GEMS NI

Department of Employment and Learning

Department of Social Development

Belfast City Council

Leonardo da Vinci Life Long Learning Programme

We recognise that partnership working is an important theme in employment policy formulation, delivery and implementation. GEMS NI works in partnership with many public sector, voluntary, community and private sector organisations and has an established network of partners and contacts. To enable us to work most effectively with the most disadvantaged (e.g. people with drug/alcohol dependencies) we have strong links with supporting specialist agencies.

We have developed and work within a dynamic platform of stakeholder engagement which enables us to be highly effective in bringing together the “supply and demand” elements of the local labour market in East and South Belfast.  Our stakeholder network of community and voluntary sector groups and organisations, public sector agencies and employers enables us to work in partnership in a multi-stakeholder “arena” to inform our work and to ensure we access those furthest from the labour market. 

Networking at Community and Neighbourhood Level

We place a huge priority and emphasis on networking with community groups in East and South Belfast. The obvious rationale for this is that many groups have local expertise and knowledge on the barriers being faced by long term unemployed/economically inactive people and through their established networks they can help us access those who need the most help. While operationally our central base in Shaftesbury Square is accessible through linkages to main transport and arterial routes, we are committed to providing maximum access to our service through our outreach offices and the establishment of access points throughout East and South Belfast.  This enables us to take our service directly into the neighbourhoods most in need.

We have developed effective working relationships and where appropriate referral mechanisms with a broad range of voluntary sector organisations that refer clients who would benefit from our service.  We also offer workshops and awareness raising sessions for groups of clients from organisations and support for staff working with unemployed people. Many of the voluntary sector organisations we work with do not have the expertise or resources to deal with the employment/employability specific issues brought by their beneficiaries and acknowledge our expertise in this field; we in turn, use their expertise in their field to support the work with our mutual client.

GEMS has been instrumental in encouraging close working between key stakeholders in terms of both support, sharing information, best practice and liaison in respect of client need.  We established an Employability Forum for practitioners working with long-term unemployed people (including DEL and Belfast Metropolitan College) to share information and best practice and explore policy, legislation and identify resources.  GEMS NI also participates in East Belfast Employability Working Group.

We are highly successful in working with employers and can demonstrate our ability to secure employer support and commitment to an East and South Belfast Steps to Work programme managed and delivered by us.

A fundamental aim of GEMS NI is to bridge the gap between long-term unemployment and work. We achieve this by using a comprehensive approach which assesses clients’ needs and wishes, in the context of employers’ requirements, attitudes and plans.  Our skill in reconciling the two is key to achieving successful outcomes and to do this we use extensive knowledge of employers and unemployed people. This is consolidated by our community-friendly access to a comprehensive range of opportunities and services which assist long-term unemployed people, to gain the necessary skills to return to work. This in turn is backed up by our ability to attract appropriate clients to the service, assess their needs, provide developmental and careers advice and ultimately match them to appropriate training, education and hopefully employment.

We build relationships with employers, to identify their labour force needs, understand their ethos and recruitment procedures and were necessary; we encourage them to change recruitment and employment procedures where such are seen to be barriers to obtaining and retaining suitable employees.

We bring in-depth knowledge of the local organisational infrastructure in South and East Belfast and excellent networking links with practical inter-organisational referral arrangements which we believe are key to ensure that our clients have the optimum support to enable them to work with us to meet their employment goals whilst availing of other specialist support, which may or may not form part of their individual action plan.