Customer Employment Scheme Success
In December 2009, South London YMCA along with colleagues at Thames Reach set up an exciting new London Customer Employment Partnership, which is now providing real employment opportunities for homeless people.
Nine agencies joined the six month pilot scheme: Broadway, Centrepoint, Depaul UK, Look Ahead, The Passage, Providence Row, South London YMCA, Thames Reach and Homeless Link.
The aim of the Partnership is to increase opportunities of paid employment, work experience and volunteering within the nine organisations for current and former service users of these agencies. Members of the Partnership have committed to working to remove organisational barriers to service user employment and striving to effect culture change within their organisation so that service user employment is embraced by current staff.
We have been delighted with the progress of the scheme and are pleased to announce that South London YMCA has recently recruited a Handyperson and Cleaning Assistant via the Partnership. These two newly created customer positions are both permanent and paid. There will be more to come! The pilot is now being evaluated, and we will announce the results of that evaluation in due course. In the meantime, the success of the pilot has encouraged all nine agencies to commit to extending the approach, and we now look forward to further success though this innovative partnership working.
