Crosby Employment Bureau

Background

The Crosby Employment Bureau was established in May 2003.  It was the brainchild of the residents of Crosby in Scunthorpe to help local people gain work experience and training and to provide help identifying job opportunities and preparing job applications.  It has been a tremendous success – people have gained experience in jobs such as childcare, administration, painting and decorating, gardening, catering, retail, driving and floristry.  

Support and Advice

Early in 2005 Jan and Donna Murphy, Social Enterprise Co-ordinator, were identifying ways in which the Bureau might be able to become self-funding.  They looked at the skills the Bureau had, the skills they could sell on and identified business opportunities that could generate revenue to finance their employment services.
 
A grant from Social Enterprise Humber trained the team in the IRIS payroll system and then they were able to offer this service to small businesses.  They set up the Crosby ‘Ambassadors’ service to ‘meet and greet’ at events in and around the town.  The ambassadors helped in the town centre during market weekends, during the pre-Christmas late night shopping period and at a large meeting at Normanby Hall.  North Lincs Food Festival employed 23 ambassadors each day to help out with the car park, in the creche, on stands and in the town centre! 

”We looked again at what skills Jan, Janine and Sarah had and what new skills or training would strengthen the service they offered,” said Eric.  “With the European funding coming to an end it was also crucial that Jan should devote more time to developing the trading business to secure additional income.”

He recommended that Jan do a BTEC certificate Level 4 in voluntary sector management funded by Business Link.  Social Enterprise Humber linked Crosby Employment Bureau into mainstream business support which assisted with the cost of this training. This covered a range of management skills including marketing and HR.  

The Future

The additional training has enabled Crosby Employment Bureau to develop and improve the recruitment service they offer. It has also made it possible for Jan to focus on pursuing business opportunities and funding to finance the employment service.   The organisation is now also offering its services outside of the Crosby area.

Jan’s efforts are currently mostly focussed on the area of childcare – they have received a grant of £8k to set up the “Helping Hand Childcare Service”, offering qualified employment agency staff on a temporary basis to childcare settings in North Lincolnshire.   She is involved in a campaign to encourage residents from ethnic minorities into foster care and supported lodgings with North Lincs Council Children’s Services – a grant of £8k.  She is also working with residents in the Crosby area, including obtaining funding to train translators and interpreters, to set up a service providing public and private organisations with access to translators in the many languages spoken in this community.  

“We are all the time looking at ways of improving and sustaining the services we offer,” says Jan.  “But we also have to identify and respond to new opportunities that come along like childcare legislation, changes in work-life patterns and funding initiatives, to ensure that Crosby Employment Bureau can be financially independent.”

Social Enterprise Humber is a Business Link Humber project sponsored by Yorkshire Forward and the European Regional Development Fund which aims to develop a strong and financially sustainable Social Enterprise sector through the following objectives:

• Growing bigger, better, more sustainable and more effective individual social enterprises.
• Creating new social enterprises with a focus on sustainability and quality.
• Developing a bigger market environment for social enterprises, and raising the profile and capability of the sector to deliver high quality services for the private and public sectors.
• Stimulating partnership developments with all sectors, public, private and voluntary/community.
• Facilitating segmented network activity to encourage peer support, information exchange and informal learning.
• Raising the profile and quality of sustainable social enterprise support within the sub-region, and building capacity, skills and understanding within the support infrastructure.

For further information contact     
Emma Buttrick
        Social Enterprise Administrator
        Business Link Humber
        Tel 01724 291526
        Fax 01724 291511
        Mob 07795605228
        www.sehumber.co.uk