CASE STUDY:
Bury MBC is a medium sized metropolitan borough within the Greater Manchester conurbation surrounded by Bolton, Rochdale and Oldham.
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Desk Research Focus Groups Face-to-face depth interviews Telephone depth interviews Mystery shopping Full Report
“We were delighted with the service delivery, professionalism and flexibility demonstrated by the RMG:Clarity Team throughout. They were able to deliver a comprehensive study and final report within the tight deadline set for them. They were easy to contact throughout the process, provided help and advice when we needed it and amended the planned timetable with good grace, and sometimes at short notice, in the light of shifting circumstances - nothing was too much trouble. I would thoroughly recommend their services to others and be pleased to use their services again in future. Harry Downie, Head of Business ReDesign & Development Adult Care Services - Bury MBC
RMG:Clarity were commissioned by Bury MBC Urban Strategy Department on behalf of Bury Employment & Skills Group (BESG) to provide fact based research into employment related training provision as part of the Bury Employment Plan. BESG consists of various public and private agencies in Bury with the aim of getting people into work by improving access and quality of learning opportunities, improving the quality of jobs available and working together to improve access to the labour market. BESG produced an Employment Plan, which includes a range of actions intended to move forward against these three priorities.
BESG highlighted the existence of a range of provision that has been put in place within the Borough, with funding from various sources. This project assessed the awareness of these services within the providers and the linkages that exist between them. A key outcome of this study was be to ensure all providers and front line services are aware of the range of provision in place to support residents into sustained employment. The key objectives of the project were to: •
Identify and understand the types of interventions and partnership arrangements already in place and identify how they should / could be linked to from a seamless client journey.
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Mapping of local provision and identification of any gaps / barriers in the client journey.
Desk research was conducted in order to ascertain the services offered by the members of BESG. This provided a baseline with which to compare the results from the depth interviews and mystery shopping and also provided evidence for the gap analysis. In depth interviews were carried out with front line staff, middle management and senior management at each organisation, where practicable, and a focus group was conducted with staff from Bury College. The mystery shopping was broken down into three types; email, telephone and face-to-face. The aim of the mystery shopping was to approach the service providers and ask what assistance was available for them, in order to ascertain the knowledge of front-line staff. The final report identified gaps, both in the provision of specific services and in the knowledge of available resources from other service providers. The report also identified the ways in which partnership working is accomplished, and identified areas of best practice that are most likely to succeed in getting, and keeping, people in work.
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