Last month, ten of our wonderful guests successfully completed Skills Lab; a transformative employability programme tailored around the needs of people with experience of homelessness.
Skills Lab provided a person-centred service that aimed to build the confidence and ability of our guests to effectively apply to and secure employment. In doing so, participants were offered the tools to master a critical skill in designing a successful and stable future of their own making.
To deliver this important programme, we were proud to partner with Social Bite; a fantastic social enterprise who share our goal of tackling homelessness. Sessions were held at our City Centre base in Crimea Street at 2pm. This made it easy for guests to attend our hot lunch drop-in at 1pm before heading upstairs for the workshop. Teas, coffees and cakes were also available throughout the class.
Skills Lab ran in collaboration with Urban; our ‘moving on’ project for guests who have passed the crisis point in their lives. As well as employability workshops, guests who come along to Urban can attend music, pottery, art and IT classes as well as personalised one-to-one advocacy support.
The Skills Lab programme provided guests with a two hour workshop every week for four weeks. Initially, guests focused on confidence building. They were encouraged to identify, analyse and tackle their limiting beliefs and bolster their self-worth. One attendee demonstrated the fundamental impact this session had on their relationship with employment, stating “my confidence has improved and now I feel confident to work with others”. In further sessions, participants focused on improving their preparation skills to address their nerves for interviews and/or starting employment. A participant explained “my biggest takeaway is how to prepare the day before the interview and this workshop has helped me develop my skills”.
Guests were also given a masterclass in CV writing, in which they learned how to improve the structure, content and layout of their own CVs. Lastly, participants were guided through interview preparation skills and introduced to the three golden rules of interviews; to be prepared, professional and of course, to be themselves. An attendee summarised the simple but monumental value of the Skills Lab workshops overall when they said “I will use what I have learnt to get employed.”
Ambreen Malik, a Social Bite Development and Support Worker, led the Skills Lab workshops. Ambreen cultivated a personalised and trauma-informed service for our guests, based on her insight into the frequent and often debilitating barriers that people with experience of homelessness can face when seeking employment. Susan Tulley, our brilliant Urban Project Worker described how “it was great to work in partnership with Social Bite. The course atmosphere was relaxed and affirming. It was great to see guests grow in skills and confidence”.
As well as the wonderful comments our guests shared about the programme, Skills Lab received outstanding ratings from those who participated. At the end of the programme, participants who chose to evaluate Skills Lab rated each aspect of it on a scale of zero to five, with five representing ‘Exceptional Quality’. Every responder scored either a four or five for each element. These elements were ‘Workshop Format Overall Quality and Usefulness’, ‘Overall Workshop Assessment’, ‘Met Expectations’ and ‘Presenter Competency’. Guests also all agreed they were most or extremely likely to recommend Skills Lab to others.
Ambreen summarised; “we were thrilled to collaborate with Glasgow City Mission to deliver the Social Bite Skills Lab course. Social Bite and Glasgow City Mission’s long-standing partnership is built on common goals and values and the Skills Lab is the perfect example of this. The main goal of this initiative is to empower individuals with a background of homelessness by developing the confidence and skills essential in applying for jobs. It was fantastic to see individuals develop and grow over the course of the four weeks, and we were delighted to receive such positive feedback from participants. A huge thank you to Glasgow City Mission for hosting the Skills Lab, and in doing so increasing the outreach of this programme. We are proud to be working together to provide this valuable support to people who have experienced homelessness”.
