Employment Services' Success

SIGNIFICANT and sustained improvements in getting people facing major challenges into employment have been revealed in a new report.

City councillors will be told that 75% of people who engaged with services entered a positive destination (employment, training or further education) and of those 62% were still there after a year.

Mark Flynn, convener of Dundee City Council’s city development committee, said: “Since the Discover Work partnership was created in 2019, and we began recording these figures, the economy across the globe has faced repeated and sustained challenges.

“But these numbers show a positive direction of travel, not only because of the number of previously workless Dundonians who have benefitted but also because of the amount of effort that is being put in by the council and its partners to sustain that.

“When we consider that almost a third of the 2079 people that have been supported since 2019 had never worked and a similar amount came from a household where no one was working, these figures represent good progress for individuals, businesses and the city economy.”

Employability services in the city are directed and delivered by the Discover Work Partnership which includes the Department for Work and Pensions, Dundee City Council, Developing the Young Workforce, Dundee and Angus College, Fair Start Scotland (Remploy), Skills Development Scotland and more than a dozen representatives of the Third Sector.

The current programme has been extended to March next year, to provide continuity during the transition from the European Social Fund to the UK Shared Prosperity Fund.

As part of a five-year strategy the priority for the council and its partners is to help the approximately 11,000 people in the city who want to work but face barriers by transforming the way services are delivered and use funding more efficiently.

This will include the next phase of support from the Scottish Government to Local Employability Partnerships under the new No One Left Behind programme, as well as funding from other sources.

Councillors will be asked on Monday (June 26) to remit to senior officers the finalisation of the commitment of employability funding following an on-going redesign and co-commissioning process being undertaken by the Discover Work Partnership.

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