WIREDGOV

Young care leavers and young people who offend in Wales can enhance their chances of finding employment and accessing further learning or training thanks to a £3.3m Getting Ahead grant announced recently.

Funding has been awarded to a partnership lead by Llamau, a homelessness charity for the most vulnerable young people and women in Wales, which will support 440 young people across the country.

Along with partners CBSA (Wales), Sova, Gisda and Construction Youth Trust (CYT), each organisation will focus on their specialist area to help beneficiaries including providing paid work placement opportunities, mentoring and support. The project will be known as Symud Ymlaen/Moving Forward to reflect the progression that the project is intended to enable in the vulnerable young people who will benefit from it.

Homelessness charities Llamau and Gisda will help with accommodation issues, education, training and counselling with the aim of reducing and preventing offending and Sova will train and supervise volunteers to help steer people away from crime. The Construction Youth Trust will provide advice and guidance, mentoring, construction skills, employability skills, site visits, work experience and work placement opportunities while CBSA will also offer workplace skills and job opportunities.  

Frances Beecher, Llamau’s Chief Executive, below: “Llamau and our partner organisations are looking forward to the challenges of delivering the Symud Ymlaen/ Moving Forward project. Working in partnership with organisations of the calibre of CBSA (Wales), Sova, Gisda and Construction Youth Trust is a privilege and we are sure that our combined skills and expertise will enable us to deliver exceptional outcomes for some of the most vulnerable people in Wales.

“The project will enable young people who have offended and those leaving the care system to move seamlessly into work, creating real, positive change for these vulnerable individuals, for Welsh businesses and for the wider community.”

With figures continuing to show that youth unemployment in Wales remains stubbornly high and above the UK average (Source: Office of National Statistics), the £3.3 million Getting Ahead programme will help this most vulnerable group of young people.
.
Getting Ahead is a non-Lottery funding programme which is being delivered through the BIG Fund and is funded by money that has been dormant in bank and building society accounts across the UK for 15 years or more. How the money is being spent in Wales has been determined by policy directions issued to the Big Lottery Fund by the Welsh Government.

Youth unemployment presents a troubling picture for Wales and the UK.  The Welsh Government Deputy Minister for Skills and Technology, Jeff Cuthbert AM said: “Our absolute priority in these tough times is to create jobs and enable growth across Wales.  Programmes like Getting Ahead are essential in taking this agenda forward and getting some of our more vulnerable young people into work.

“The number of vulnerable young people aged 18-24 who are not engaged in education employment or training (NEET) in Wales is a concern to the Welsh Government and we are determined to do all we can to help them.

“For some of these young people, time spent outside of education, employment or training could affect their ability to compete for jobs in the long-term. This, in turn, could have an adverse impact on their motivation, self-esteem and overall health and wellbeing.

“Through this £3.3 million grant we will help some of our most vulnerable young people to enhance their chances of progressing into sustainable employment by increasing their employability skills and giving them that all-important advantage in the jobs market.”

Highlighting the importance of the funding, Big Lottery Fund Wales Committee Member, Gareth Newton, said: “Young offenders and young care leavers who are disaffected or disengaged from learning and employment are the most vulnerable members of our society. That’s why this £3.3 million awarded today is so important because it offers tailored and essential advice and support.”

“Vulnerable young people require more support to enter work than others and offering tailored support and training will motivate them and help them to achieve their full potential.”

Big Lottery Fund Press Office – Ben Payne 01686 611720
Out of hours contact: 07500 951707
Follow BIG on Twitter: www.twitter.com/biglotterywales
Find BIG on facebook: www.facebook.com/biglotteryfundwales 
Public Enquiries Line: 0300 123 0735                           Textphone:  0845 6021 659
Full details of the Big Lottery Fund programmes and grant awards are available on the website: www.biglotteryfund.org.uk

Notes to Editors

• In Wales, the Big Lottery Fund is rolling out close to £100,000 a day in National Lottery good cause money, which together with other Lottery distributors means that across Wales most people are within a few miles of a Lottery-funded project.
• The Big Lottery Fund is responsible for giving out 46 per cent of money raised by the National Lottery. Our mission is to bring real improvements to communities and the lives of people most in need.
• The National Lottery Act 2006 allows us to handle non-Lottery as well as Lottery Funding. We do this by operating as BIG Fund.
• The Getting Ahead programme is funded by money that has been dormant in bank and building society accounts across the UK for 15 years or more.  How we spend this money in Wales has been determined by Policy Directions issued to the Big Lottery Fund by the Welsh Government.  This programme has been developed to meet the need identified in those directions.
• The Big Lottery Fund, the largest of the National Lottery good cause distributors, has been rolling out grants to health, education, environment and charitable causes across the UK since its inception in June 2004. It was established by Parliament on 1 December 2006.
• Since the National Lottery began in 1994, 28p from every pound spent by the public has gone to Good Causes. As a result, over £30 billion has now been raised and more than 400,000 grants given out across the arts, sport, heritage, charities, health, education and the environment.