Want to help A4e? Volunteer as a mentor to unemployed customers
Post Categories: Action 4 Employment • Flexible New Deal • a4e
Tags: a4e, Action For Employment Ltd, eltham, Flexible New Deal, greenwich, long term unemployment, Seetec, sustainable jobs
“Want to help people? Volunteer as a mentor to unemployed customers in Eltham and Greenwich”
Want to help people? Volunteer as a mentor to unemployed customers in Eltham and Greenwich (London)
A4e are urgently seeking enthusiastic highly motivated volunteers to mentor long-term unemployed people on a weekly basis in Woolwich and Croydon. Mentors provide support information and guidance helping their mentees to gain confidence and overcome the barriers they face in gaining sustainable employment. Extensive training ongoing support is provided and travel costs are covered. Also after one month of mentoring you can opt for C& G recognition certificate as a Community Mentor. All mentoring sessions take place between Mon-Fri within the hours of 9:30 to 16:30 at one of our locations. The minimum commitment we require is 3-6 hours per week for a minimum of 6 months. Locations Eltham and Greenwich For more info please contact Milana on 0208 746 9031 or to apply please send your CV and a cover letter with a preferred location to a4ementoring@a4e.co.uk
Want to help A4e? A4e are seeking volunteers to help deliver its multiple-million pound Flexible New Deal contract. I am not sure especially why, as Flexible New Deal payments are upfront service fees (that do not require participants attendance as was the case with New Deal). Some other providers have been using Armstrong Learning for mentoring services or other mentoring services. A4e require people to mentor unemployed customers for 6 hours per week (3 hours minimum if they are desperate i.e. if no one comes forward) for at least 6 months.
Why not pay someone National Minimum Wage to mentor the unemployed customers? Simple, they want to keep costs down to increase their profit – even if this means a worst service for participants. At the end of the day its not their problem of how their “customers” are treated…
First Sustained Outcome Under Flexible New Deal
Also, I will include a snippet from A4e website on this news article (slightly old now!):
First Sustained Outcome Under Flexible New Deal
10/02/2010A4e celebrates its first customers in sustained employment under Flexible New Deal.
The first customers to achieve sustained employment under Flexible New Deal are now celebrating 13 weeks in employment. The first customers to find employment under the new programme came onto Flexible New Deal at the start of the programme, in October 2009. One customer, with the support of the A4e team in Dudley quickly found a permanent position with a drop forging company and another with our partner Seetec in Chesterfield has been working at a flag pole installers. The very first customer that came onto the A4e’s Flexible New Deal Programme at our Rotherham office also quickly found work through a ‘work boost’ opportunity, similar to a woek placement. He was quickly offered a permenant job. Thirteen weeks on, they are all still there…the start of sustainable employment.
We will be celebrating sustainable employment outcomes across many other A4e and partner offices over the coming weeks. Over 900 customers have now been found employment opportunities with Flexible New Deal delivered by A4e and our partners.
A4e improving peoples lives.
I have just noticed the errors in there. Anyway… 3 people… one in Dudley, one in Rotherham and one (their subcontractor: Seetec) in Chesterfield. it is progress but shows how poor the service is – we have to assume that we are unsure whether the provider A4e and Seetec actually done anything to secure the participant a job or whether out of coincidence the particpant found themselves a job (that is they saw it themselves and applied for it) and got it.
No dates have been announced of when the person got the job so maybe they are prematurely assuming the job is sustained because its a permanent position (i.e. not short term temporary or agency work). If they are refering to such jobs being permanent AND have been on them for 13 weeks… This means within 6 weeks at all their locations on Flexible New Deal they have only got 2 people into “sustainable employment” (we say two because they cant steal credit from Seetec as its a different organisation!) – lets compare this to Reed in Partnership where every PA has a target of getting 8 people a month into employment… or for 6 weeks… 12 people (and thats just per a single PA!) Besides we aren’t comparing A4e and Reed as we are unsure if Reed has had any success.
Sustainable jobs?
What made me laugh is, that under Flexible New Deal a sustainable job is actually one that last for 26 weeks (6 months) and not 13 weeks (3 months) which is known solely as an short term job (if I recall correctly). If the contract began in October 2009 it is impossible that of the 10th February 2010 that up to as many as 3 people got “sustained jobs”…
I just hope that A4e are misleading us and not defrauding Jobcentre Plus/taxpayer in prematurely claiming Sustained job outcomes… I have no confidence that anyone at DWP would (or could) bother checking if it was possible that in Februrary 2010 that someone could have got past 6 months employment when the contract only began in October 2009!
8 Responses to “Want to help A4e? Volunteer as a mentor to unemployed customers”
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They’ve been advertising for months. Looks like the A4e Army will have to introduce conscription.
Surely with over 20 years experience of welfare to workfare, not to mention being in bed with New Labour you’d have thought they have enough contacts in the business world to get volunteers.
you know what is going to happen dont ya. we are going to have a whole bunch of suckers conscripted under their so called work boost scheme. they may even extend the term from whati gathered from the DSA Manager the works boost placement can be much longer than 4 weeks.
This will give rise to an even poorer service people with no motivation mentoring people with no confidence low self esteem. It will lead to apathy.
I would gladly volunteer my expertise in the field of disability to them. I.e make sure students have got equipment they need. But I think that will be lip service and I really wouldnt be allowed to do much of anything
I was thinking of applying myself – I guess being unemployed would exempt me from it – but atleast I was witness against any unfair treatment (although thats the maximum power I would have) if there ever was – and oh yeah… I live rather far away, but dont mind travelling!
What Jobcentre Plus and Flexible New Deal/New Deal providers never understood is if you squash peoples confidence and self-esteem… they are guaranteed (for atleast in the short term) not to find and secure a job. It is a very shortminded practice. Sterotypes are used and its believed you have to knock every little bit of confidence out of them to knock the person out of their comfort zone and that big hole they were digging themselves.
(This is the claimants ways of being a “passive receiver” – the provider needs to get them to actually bother to look for work. Yes, I am offended too – It is assumed you haven’t although you must have claimed for between 6 and 18 months to be eligible for the course thus must have met the Jobseekers Allowance conditions for every benefit week – between 26 and 78 Benefit Weeks)
Funnily enough neither of them have any qualification, skills or experience to support this type of therapy. As being on such a course at YMCA Training’s Dencora House detention centre … this could fall under torture… the course is meant to help you into work not to play mind games etc.
Kyron and FND: You both have experience, and being unmployed shouldn’t stop you from volunteering. Voluntary work is a vocation that is, or should be, open to everyone.
Gerry I told the dss manager tony hickman that if a4e in dudley want me as a volunteer I will quite happily do so.
Hi just to let you guys know have applied for a mentoring post in Dudley West Midlands. Will keep you aprised of what happens
And the replyemail is
Thank you for your e-mail, however, you’d need to contact Dudley branch as we recruit volunteers to mentor clients only within London.
Has anyone thought of using twitter as well and linking to this site it seems emma harrison might have moved over to Them