Life Academy has been working with the Career Development Group (CDG) to help people who have been unemployed for at least one year. The group includes a wide range of people who are variously disadvantaged and challenged in their day-to-day lives, not at least in economic terms.
CDG is a leading charity that seeks to help those who are unemployed find and sustain meaningful employment. Many of the people they support have multiple barriers to employment including lack of recent work experience, disabilities, health problems and lack of relevant employability skills. CDG provide training, work experience and the support necessary to enable their customers to achieve a better quality of life. Under the ‘Flexible New Deal’ CDG offer training to people who have been unemployed for at least one year.
CDG approached Life Academy last year with a view to utilising our expertise within their ‘Options - 13 weeks’ training programme. Their training programme assesses their customers’ needs, looks at retraining options and gives their customers skills to prepare them for the job market. In response, Life Academy undertook a series of four pilot one day workshops in 2009 and 2010, working with a total of 62 people.
The workshop: ‘Managing change and moving forward’ has been designed to enable people to change their lives by: being more motivated; understanding and managing change; thinking positively and identifying actions that can contribute to creating more positive lives for themselves. In building the workshop programme and resources, Life Academy brought together its professional expertise to design and implement the workshop.
