Access 2 Employment / The Job Zone

The Job Zone partnership tackles: low skills, worklessness, poverty and social exclusion. It is led by Learning Partnerships and includes: Job Centre Plus, Leeds City Council's Jobs and Skills, BEST Ltd, Joseph Priestley College, Leeds Thomas Danby, Aire Valley Employment Team, GIPSIL, Hamara Healthy Living Centre, re'New, Unity Housing Association, St Luke's Cares and Vera Media.

Thank you for all of the support we have received from our partners.

The Job Zone is funded from the Neighbourhood Renewal Fund, the Transitional Neighbourhood Renewal Fund and Access to Employment (A2E). The process was basically very simple. Family Learning Workers who are based in primary schools had access to parents from a wide range of backgrounds particularly economically excluded parents. The Learning Zone gave us the opportunity to engage parents in their own learning. The Job Zone enables us to support parents and other adults into work and completes the circle from economical exclusion to economic inclusion.

The project focuses on some of the most deprived areas of Leeds: Burmantofts, Lincoln Green, Gipton, Harehills, Chapeltown, Seacroft, Holbeck, Beeston Hill and the Aire Valley employment catchment areas.

Combating child poverty and therefore family poverty, is the key to raising attainment. One child in five in Leeds lives in a workless household. Economic growth in the city has meant a substantial reduction in unemployment. Those that remain unemployed are the most difficult to place in employment and come from communities where worklessness has become a way of life over successive generations. Their children are among the most disadvantaged and socially excluded in the city.

The Job Zone Partnership has proved very successful - its achievements include:

• 501 people into employment and 776 people helped with job search, to write a CV and fill in an application form
• 60 learners benefiting from Work Experience
• Organising 17 Jobs and Learning Markets
• Over 100 people benefitted from our English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) course

The Job Zone has made a small contribution to the overall goal of ending child poverty but we believe this model, if rolled out across the city could make a significant contribution.

"Children living with a workless single parent are over three times more likely to be in poverty than those living with a single parent who is in part time work. They are also eight times as likely to be in poverty when compared to those whose parent works full time." (DWP, In Work, Better off, July 07).

Our New Opportunities Programme which is part of the Job Zone targets Lone Parents who are workless and supports them into employment. It starts in April 2008 and runs until March 2010. The programme is on target to delivery all of its outputs.