North Moseley Street Advisors Employment Project Update Report - w/e 16th February 2007

Street Advisors Employment Project Update Report

Kings Heath and Moseley

16th February 2007

Period 1st February to 15th February

Team
Over the past two weeks two Advisors have spent a total of 50 hours actively engaged in the Moseley ward. A Team Leader has been engaged to coordinate the work of the Street Advisors and organise recruitment events. This has greatly improved the targeting of Street Advice over the past week.

Streets and public spaces covered
Over 150 leaflets have been distributed to households on Kingswood Rd, Trafalgar Rd , St Albans Rd and Sandford Rd. Each Advisor has spent 10 hours knocking on doors on these streets to follow up the leafleting. An additional 9 hours each has been spent talking to people in main streets in Balsall Heath and Moseley on the ward borders and in engaging with young people at Joseph Chamberlain College.

Organisations and Events
Street Advisors have made contact with Sajid Khan at Moseley library and arrangements have been made to provide advice to people on an appointment basis.
So far there have been two referrals from Sajid, which has led to one client being signed up to the project. The Advisors are meeting Sajid again w/c 19th February to look again at the materials and the referral process they agreed and to see whether it will be possible to improve it and see whether this can be rolled out to other venues.

So far no other venues have been identified for this type of activity although the Advisors and EC team are looking into ways to link into community activities.

The recruitment event at Moseley CDT on Wednesday 28th February has been confirmed and from 19th February will be intensively marketed via leaflets and word of mouth by all Advisors working in and around the Moseley area. Building Health Hub, Jobcentre Plus and Birmingham City Council will be attending this with current vacancies. People will be given advice about job application forms and interviews.

Outputs
As of 14th February we have registered 25 clients from the North Moseley area including residents of Kingswood Road, St Albans Rd, Sandford Road and Trafalgar Road. Five of these have been referred to the Building Health Hub, one to the TUC centre for further job preparation support and 2 to other support services. Four people have gone on to training and 2 have started full time work.

Issues Raised
Knocking doors during day time hours has led to limited benefit in terms of talking to people about their circumstances. Advisors are getting many refusals to talk with them and the majority of doors are not opened. This may be for cultural reasons or that people are out working, job seeking or in other centres/ community points.

There are very few Community spaces in the North Moseley area. Advisors have been having to go to points just outside the area to engage with people in the street. These have included: Moseley Village, Balsall Heath Shops/ Moseley Rd, Kings Heath High Street and Joseph Chamberlain College in Highgate. This activity has been successful in engaging with larger numbers of people and Advisors records show around 25% of the people they talk to live in the North Moseley area, many others living in other EC areas.

Action Points
Door knocking is a method that would ensure engaging with clients from the target area but success so far has been limited due to low numbers of people agreeing to talk to Advisors.

To try to overcome this over the next two weeks 3 Advisors will carry out information leaflet drops to 300 households and then follow up with door knocking at weekends in the day time as well as during the week.

Streets and Areas they will do this will be:

Chestnut Rd
Church Rd
Anderton Park Rd
Queenswood Rd
Woodstock Rd
Forest Rd
Coppice Rd

All Advisors to wear project coats and to give out as much information as possible and to spend at least 30 hours each out in the area over the next two weeks to maximise awareness.

We will ask them to report to the Team Leader every other day as to their progress and to agree any changes to maximise project outcomes