactions of learners and their intention to use what they’ve learnt.
Second, be clear about what it is they’ve learnt.
Third – and this is where it gets interesting – find out how they’ve used the learning, what they’ve done differently with it in mind.
Finally, ask if anything changed as a result: if the learning and its consequent changes of behaviour had an impact.
Sadly, we spend little time and effort when we invest in innovatory programmes like Equal asking these third and fourth groups of questions.
Equal Works provides you with some of the answers. And they’re encouraging.
Many partnerships have changed how things are done. Think of the very public successes of ACE in promoting reforms for carers. Carers are now treated differently and better. They have more opportunities to learn and work. The work and the lobbying aren’t over, and much of their persuasive authority is based on what was achieved with Equal funding.
Others have used Equal to transform themselves into going concerns, many as social enterprises. Others still have become ongoing features of local public or voluntary provision. And some have found their niches in larger bodies: national or regional agencies, or universities.
Wherever they are, it’s worth asking the Kirkpatrick questions, ‘What did they do next that was different?’, and, ‘Did something else happen as a result?’.
The idea of Equal Works is that interested users should be able to do just that. Here are just a few examples of the rewards it can bring. Look at them, and then search for more.
Cementaprise
If you watched the Equal Works interview with then Skills Minister Bill Rammell (now in the Foreign Office) earlier in the year, you’ll have seen Robert Morrall of Cement distinguishing himself as one of the panel of Equal people after the minister had finished.
Robert was commenting based on lessons he’d learnt leading Cement in channeling people from disadvantaged backgrounds into jobs in the construction industry. Much of the work was in alliance with prisons and in partnership with the LSC, the CITB, local authorities and Business Links in Acton, Hertfordshire, Milton Keynes and Northamptonshire.
Now the Equal legacy has been transformed in Cementaprise, a social enterprise that describes itself as ‘a special kind of training and recruitment agency’. But it’s more than that because they’ve launched a revenue-generating pallet-making business as well. And they’ve kept up their training of offenders, ex-offenders, drug abusers, young people at risk, disadvantaged groups and mature workers.
Trading Up
Another new social enterprise is aimed at ‘encouraging more enterprise in disadvantaged communities, under-resourced and underrepresented groups’. Called Enterprise Taktix, and based in Kent, it has grown out of the Trading Up partnership.
Trading Up’s argument was that most of the existing business support schemes don’t take real account of either the needs or the potential of disadvantaged/excluded or under-resourced groups. It’s much more regionally focused than it used to be, but still remains principally focused on mainstream groups.
Trading Up is a pilot project with a main focus on the theme of providing access to a community-based confidence-building programme built around the establishment and running of a business.
Well, through Equal, Trading Up made its point. Between 2004 and June 2006, 494 people took part in its programme and 176 of them went on to the core business start-up training course. Forty-two businesses were created as a result, and Business Support Kent CIC has responded by launching the not-for-profit Enterprise Taktix Ltd. Take a look.
Wiser about being older
South West Opportunities for Older People (SWOOP) came out of Exeter University’s Marchmont Observatory. It’s a research and policy lobbying initiative aimed at employers, employment services and older workers themselves. Now that Equal funding has finished, it’s still working as hard as ever on behalf of over-45s in one of the UK’s demographically older regions.
The Equal SWOOP partnership focused hard on engaging employers from the point of view of older workers. It concluded that it was more use making the business case to employers for hiring older workers than trying to sell diversity. It was best to work through business networks, and use business brokers to get the message across.
SWOOP is still researching the implications of demographic ageing, examining what forms of support help older people get and keep jobs, and influencing decisions on services and service delivery. Click here to find out more.
The right deal for homeless people
Another Equal success that has been fully capitalised on by its parent partner is the TMD project (Tackling Multiple Disadvantage in London by Improving Employability).
OSW (Off the Streets and into Work) won a 2008 Charity Award for its work in Equal: www.osw.org.uk/about/news.asp. Its legacy is a new model of service delivery, strongly supported by many of London’s key housing and homelessness organisations, who were Equal partners. The model identifies necessary services and best delivery practice to help homeless people into sustainable employment. And it deals with costs, and the benefits to government of getting it right. It’s a template for OSW’s continuing battle to fight homelessness with jobs. Read the report.
Cars and Care
INSPIRE in the North East was all about establishing social enterprises. It directly promoted three new ones, and supported the replication of five others. All have been mainstreamed after the end of Equal funding.
One is the Option C car club: a North East regional network of car clubs. The idea is to provide a workable alternative to car ownership: two clear pluses – social and environmental. For more information see: http://www.optionc.co.uk/
Care and Share Associates (CASA) Limited has been establishing a ‘sectoral organisation or hub’ of home care units replicating the experience and expertise of the region’s leading home care social enterprise, Sunderland Home Care Associates, in the development of home care ‘replication units’ across the region and elsewhere. It provides development and support services to satellite home care social enterprises, and has now been incorporated as Care and Share Associates Limited.
Pastures new
‘Are you 45 or over? Do you feel like you’re being put out to pasture?’, asks the new OWEN web site.
Well, Equal certainly proved fertile ground for OWEN (Older Workers Employment Network). Having worked with more than 230 older workers and placed 87 of them in new jobs, it has been funded by Yorkshire Forward as part of the MORE (Making Opportunities Realistic for Everyone) programme.
Enterprise support has been a part of many Equal partnerships. In Northampton, the smart work done by the University of
Northampton Business Creation partnership was targeted on job-seekers to open up business creation as an option. It was successful in Equal, and part of its work has now found a permanent life as the University of Northampton Enterprise Club. Check it out on the web site:
www.sunley-northampton.co.uk/enterprise_club.
Strictly come learning
Not all the Equal legacies are about business creation. Slough’s Creative Academy, which was a partner in the Last Mile, has got together with Thames Valley University to launch a foundation degree in dance.
And it’s not like any other. Supported by the Rambert Dance Company, The Hip Hop Collective and Foundation Degree Forward, the two-year programme offers intensive practical dance training with professional qualifications and work experience. Its twelve modules and variety of classes cover jazz, break, street, Bollywood, ballet, Bharat Natyam, Graham, release, Cunningham and tap.
For more information see: www.creativeacademy.org/id2.html
