A Big Society project for Leek- helping ourselves.

Like others I have doubts about the concept of the Big Society. But I am prepared to explore and develop ideas if I feel that they could be to the betterment of the people of Leek. I think that there is a great deal of potential in the town, which all too often is overlooked. And I believe that the Big Society could offer something to the locality especially if people in the town could be encouraged to support an idea that develops a service that used to exist in the town but was removed.

I should explain my idea.

It is a simple one and came me again following the front page report in a local newspaper to a young man who sat by a round about with a placard saying that he was looking for work early one morning. An employer reading the board offered him a job. I was walking down Derby St in the centre of Leek and noticed a couple of jobs in windows who were looking for people for vacancies. Now evidence suggests that many jobs are not advertised in the conventional channels through the job centre or agencies. A figure of anything between 20-80% of jobs are within this hidden jobs market and a key in finding this market is to be proactive. I felt that there ought to be some mechanism where people could advertise jobs for free or alert people to work possibilities.

The problem with Leek is that there is no job centre and has not been one since 2004. The local unemployed has to travel to the Potteries to a very inferior service. I know because in 2009 I used the service myself and as a consequence of my experience I did put forward an idea for an opportunity centre in Leek. It would a place perhaps based in an unused facility such as an empty shop where people could visit who were looking for work or self employment opportunities.

I am clear that this initiative should be concerned with employment or employment opportunities. It is not concerned with volunteering opportunities there are facilities in the town that cater for volunteering.

My original idea was that self-employment might for some people be the only route out of their predicament where people could give advice who have undertaken that journey. One aspect of using the job centre was that the staff were largely unaware of the process of the journey into self employment indeed attending the Hanley Job Centre was a process which offered no opportunity to discuss possibilities. The experience of using the job centre was a very unsatisfactory one as the objective was to move you through the system as quickly as possible without discussing options or possibilities with you.

When I suggested originally in March 2009 my first thought was to use the faith community as a catalyst for setting up something. In July 2009 I attended a meeting at the Salvation Army in Leek and the captain of the local citadel was looking at bringing an Employment Plus project which the Salvation Army run in various parts of the country. This seems to have come to nought.

Shortly after I raised the issue of there not being a job centre in Leek the town was visited by a Job Centre bus provided by the County Council. This was only a short-term measure. I did call in and the service was staffed by people from the South of the County who did not have much knowledge of the local situation.

Currently there are about 1500 people who are not economically active in Leek a high proportion of them will be young people and the numbers are bound to rise as young people leave Colleges and Schools. There is also likely to be an increase following the spending cuts to be made by national and local Government. The Government is also keen that people who are in this predicament move into work into the private sector or self employment and this idea is helpful to that objective.

There are two stages to my idea firstly the setting up of a social network page through Facebook of a Leek Job Mart where jobs that exist could be flagged up and people who are looking for work can promote themselves. This is a derivative idea and I noticed that the Oatcake Stoke City supporter site has a section that helps people who are looking for work. Obviously people who know about local jobs could post them on to the Face book site and people looking for work could use it to post their details. I have used the facebook approach in setting up the Regenerate Stoke Facebook page, which has proved to be a focus for positive ideas to develop the area.

I have had a few conversations with individuals such as Marc Briand the Vice-Chairman of the Leek Chamber of Trade. The idea falls neatly into the work that has been done in town during the Save our Leek campaign against the planning application put in by Sainsbury’s.
Campaigners have argued that businesses in the town centre could generate employment without the need for the development on the edge of the town. This initiative again helps that objective.

I have a feeling that the Chamber of Trade would be supportive of the idea.

My idea is also around the concept of self-help and last year I looked at some examples in the United States of the response to the unemployment crisis of 2009-10 especially with the development of the concept of the Laidoffcamp.. LaidOffCamp is an ad-hoc gathering of unemployed and self-employed people (including entrepreneurs and start-ups) who want to share ideas and learn from each other. They exist in a number of cities such as Detroit, San Francisco and New York as well as smaller They feature an open, participatory discussion forum designed to educate, empower, and connect community members. The various presentations, workshops, and discussions focus on topics that may include: building your personal brand, transitioning to a new industry, legal & accounting demands of launching a new business, alternative working spaces, alternative income sources, and how to become a freelancer.

I have also been drawn to a case study of a programme designed to tackle worklessness in Sunderland. NESTA in a document that looked at a radical approach to delivering public services advanced the project as an example of best practice in an area that equally has resonates in North Staffs as it does in the North East. In 2007 25% of the work force in Sunderland were economically inactive which is as near as damn it is the experience in Stoke. Sunderland like Stoke have been much exercised by this problem and all the conventional approaches to turning the tide on unemployment had failed. Sunderland therefore attempted a new approach. The organisation Livework did not win the contract by saying they had all the solutions refreshingly they said they needed to clearly understand the barriers to work faced by the unemployed. By asking people they quickly concluded that the reasons why people are unemployed for long periods is complex a fact not readily understood by job centres.

This was particularly true about hard to reach groups were the connection and involvement that they made with community organisations was often very strong. Stronger, in fact than the statutory organisations. I experienced this with the metal health organisation I worked with in Manchester. They also found that there was a lack of communication and co-ordination between community groups and statutory bodies. The importance of collaboration between the agencies especially those engaged most consistently and at an earlier stage was the key.

Livework convened a number of workshops between the long-term unemployed; employers, community groups and the council included how to deliver the long-term support that the workless required.

Lifework was able to pool the various offers from community groups into a single brochure. The community groups supported the unemployed person through and supported them in their efforts to be work ready and in this goal they were supported by Sunderland Council services. More people were able to contact the job centre because they received the support of the organisation that they were most familiar with in the community, which they lived. The community groups did the outreach and support work.

I can quite see something like this working in Leek.

Locally based initiatives seem to have worked in Sunderland.
In its first stage Make It Work supported over 1,000 people, with 238 finding work. The success of the project owed something to the risk that the Council were prepared to take in handing control over to community groups funding it properly and giving it the opportunity to grow.

It is also interesting to note that Job Clubs tend to do better if they are sited in the heart of the commercial community. All too often in my experience job clubs tend to be located in buildings on the periphery of the town while research carried out in the mid 90s concluded that buildings in the heart of commercial activities do better.

Since I was looking at this as an idea there have been a number of developments. Firstly the election of a new Government in which the Big Society was a principle idea. Last week there was an announcement that the Government was looking at 4 pilot areas in England. They were also looking into seconding civil servants to push forward potential projects. I feel that a project like the community facebook job mart as well as community support through an opportunity centre might make for an attractive package.

Potential funding for such a social enterprise will come from dormant accounts and I think it would be an advantage to Leek to develop such an idea when the Government is looking for pilot projects.

There have been other developments as well.

Vision North Staffs is holding a conference in the autumn looking at ways in which redundant heritage assets of the area could be bought back into sustainable use for the benefit of the community. The plan will be to identify a number of potential assets in the area and look at ways in which Urban Vision can work with community groups to develop a heritage project that can meet a recognised need of the community