Lead Partner: Pultneytown Peoples Project
Description
This action research programme will provide learning opportunities for ‘hard to reach’ people in rural areas. These learning opportunities will be innovative and targeted at young people, long term unemployed, elderly and people on benefits. The fundamental issue that needs to be addressed in service delivery is to ensure that it is relevant, and accessible, from a suitable venue, has adequate resources. Also, staff must have the ability to relate to the emotional barriers that these clients face, including barriers to change or progression. ‘Time’ is an essential issue that is often missed by conventional ‘learning sites’. Pultneytown will lead a consortium involving 3 rural based learning projects in the Highland and Grampian areas of Scotland, each working with hard to reach client groups.
In Caithness, Pulteneytown Peoples Project will set up a ‘Learning House’ within the community for all local people access to computers (the last Census states currently only 48% of homes have to internet access). They will work in partnership with Careers Scotland, Job Centre Plus and the Health visitors to allow the local long term unemployed to maximise their opportunities and gain employment, gain qualifications or learn skills that will help them on a daily basis. In Easter Ross, the group will involve young people who have been homeless in the design and delivery of learning programmes for homeless young people, focused on tenancy retention and basic skills. In Peterhead, the group will use innovative methods such as football the vehicle for literacy and social skills development involving young males. They will work with the young people in the community to deliver innovative training methods to meet the needs of the community.
Evaluation will be based on client feedback, progression outcomes (hard and soft), feedback from strategic partners and sustainability measurement, including take-up of the service, retention rates, response to rural barriers, financial sustainability and accessibility.
Participants in the work will be trained in evaluation skills, including interviewing, recording, IT skills and supported to learn social and team working skills. Learners will visit the 2 partner projects, where they will compare these different approaches to learning in a rural context to their own project. Learners will therefore lead on the design of the learning model and in its evaluation, and through the comparison exercise involving consortium partners help to define good practice more widely in providing community-led learning services in rural areas.
Contact Details
Katrina MacNab and Yvonne HendryPultneytown Peoples Project 41 Murchison Street Wick Tel: 01955 606950 Email: katrina.macnab@btconnect.comWebsite: http://www.caithness.org/community/social/text/ppp/index.htm