Jobcentre Plus is an executive agency of the Department for Work and Pensions. It provides services that support people of working age from welfare into work, and helps employers to fill their vacancies.
Jobcentre Plus can help you as a social care employer in a number of ways including:
- Advertise your vacancy for free
- Sift candidates prior to your short listing (ensuring only people truly interested in the job are passed to you)
- Support you through the recruitment process
- Advise you on a number of financial incentives open to you when recruiting someone who is unemployed
- Advise you on practical incentives when recruiting someone who is unemployed such as work trials or apprenticeships
For further information on what services you can receive from Jobcentre plus please visit
www.direct.gov.uk or telephone your local Jobcentre plus office.
Current initiatives
Care First Careers
Care First Careers is part of the Government’s young person’s guarantee that everyone between the ages of 18 and 24 who has been looking for work for six months will get a job offer, work experience or training.
The scheme is administered by Jobcentre Plus whose front line advisors are primed to promote adult social care as a key route into work for unemployed 18-24 year olds.
Skills for Care have been involved in the development of a sector routeway to support the pre-employment programme part of scheme.
The sector route-way is a form of support that Jobcentre Plus can offer to unemployed people to give them the skills and confidence to move into entry level jobs in the adult social care sector.
A key part of the route-way is a 60 hour training course that gives learners a good idea of what it would be like to work in adult social care, and at the same time helps them to develop the skills they need to get started.
The learning outcomes for this course have been developed into draft units at level 1 and we are now in the process of putting them forward for accreditation on the Qualification and Credit Framework (QCF.)
For further information please see the following leaflets
Information for employers
Information for potential recruits
