News Item: Can You Help Kickstart a Young Persons Career?

The government recently announced details of this UK-wide initiative to support young people aged 16-24. The Kickstart Scheme provides funding to employers to create new 6-month job placements for young people who are currently on Universal Credit and at risk of long-term unemployment. This is part of the government's Plan for Jobs and aims to create new, fully funded jobs across England, Scotland and Wales. The first placements are likely to be available from November.

The roles applicants apply for:

• should be a minimum of 25 hours per week, for 6 months
• should be paid at least the National Minimum Wage for their age group
• must not require people to undertake extensive training before they begin the job placement

Funding for each job placement will cover:

• 100% of the relevant National Minimum Wage for 25 hours a week
• the associated employer National Insurance contributions
• employer minimum automatic enrolment contributions

There will also be extra funding to support young people to build their experience and help them move into sustained employment after they have completed their Kickstart Scheme funded job.

Further details can be found on the scheme website here: www.gov.uk/government/collections/kickstart-scheme

If your organisation is creating more than 30 job placements as part of the Kickstart Scheme, you can submit your application directly but for fewer than 30 job placements you cannot apply directly. You must partner with other organisations (an intermediary) in order to create a minimum of 30 job placements before applying. If you would like HAE EHA to take on the role of your intermediary if you have fewer than 30 vacancies pllease get in touch with our Training Coordinator Alan Wemyss on 0121 380 4615.