Regent’s Park Job Hub: A Six-Month Perspective
Words by Tom Palmer, Job Hub Advisor at London Borough of Camden
It has been incredibly fulfilling to join the Regent’s Park Job Hub in its infancy and play a part in helping it find its feet and help shape its identity. Each of us in the Job Hub is determined to assess needs and promote good work to our residents. But it’s also a two-way process. Every resident we support makes us more informed whilst helping us achieve our shared goal of supporting residents into meaningful and sustainable work.
The people we support are not just contending with an unimaginably competitive economic landscape, they are often balancing this burden alongside other personal challenges. These can all play a part in the time it takes for them to gain employment, as well as their subsequent job satisfaction. Some are threatened with eviction, struggling as a single parent or contending with life as a carer. Others are dealing with the consequences of abuse, feeling academically despondent, struggling linguistically, battling with the legalities of furlough or trying to identify employers that prioritise ability over disability. Collaboration and communication have been crucial, therefore, to provide one-to-one support that our residents deserve — a holistic approach that Good Work Camden has championed from the start.
One of our highlights over the last six months has been the creation of the new fortnightly Neighbourhood Café, a virtual hour where residents can network, have respite from their daily circumstances and, perhaps most importantly, gain tangible employability related skills that make them more assured and work-ready. Promoting grants and scholarships has also been important. Through our discretionary fund, we’ve worked with residents to provide the equipment and funding they need to access work and training, in turn providing dignity, independence and access to opportunities that were previously unattainable.
Despite working from home, we’ve managed to reach not only our rapidly increasing caseload of residents but also employers, agencies, community groups and charities. We are now better equipped than we ever were in providing the level of relational support that, from the outset, we have always promoted. This process is continuous, and the value of building resident-centred links remains central to our ethos.
A six-month forecast is a strange concept when time, in this last year, has become so arbitrary for so many. What has become clear though is the increased demand for our service. The way we react to this demand, by developing our contacts with stakeholders, increasing our visibility and identifying and responding to resident and economic trends will all play a key part in the next stage of our Job Hub journey.
