Employment can, on the face of it, appear like an opportunity available to everyone. However, any opportunity is wrapped up in several factors that may not be initially apparent. Many of the people we work with have had to overcome difficult circumstances to simply survive.

What is often sacrificed along the way are things such as completing education and gaining qualifications or having identifiable work experience. These things are necessary for a competitive working environment to get your foot in the door for many entry-level jobs. We know that unemployment is disproportionately higher for people who have experienced homelessness or people who are currently homeless, with just 6 in every 100 in a job, compared to 70 in every 100 for the general population.

Our Jobs First programme focuses on providing real job opportunities to people who have experienced homelessness. The crucial part of the programme is trauma-informed support that is offered to every employee as part of their employment.

Through our Jobs First programme, we will work directly with some of the UK’s biggest employers to help break down the barriers people who have been homeless face on their route to employment. The initiative, which guarantees living wage employment for each person, will provide wrap-around support for both the employer and employee. Each Jobs First employee will be allocated a support worker from Social Bite who will assist them throughout the programme and their employment contract, meeting weekly to offer practical support on bills and forms, as well as emotional guidance and confidence building to adapt to working life. We will provide training to each employer to help them appropriately guide the employee while the support worker will help facilitate appraisal processes and employee progress.

So far, businesses including BaxterStorey, Mitchells & Butlers, Nairn’s and Andron, to name but a few, have signed up with a plan to help create a target of 60 employment opportunities for people experiencing homelessness.

If you would like to find out more about how you could get involved, contact Emma Colgan-Blair on emma.colgan-blair@social-bite.co.uk.

For more details, please see the additional reading documents below