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news Kickstart scheme offers young people a great opportunity

Back in September 2020, the Government launched the Kickstart scheme, which provides funding to employers to create new six-month placements for young people, aged 16-24 who are currently on Universal Credit and are at risk of long-term unemployment.

Andy Horn, Managing Director with Kalai Sivayokarajah

The scheme gives young people a six-month placement, at national minimum wage, for a 25-hour week, work experience and support to develop their employability skills. The employer increases capacity, which is fully funded and hopefully at the end of the six months, they have a new, fully trained, keen member of staff. Hounslow Chamber saw this is as a great opportunity to help our young people. We registered as a Gateway, to help the smaller companies and were pleased to be amongst a handful of greater London chambers of commerce to be accepted. To date we have placed 95 young people into placements from 27 companies, ranging from roles in social media to visitor assistants for Paws in Work, puppy therapy specialists. Their sessions provide a chance to ‘switch off’ from mental stressors.

Sally Smith said “The scheme was introduced incredibly fast by DWP so there were some initial problems, but things have now settled down and I am so pleased that one of our employers AV Rental Services, has now offered a permanent role to one of their Kickstart employees. After all the hard work it is gratifying to see that the scheme is working, as are our young people.”

Andy Horn, AV Rental Services said: “As with any scheme introduced at pace, we were expecting it to be a slow process, however this was not the case. After initial conversations and support from Hounslow Chamber of Commerce on how the process worked, we were quickly receiving numerous applicants for both the roles we were advertising for. From the interviews we held in February I was delighted to be in a position offer a junior technician role to Kalai Sivayokarajah starting March 1st. Kalai showed us from day one a desire to work hard and learn, becoming a valuable member of the technical team, as such we have just offered Kalai a full-time role and he has accepted! It is so pleasing to see this scheme go full circle, with both the business and Kalai benefitting, it works, as such we have just applied for a further two kickstarters. Our thanks to DWP and Hounslow Chamber of Commerce for both the scheme and support from start to finish.”

The initiative ends in December. Please contact Sally Smith on

sallysmith@hounslowchamber.org.uk

for more details.

we have just offered Kalai a full-time role and he has accepted! It is so pleasing to see this scheme go full circle, with both the business and Kalai benefitting, it works, as such we have just applied for a further two kickstarters