Kaleidoscope supports unemployed lone parents
Location: London
ESF Funding: Department for Work and Pensions
ESF Target Group: Lone parents
The Kaleidoscope ‘Prepare Access and Success for Parents Returning to Work’ project is co-financed by the London Councils and the European Social Fund to offer individualised support packages to long-term unemployed parents in south London.
The project works with local community organisations and businesses to identify work experience and employment opportunities, and provides a full range of advice and support for participants who are looking for or in work.
Kaleidoscope started in partnership with Jobcentre Plus in 2008 to help unemployed lone parents into work in the education sector. Since then the range of sectors has widened to offer opportunities in administration, hospitality and retail. The project employs job brokers in each sector, and Information, Advice and Guidance (IAG) training advisers. In one-to-one sessions, the advisers help participants with long-term career goals, organise appropriate training options, including help with childcare, literacy and numeracy, and support them in learning other life skills such as finance and budgeting.
Project participants
Beverley Thomas trained to work in reception/ administrative work, but after many attempts to get a job in this field she was referred to Kaleidoscope by Jobcentre Plus. She declined an initial offer to work in an after-schools club as she was adamant about working in an office. However, when Kaleidoscope again matched her to work in an after-schools club, she decided to try it and now says it’s the best thing she could have done. As a parent, being with children suits her and she knows what they like and need. This experience has launched an ambition to run her own childcare programme, which she hopes to do in the future with Kaleidoscope’s guidance.
Other project participants include a lone parent who was helped into a job at a pre-school nursery, and an ex-offender now working part time at a school as a sports coach, who is now working with Kaleidoscope to develop himself to be a youth worker.
For more information about the Kaleidoscope project, including video interviews with the project team and other project participants, plus further project information, you can view the full in depth case study on the ESF-Works website. This is one of around 40 (at Feb 2012) in depth case studies available on the ESF-Works site.