Theme A | Theme B | Theme C | Theme D | Theme E | Theme F| Theme H 

Theme E - SWELL (Scottish Workforce Empowerment for Lifelong Learners)

Objectives
SWELL will work to develop sustainable rural and urban partnerships consisting of employers, unions, education providers and support agencies from private, public, voluntary and educational sector to eliminate barriers to career progression for people who are disadvantaged by learning difficulties, disability, race, sexual orientation.

Target Groups
People under-employed, tenuously employed and/or poorly paid; people with a little choice of employment; those who have limited, devalued or redundant skills; people facing barriers to caree advancement; those who reuire spcific training.

Strategic Outcomes

Scottish Further Education Unit
SFEU implemented a Research report and Update on Barriers to learning faced by SWELL target groups and developed an Equality Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) website to provide advice and guidance on legislation and good practice for Scotland’s colleges. EDI website is maintained by SFEU for Scotland’s colleges. The roll out and promotion of the website was supported SFEFC and HMI.

Queen Margaret University College
QMUC piloted two distinct projects:
Development of an HE course for Carers to provide a supported learning pathway and career progression possibilities for these workers that was not previously available;
Practice based research for community arts practitioners
The HE in Care is now a mainstream course option through the college of nursing at QMUC.

Scottish Qualifications Authority developed and rolled out a Scottish Progression Award (SPA) in Enterprise. SQA’s SPA in Enterprise is a fully accredited new qualification available through colleges and schools in Scotland. The Award has been seen by bodies such as Careers Scotland Young Enterprise Scotland as filling a gap by linking employability and enterprise learning, accessible to a range of learner groups.

Scottish Trades Union Congress piloted the One Workplace Equal Rights project aiming to develop training in Equalities legislation and good practice for trade union representatives. STUC training for trade union representatives is to be mainstreamed through TUC education.

Scottish Enterprise Lanarkshire developed the Creativity Content, a methodology to recognise skills of older workers and provide learning advice and guidance. The methodology now mainstreamed through Skillnet and has also been validated as Creative Thinking & Goal Setting as an NQ unit at Int 2 level and is to be added to the SQA catalogue. This unit is also being considered as a possibility to deliver the Core Skill of Problem Solving by SQA.

Theatre Workshop
TW piloted the Empowerment through Theatre project involving beneficiaries in workshops in music, drama, dance, etc through to their participation in final theatrical production.
The programme has been redeveloped in the 2nd round of Equal to concentrate on the special support needs of those with mental health issues and to emphasise awareness raising of Equal Opportunities issues through their productions.

UHI Millennium Institute Learning Centres
The project led by the UHI Millennium Institute focused on:

• Community learning access programme to support the sustainability of learning centres in remote and rural areas.
• Research into sustainability of learning centres
• Support to roll out BA in Child and Youth studies through learning centres

The UHI Community Learning Access Programme was a great success. Learning centres were provided with advice and guidance and networking opportunities that were highly valued and helped the learning centres to market themselves to local business and the community.

University of Paisley carried out an underpinning research into barriers faced by SWELL target groups. Results are now available.

For more information please contact Lorraine Glen
Tel: 01786 892006
e-mail: Lorraine.Glen@sfeu.ac.uk
or visit: www.sfeu.ac.uk/swll