Employment programme launched for young offenders

Working with the Scottish Government, SCVO will be running a Community Jobs Scotland (CJS) programme targeted at young offenders. We will be working in partnership with Apex Scotland and the Scottish Prison Service to identify suitable young people leaving custody. The initiative is aimed at young people who were serving short sentences of six months to two years. We are now asking organisations to get in touch if you could host one (or more) of these young people. We ask organisations to create jobs for at least 25 hours a week, pay at least the National Minimum Wage and for the job to last 26/39 weeks. The jobs would need to meet the needs of the young people who may require entry-level or more supported jobs, to those who require higher skilled jobs.  We would also be asking employers to provide some flexibility to tailor the job to meet the needs of the employee. We are working to very tight timescales for this initiative and would be looking for recruitment to start end of November/December 2013 and jobs filled by March 2014. Given the levels of youth  unemployment in Scotland, young people leaving custody face even more barriers to entering or getting back into employment.  The third sector can offer some excellent opportunities to support young people into sustainable employment. If you’re interested in taking part in this scheme as an employer, please submit an expression of interest by Friday 29 November to Michael.hollinger@scvo.scot or contact Michael for more information about the scheme.