Greater Manchester Placed Based Economic Inactivity Trailblazer and the VCFSE sector
Greater Manchester has been selected as one of eight Trailblazer areas in the UK Government’s Get Britain Working White Paper, which sets out reforms to supporting people towards work.
Over the coming year, Greater Manchester (GM) will be testing and embedding new ways of supporting people furthest from the labour market to move towards employment and training.
Each of the 10 localities in GM has developed a delivery plan to drive this ambition. Alongside this, Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA), Local Authorities, Greater Manchester Integrated Care, and voluntary, community, faith and social enterprise (VCFSE) sector partners are co-designing a shared vision and framework for employment support that reflects the values and strengths of our communities.
This work builds on Greater Manchester’s Live Well movement — our collective approach to community-led health and wellbeing. Live Well is a Mayoral priority and part of a broader shift towards prevention, community power and public service reform. These principles are now being applied to employment and skills.
This document - A Framework for a Live Well journey to employment - lays out how the programme will support people to access good work with community-led support.
VCFSE Leadership
If this work is to be built upon and extended to new places and new communities then it is important that there is a growth in the range and capacity of organisations working to support people into work.
VSNW and 10GM will be working with GMCA to understand implications of the programme for VCFSE organisations and help inform local authorities on how to make the most of their local VCFSE sector.
We will be providing regular updates on this work, and we are happy to talk to interested organisations.
If you’re a VCFSE leader in GM, please get in touch for more information on opportunities and risks related to this programme.
For enquiries related to activities at an Local Authority district level please contact, Zara Hakobyan and Anushka Swannell at zara@macc.org.uk or anushka@macc.org.uk
For enquiries related to the programme in general and any strategic issues, please contact John Hannen, Work and Skills Lead at VSNW, at john.hannen@vsnw.org.uk
A note on terminology
In GM there are concerns across the VCFSE and public sector on the use of the term “economic inactivity”. Many people designated under this label face barriers to engaging in work that are placed there by society at large and many with caring responsibilities and undertaking volunteering may be actively supporting other forms of economic activity through their efforts. We will only use this term when referring to the formal title of this central government programme or official national statistics with the label.
