Welcome to the September 2008 issue of the Equal works e-zine.

In this Issue

	Equal-Works
	Editorial: If soft skills be the key to jobs . . .
	Can you do what you’ve learnt?
	Have you learnt what to do?
	The skills to connect
	The connection to skills
	Self-belief to self-employ
	Enterprising colleges

Equal-Works

Equal-Works.com is a searchable web site offering easy access to the products, processes and good practice developed under the ESF Equal programme in Great Britain. Although Equal Development Partnerships have ceased operation, Equal-Works continues to track the outcomes, achievements and lessons learnt.

This electronic newsletter highlights some of the thousands of enlightening resources available on the site.
 

Editorial: If soft skills be the key to jobs . . .

There’s no point in saying you must see David (Dr Who) Tennant’s brilliant Hamlet at Stratford, because it’s sold out.

Anyway, this isn’t a theatre review. And the point isn’t the charismatic time traveller but a droll turn by the gravedigger who produces the skull (Hamlet: ‘Alas, poor Yorick . . .’). Benny-Hill-style in cloth cap, half-mast trousers and braces, and thumbs firmly in waistcoat pockets, the gravedigger is funny not for his jokes, which seem pretty leaden to us now, but because he totally lacks what we variously call soft or interpersonal skills.

Click here to read the full article

Can you do what you’ve learnt?

Do we look at progress in soft skills in the right way? This fascinating academic paper, produced for the North Merthyr Tydfil Regeneration Partnership, questions the way we measure progress in the underpinning soft skills (like literacy and numeracy) that enable us to develop the ones that help us get and keep jobs, like punctuality and reliability. We tend to measure progress by the distance that learners travel and then assume that they can apply what they’ve learnt. Maybe it’s more important to look at the impact that being literate and numerate has on capacity to learn, and how long that impact lasts. Read the paper and see how the thinking has influenced practice.

Click here to watch four interviews with project staff filmed in early 2007.
 

Have you learnt what to do?

But plenty of projects do measure ‘distance travelled’ by beneficiaries, and a host of them have developed tools and systems that are available for others to use. Among the tried and tested is the Common Ground partnership’s Soft Outcomes Measurement System Toolkit to measure distance travelled in ten sets of key soft skills: teamwork, confidence, communication, motivation, autonomy, problem solving, self-esteem, coping with pressure, positive attitude and work-related values.

The skills to connect

A much broader view of soft skills – those that asylum seekers and refugees need to deploy in order to make social and institutional connections in unfamiliar communities – has come from an evaluation by the Aston Centre for Voluntary Action Research of the Aspire Partnership’s approach. It’s worth looking at for the thorough range of indicators that have been developed, and for the conclusion from the evaluation research that arts projects are the most effective means of helping people make these vital social links.

The connection to skills

And does anyone find this ability to connect more elusive than someone with the real constraints and the stigma imposed by a mental health condition? The Valuing Learning: Strengthening Communities partnership in Cardiff was using informal learning to work with women with mild to moderate mental health issues including clinical depression, bipolar disorder and obsessive compulsive disorder. Look at the page to read about the methods used to work with a group of 45 for two half-days a week over twelve weeks, and the positive results and some of the tools they used.

Self-belief to self-employ

Is self-confidence the key to soft skills? For many people it seems to be. To see the impact that advances in self-confidence can have on women seeking self-employment who have major constraints like heavy caring responsibilities, watch the Adjust the Balance video interviews. This programme was launched in South Warwickshire and Worcestershire in January 2006. The response was phenomenal. Seventy-five women enrolled in the programme in the first three months, and eight businesses started as a result.

There are also interviews with five participants, the project director and the evaluator.
 

Enterprising colleges

None of the soft skills are much more valued than that magic collective one, ‘entrepreneurialism’: the capacity to go out and make work happen, make money and make jobs; the ability to harness innovation on however small a scale to achieve business results. And nowhere is the instilment of the attitudes and techniques behind it more important than within the college system. Kilmarnock College’s Enterprising People lives on through a 200-page teaching pack and an accompanying tutor support pack, containing the practice, the theory and a clutch of case studies.