Gateway Family Services
Changing Lives, Changing Services.
We work to improve health, develop skills and opportunities and fight inequalities. We change the way public services work.
Not in Education, Employment or Training?
Gateway Family Services are offering support to young people between the ages of 16 – 24 years who are not in education, employment or training.
We will be offering courses in Employability and Personal Development, Customer Service and Preparing to Work in Adult Social Care.
We have a key worker service that can offer one to one support with CV building, looking for jobs and finding the right training.
If you are aged 16 – 24 years and live in the Birmingham and Solihull area please call Chelsea Gaffey on 0121 456 7820 for more information.
Key Workers Help with Training and Volunteering.
Karen had been a victim of domestic abuse and as a result had been living in women’s refuges in and around Birmingham. Now that she was settled she wanted to carry on with a job in the care industry as this is what she used to do.
Key Worker Rachel, supported Karen to create a CV and an email address. Karen wanted to do a counselling course and an NVQ in Advice and Guidance as she already had an NVQ in Care. Karen knew that she would need to do some voluntary work to gain more experience. Rachel gave Karen some ideas of organisations that she may be able to volunteer with. Karen made contact with them and one organisation invited her to an interview. Rachel downloaded the company’s volunteer handbook and worked with Karen on her interview skills and techniques.
Karen attended the interview and found out that she was successful four days later.
This is a great opportunity for Karen as she will receive training and gain valuable experience as well as getting a reference for any future applications she makes.
*Names have been changed.
Key Worker Support Helps Diane to Find a Job
Diane*, a university graduate, registered with the key worker service in November 2011. She was interested in becoming a cardiac volunteer, and following interview she was accepted for the role.
Gateway Family Services offered all the volunteers a training package and Diane also attended training provided by University Hospital Birmingham.
Diane was still getting support from the key worker service while she was volunteering. During her one to one sessions Diane updated her CV and was given tips to help her with her job search. As it had been a while since she had a job interview she was also given support with her interview skills. Diane and her key worker did mock interviews and the key worker gave her some frequently asked interview questions. Diane was able to go away and think about how she would answer those questions.
Within weeks Diane had secured an interview within the Audiology Department of a hospital in Oxford. Diane was successful and is now working in her new job.
*Names have been changed.
Volunteering – a stepping stone back into employment
Having been made unemployed during the height of the recession, Paul was lost as to what to do next. After seeing if retirement suited him, he realised that he wanted to get back into a working routine and wanted to give something back.
Paul had heard about Gateway’s volunteer programme with University Hospital Birmingham through his neighbour and decided that it was for him, signing up as soon as possible to help cardio patients to recover and rehabilitate.
Here he talks about his experience of being made redundant and finding his volunteering placement.
Paul now works with Gateway as a Support Worker, helping others to find employment or training, just as he did.
Khan Thought He Had All The Experience and Qualifications Needed to get a Job in England
Khan came to the UK to live with his wife but he came on as a visitor visa so he had to go back to Pakistan. Eventually he got a spouse visa but it didn’t take him long to realise that job prospects were not what he thought they were. His wife was friends with my wife and she made a referral to me because she knew I was an employment advisor.
Khan has a lot of work experience and qualifications but they are not recognised here, a Masters in Pakistan is the same as an Honours degree in England. He has looked for work outside of his field because he knew that he wouldn’t get the type of work that he has done previously. In Pakistan he was a teacher and here he had been self employed selling sports goods but the competition was too big.
Khan’s wife was working and supporting the family inspite of her health problems. Khan now needed to take over and be the main breadwinner.
Khan did not have a CV or references. I told him that working culture is different in England and we need to start with a CV. Khan was confident that he had all the experience he needed and would not need help with interviews etc.
At the first Interview Skills Workshop Khan’s eyes were opened to the way things are done in this country and afterwards told me that he would never have passed an interview in a hundred years if he hadn’t done the workshop.
To get references he agreed to do some voluntary work at the QE through Gateway and he got all the training that went with the volunteering job. He now has something to put on his CV and he has now got a job in a factory. It is not what he wanted but he is bringing home a wage and supporting his family.
Getting people ready to work
Finding a job at the moment is tough for a lot of people, tougher still if you have few qualifications or are lacking experience in the world of work so we understand that many people need help to overcome the barriers and fears that they may have in stepping into the unknown.
Shamana joined one of our Employability Courses this year when she was struggling to find work. Initially overwhelmed by the thought of going back to training, especially as she thought she was a bit older than the average learner, Shamana tells us how she was made to feel comfortable in her course while being offered the support and guidance to help herself become more ready for work and confident in her own abilities at the same time.
We currently have more courses running that can help you develop your work readiness, CV or even just your confidence. They are free to join and normally in your local area.
If you are aged 24 and under and would like to know more about our courses then please contact Chelsea Gaffey on chelsea.gaffey@gatewayfs.org or phone on 0121 456 7820
Our Keyworkers get people into the jobs they want
13 weeks pregnant and under a lot of stress, Diane* was a client of our POW service. She was involved with an abusive partner and had suffered an early miscarriage, as well as experiencing the onset of depression. During that time her benefits had also been cancelled.
Diane was referred to the key worker service where she was offered support and guidance from one of Gateway’s Key-workers, Susan Bernard. When Susan met her she was still struggling financially. Susan supported Diane through frequent one to one visits and phone calls and signposted her to relevant agencies, who helped Diane get motivated and search for courses as she was interested in voluntary/paid employment. Diane’s burning ambition since leaving school has been to work in the Travel and Tourism Industry.
Diane was very resilient despite all that she had been through as a young person and had been doing voluntary work with West Midlands Fire Service for a time. She had also managed to find a voluntary placement with Travel Lodge which she has hoped would lead to a permanent position.
