South Ayrshire Council’s Thriving Communities staff provide a wide range of employability services aimed at supporting young people and adults into employment.

Thriving Communities staff have co-located with South Ayrshire Council’s Young People’s Support and Transition Team (YPST). This is helping to foster a collaborative approach that supports participation through joint house visits.

A team of key workers are assigned to each secondary school within South Ayrshire. They work in partnership with Skills Development Scotland (SDS), education services and social work to support young people to progress to a positive destination.

The Local Employment Partnership (LEP) is made up of representatives from South Ayrshire Council, Skills Development Scotland (SDS), Ayrshire College, Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), Developing Scotland’s Young Workforce (DYW), NHS Ayrshire and Arran, and Voluntary Action South Ayrshire (VASA) as the third sector interface. The LEP leads the planning, decision-making and implementation of employability provision across South Ayrshire to ensure that young people’s individual needs and labour market demands are met.

The reason for improvement

South Ayrshire faced a notable challenge in the low number of school leavers progressing to a positive destination on leaving school. In addition, participation measure data indicated that the engagement of 16- to 19-year-olds in education, training, or employment throughout the year was lower than the national average.

What South Ayrshire did

The council decided to introduce employability key workers who would help improve school leaver destinations. Key workers attend More Choices, More Chances meetings, which are part of a national strategy aimed at eradicating the number of 15- to 19-year-olds who are not in education, employment or training (NEET). Attending these meetings helps key workers to identify school leavers earlier and provide them with access to a range of tailored support.

Tailored support includes:

• facilitating work placements
• confidence building
• developing essential work-related skills
• providing guidance on financial management and budgeting
• delivering specialised vocational and industry specific training
• literacy support
• application and interview support
• offering hands on vocational tasters for diverse career paths

Key workers have access to a data hub that means that they can identify young people in their senior phase up to the age of 24 years who were not yet in a positive destination. Key workers facilitate timely interventions, including telephone communication or in-person house visits to engage with these young people.

Collaborating closely with SDS, key workers share relevant information on each young person. This helps to inform SDS of their individual needs. As a result, every school leaver receives a more tailored support offer. This offer is matched to their interests, takes account of personal circumstances and has flexibility

In addition to Thriving Communities provision, the LEP can also commission additional services to help meet the needs of young people, adults and the communities within South Ayrshire.

The majority of care-experienced young people are choosing to progress to college. Key workers, Ayrshire College and SDS meet regularly with the young people as part of tracking meetings. This helps ensure that any issues are identified early and addressed. As a result, young people continue to receive appropriate support to help sustain college attendance.

What the sustained impact has been

This partnership approach and tailored interventions have significantly raised the overall participation rate in South Ayrshire. As a result, South Ayrshire Council has seen significant improvements in the initial and sustained school leaver destinations reports (SLDR) and remain one of the highest in Scotland.

Thriving Communities staff offer an all-age, all stage employability pipeline, which is held in high regard in South Ayrshire. A few of our approaches are being used as an example of good practice nationally.