Unemployment in a Rotherham community has halved thanks to the training given by Kiveton Creative, which, without funding secured via Sector Solutions, would not have been possible.

Through a Targeted Support Fund, Kiveton Creative, which aims to develop communities through I.T and media education, identified thirty unemployed community members to provide training to. Fifteen of these secured jobs after three months with the organisation.
Julie Draper, I.T Media Manager at Kiveton Creative said: "We've benefited in a number of ways from our Partnership of Sector Solutions. My staff and I have enjoyed many interesting seminars and courses. For example, a bid writing workshop resulted in us securing £25,000 of funding from the South Yorkshire Community Foundation." Additional courses that Julie and colleagues attended include Internal and External Auditing and Tutor Training.

She continued: "We've gained a number of qualifications since Sector Solutions' involvement. I've worked for almost twenty years in I.T, however have had no teaching experience. Therefore the teaching qualification I've gained has proved to be invaluable."

Several success stories have emerged from Kiveton Creative thanks to Julie and the teaching of her dedicated staff. One 46 year old man was on the brink of redundancy due to his lack of I.T and grammar skills. He came into the centre and after Julie read through some of his work she thought there may be a high chance of him having dyslexia.

She organised for him to have a free dyslexia screening, to which he agreed. The results from the test cemented her beliefs and he now has support from Shaw Trust, who work with employers to help those with disabilities find employment, and has retained his job at the firm where he has worked for the last 10 years.

A 45 year old woman from the same area became very depressed because of her job. However she felt her lack of computer skills would prevent her from finding an alternative role. After three months at Kiveton Creative, she improved immensely in I.T and was able to fill out an online application form. She landed the job thanks to her experience and new found skills and now has a positive outlook on her abilities and life.

Julie sums up: "Our quality of teaching has increased significantly; we've even achieved the Matrix quality standard as suggested by Sector Solutions. The manageability of the organisation has improved, we've employed more staff, our chances of winning future bids have increased and we've generally become more efficient. All of this filters down to the people we help and means more great personal stories of achievement."

All of the training that Kiveton Creative has accessed via Sector Solutions has been funded through the Big Lottery funded BASIS (Building and Sustaining Infrastructure Services) grant, the aim of which is to address the skills gap in the South Yorkshire labour market by developing community based learning providers i.e Sector Solutions partners. The organisation has never held a Sector Solutions contract to deliver a training programme but the fact that it has received significant amounts of funding to enable it to make a difference to the local community is testament to the benefits of being a Partner.