Frontline Workers Project

The aim of the first phase of this project (completed April 2005) was to give frontline workers the skills to recognise members of the public with a literacy, language or numeracy skills need and support them into learning through  co-ordinated referral arrangements across a network of local organisations.  KPMG managed this project, which took place in 12 pilot locations around the country, at least one in each region, resulting in a set of findings and recommendations. KPMG have also produced a resource toolkit that can be used to develop similar referral networks.

As a result of the recommendations in the report, this project has now been extended to build on this work with frontline workers.  There are two elements to this continued project.  Firstly, KPMG will work at a strategic level with some national organisations that have a major focus on working with the public for, example Jobcentre Plus, the National Offender Management Service, IAG, Social Services and Libraries; to provide operational support to increase their capacity to help their clients improve their literacy language and numeracy.  The second element is to work with call centre staff to develop their skills to refer their clients with a need into appropriate Skills for Life learning.  The project will initially work with call centres offering an employee assistance service and with local government contact centres.  This project is in its initial phase and is due to run until April 2007.

Resource Toolkit

The Resource Toolkit is made up of a selection of documents which were found to be useful during the course of the Frontline Workers Project. The resources are useful for overall project coordination and project management.  There are examples of development session materials that were used to equip frontline staff, from a variety of organisations, with the skills to better support their clients with Skills for Life needs.  There are also examples of referral systems and documents to provide an illustration of the different methods that were used to refer people to appropriate local provision.

The resources will be available to download here shortly.