News
Youth Transitions in Greater Manchester
We are pleased to announce that a result of supporting Manchester’s Getting a Life Project, Pure have received funding to develop new initiatives across the City of Manchester.
Getting a Life is a three-year cross government programme that aims to identify what needs to happen to ensure that young people with severe learning disabilities leave education and go on to achieve paid employment and lead full lives.
Exciting new initiatives for Pure are the Youth Supported Employment Project (YSEP) and Manchester College transitions projects.
Manchester City Council have agreed to fund a YSEP pilot project which will run initially for 12 months. YSEP employs a ‘peer support’ approach using non-disabled teenagers attending local mainstream schools to provide support to enable the young people aged 16-19 yrs with a disability to undertake work opportunities such as Saturday or part time jobs. This establishes new roles for the main beneficiaries as the disabled and non-disabled teenagers work alongside and learn from each other.
The students without disabilities will have an opportunity to learn that their peers with disabilities share the same aspirations and hopes as they do and support them to achieve their goals. Previous projects have observed that many non-disabled peer partners become champions and advocates on behalf of their peers with learning disabilities in school and the community. Few support models exist which enable young people who need one-to-one support to experience part-time work appropriate to teenage life. This is important, because adult unemployment rates for people with learning disabilities are over 90% nationally.
Pure’s Business Liaison Manager Rachel Roberts-Newton will manage the project alongside Dr Mark Kilsby from the Welsh Centre for Learning Disabilities, Cardiff University and Julie Allan from Canada who developed the model.
Pure Improve Transitions from College and School
As a result of the partnerships gained through Getting a Life, The Manchester College were successful in securing funding from the Learning Skills Council to employ an Employment Officer to establish a Transitions service for their Northenden Campus. In addition, Bolton’s Firwood School approached Pure to establish a Transitions service that will enable their young learning disabled students’ access to quality work experience placements that will result in paid employment opportunities and improve outcomes for their learners.
In both Manchester College and Firwood School, Pure are managing an Employment Officer who is based at each location, who will build relationships with the young people, their parents/carers and the staff within the school and college and the wider community.
These new projects commenced in November, enabling us to work with clients at a younger age and thus provide an alternative to the continuous training and ready-for-work models traditionally used, and eliminate the need to attend day services. At the same time it will help to raise disability awareness to peer groups.
If you wish to know more about how you can meet us please email us or telephone 0161 474 5900.
