Getting a job is never easy at the best of times, although we do our best to help here at totaljobs, the task can be more arduous if you're long-term unemployed.
The main issue can often come down to a lack of relevant, recent experience, a problem only intensified by companies' inability to take a chance and offer the opportunity to gain the experience in the first place. So what can you do?
Well, there's always the education option - learning a new trade or gaining more qualifications will mark a significant improvement in your chances of getting a job, but this very much a long-term choice and in many cases turns out to be something of a costly affair.
Luckily, there are a raft of UK charities that offer a range of services designed to help the long-term unemployed back to work. Providing everything from job interview coaching through to team-building exercises and even concrete employment opportunities, these charities aim to give unemployed people every chance of not only getting back to work, but of capturing a job they really want.
Social Firms UK
Social Firms UK represents social enterprises designed to help disadvantaged people back into employment. This is achieved largely through the Social Firms themselves; locally-run businesses set up with the express aim of employing disadvantaged people and ensuring that they are provided with ample opportunities to gain valuable working experience.
The Amber Foundation
Amber focuses on the young, homeless and unemployed, providing three centres designed to offer the help, support and guidance that is needed to allow visitors to re-enter the world of employment. With an emphasis on teamwork and outdoor activity, the Amber Foundation also runs a narrowboat, where visitors learn boat-handling skills and conservation work. As well as this, more direct skills like numeracy and adult literacy are taught at Amber.
PRIME
Formed after Prince Charles was moved by letters he received, The Prince's Initiative for Mature Enterprise aims to help over-50s who are unable to find work. PRIME provides its members with a heap of advice on making sure the business is a success, and training and mentoring.
Papworth Trust
Papworth Trust was formed way back in 1917 as a tuberculosis settlement, but in recent years the charity has focused on helping disabled and disadvantaged to achieve equality, choice and independence. As well as housing and personal support, this involves a large degree of employment and vocational rehabilitiation to help people back into work.
Broadway
Broadway is a homelessness charity working throughout London to help rehouse the homeless and ease them back into the world of work. Helping over 4,000 people every year, Broadway runs a number of projects, from the Street Outreach programme which makes initial contact with people sleeping on the streets, through to the Employment Academy, which provides training and advice to help people get jobs and keep them.
CDG
Careers Development Group is a leading welfare to work charity with nearly 30 years’ experience in helping those who are unemployed find and sustain employment. Many of the people CDG supports have multiple barriers to employment including a lack of recent work experience, disabilities, health problems and a lack of relevant employability skills.
CDG supported 27,000 people in their journey into work during 2010/11, from 26 centres. The charity started delivering the coalition government’s flagship Work Programme as a prime contractor in London East at the beginning of June.