She enrolled for a French language class which she has been attending one evening a week to improve her skills but unfortunately had a setback due to a car accident which meant she wasn`t able to continue her role with Travel Lodge. This was really disappointing for her because she had set her heart on working for them as a Receptionist/Front of House role and had done all the required training for the organisation .This was just another barrier to overcome for Diane.
Susan supported her to complete a quality CV and covering letter so she was prepared for future job vacancies.
With the gained confidence and tools for finding employment Diane applied for a job with Birmingham Airport for a Security post. She was not expecting to receive a positive response due to lack of experience but was keen to apply and hope for the best. Diane was then short listed for the interview which was a full days assessment. Diane was very nervous but Susan supported her with interview preparation and confidence building to help Diane focus on the task ahead.
Diane’s application was successful out of sixty applicants and feels over joyed with what she has managed to achieve after such a difficult start
Diane has now started her new job and is finally getting to where she wants to be in life, all with her new baby!
*Name changed to protect identity
Hitting the targets – missing the point
Once again this week I will be spending my time responding to service specifications through a procurement portal. It’s good that there are still tenders to respond to, but….
What I write in response to their questions doesn’t give me the opportunity to talk about the really important stuff, the life-changing opportunities and the amazing journey that some people will make.
Every day I hear remarkable stories from staff about the achievements of the people they work with, the overwhelming barriers they face and the challenges they have overcome.
And every month I read the reports to the commissioners about the targets they set us and how we have achieved them. As I read these reports I see nothing about individual’s triumphs, –largely because this information is not measured as a target.
Yet when I do tell people about the difficult circumstances that some of our clients are in, and how we have helped them everyone agrees it’s the right thing to do, it’s needed and often changes lives – will these experiences ever change services?
We know loads of stuff
The term commissioning comes from shipbuilding, and it feels to me that often we are treated as an empty vessel. The reality is that we are packed to the rafters with experience, knowledge, skills and understanding from all sorts of perspectives – community based organisations usually are.
Trust is a great thing
The thing that makes us able to help people, is because we can listen to them, often we have been where they are, sometime live in the same places and most importantly we can see many perspectives, we are here because of our life experience. Someone recently said to me “The best guides in life are those that are just a few steps ahead of you” – that is how we see ourselves in relation to our clients. We need to be trusted to work in ways we know best.
We will find the way – see you there.
Where it starts to become uneasy is when the path is set, the route is determined and the road to a target is specified. In our sector, there is a well known route – it’s called the Patient Pathway and many many hours have been spent designing it, mostly by people who are never going to walk down it.
People can do even greater things
About 95% of the time spent by people working in communities is on negotiating the hoops that have been set down, in order to get to a target.
Negotiating services and systems is a job in itself; how to find what you want, where you want it and how you want it would be much easier if the road to the target was simple, the signs were clear and perhaps designed by those who use it.
Community/voluntary organisations, social enterprises, Community Interest Companies know loads of things, we don’t want to be responders, we need to be specifiers – then maybe targets will become more relevant to the point.
Skills in Birmingham
There has been an interesting conversation this week about what it is that employers value when recruiting staff With the Birmingham and Solihull LEP meeting at the end of the month to discuss what skills the people of Birmingham need, Nick Booth from Podnosh, has tried to gather the views of people from across the city to see what they feel is currently missing in his blog piece below;
Views are sought from local organisations from across different sectors, each describing their interactions with the percieved skills (or lack of them) in the local area and also commenting on what they think is needed to make sure that Birmingham, and it’s people, is ready for the future.
Karl Binder, from Adhere left his views on the site, amongst others, while Gateway’s Chief Executive, Vicki Fitzgerald also commented on the debate by saying, “As a training provider and accredited delivery agent for qualifications, people often think we value qualifications above all else. This isn’t true, in fact the opposite is the case. We employ over 60 people that we have recruited for their experience, mostly of life, family, barriers, prejudice and often overcoming the most difficult of circumstances. Their experience is nothing without genuine commitment, passion and enthusiasm for what they are doing and it’s these values that we would recruit for.
Often qualifications mean exclusion for many rather than inclusion.I often see them as a hoop people have to jump through in order to do things that really matter. For me, while others were doing their degrees or their masters, I was learning about real life and real people and it taught me a huge amount.
We work mostly with the NHS and professional qualifications are necessary in most cases (my dentist for example!) Unlike many other sectors the qualifications rarely change and this can mean a job for life, but it also can mean that you never get to employ people who see the world from different perspectives – always valuing skills and qualifications over experience and values makes for a very insular organisation
So what do you think?
Are the skills that people are learning useful in today’s world? What skills, and when, should we be looking for when employing staff and does experience and ‘life-skills’ make you stand out more than qualifications?
Strictly Not Rehabilitation
Our new out-patient service offers cardio out-patients and their families the chance to work with a “befriender” to progress their recovery plan.
The befriender will be a first contact point for any aspects of the recovery programme and could assist with going to the shops, getting to the planned dance classes.
Part of Strictly is an invitation to attend a weekly dance class – whether to improve your dancing skills (!), meet with other patients or one of our team, or simply socialise.
The Strictly dance session will be held weekly, at Selly Oak Methodist Church in Langleys Road . At this class the patients and their partner/friend, if you choose to bring one, will be invited to get up and dance. Dances will be available that don’t need a partner. Professional instruction will be provided! If people don’t want to dance and just prefer to just sit it out that’s fine too. The idea is to have fun!
The programme is free and will last 12 weeks during which you will be asked to complete questionnaires so we can get an idea of how the programme is doing.
Here, one of our volunteers, Jim, explains why he has decided to give up some of his time to volunteer within his local community after being made redundant