Birmingham and Solihull Youth Promise Plus secures more than £13.9 million from the European Social Fund (ESF)
12 Jun 2019
Youth Promise Plus, which is operated by Birmingham City Council, has secured more than £13.9 million from the European Social Fund (ESF). The funding enables the programme to support disadvantaged young people needing employment, education or training.
The project targets areas of high unemployment across Birmingham and Solihull. It works with young people from a diverse set of backgrounds such as care leavers, young people at risk of offending and young carers by offering them relevant skills that can be used to progress to training, education and employment.
The project works closely with a set of partners including Solihull Council, Birmingham Children’s Trust, The Prince’s Trust and University Hospital Birmingham Learning Hub. It connects young people with opportunities in training, skills, apprenticeships and jobs in all sectors ranging from construction and health care to design and film experience.
Programme Success
Since 2016, Youth Promise Plus has helped more than 4,000 young people into education, training or jobs across Birmingham and Solihull. By 2021 the programme will have supported more than 16,600 young people.Case study (Names may have been changed)
Katie
Katie joined the Youth Promise Plus project with a dream of securing an apprenticeship in sport. However, she doubted herself due to not having achieved her English and Maths GCSEs and was struggling to get onto an apprenticeship scheme.
Youth Promise Plus worked with Katie to discuss her options. It successfully referred her into a sport-based pre-employment training course for young people who do not have the required qualifications to go into an apprenticeship. Katie worked towards achieving Level 2 and 3 qualifications in Coaching and Skills Development.
Katie impressed staff by her dedication, hard work and passion to succeed, securing an apprenticeship with Aspire Sports to deliver sports sessions to children and young people in schools.
Tara Verrell, Project Manager at Birmingham City Council, said:
“We work with amazing partners to deliver the best quality support to young people in the area. As we move towards hosting the Commonwealth Games in 2022, Katie’s success story is one of many and we hope that by the end of the programme we’ll have helped more than 16,000 young people on their road to success.”
European Social Fund
The project is receiving up to £27,991,124 funding from the European Social Fund and Youth Employment Initiative as part of the 2014-2020 European Structural and Investment Funds Growth Programme in England. The Department for Work and Pensions (and in London the intermediate body Greater London Authority) is the Managing Authority for the England European Social Fund programme. Established by the European Union, the European Social Fund helps local areas stimulate their economic development by investing in projects which will support skills development, employment and job creation, social inclusion and local community regenerations. For more information visit https://www.gov.uk/european-growth-funding.To find out more about the European Social Fund in the Greater Birmingham and Solihull area, please visit https://gbslep.co.uk/what-we-do/making-it-happen/european-funding.
