Kim GRIFFITHS-PARRY: “Our main goal is to give people back their self-esteem”
“In Liverpool, when we have a new idea that could reduce social exclusion, we don’t beat around the bush, we get down to work.” Kim Griffiths-Parry runs the city’s employment programmes and is one of the driving forces behind this momentum. She firmly believes that cooperation among social services in deprived areas works. This is the spirit with which she runs the local implementation of the URBACT project Co-Net, with which her city is partnered.
When it comes to social policies, Liverpool has a lot of experience in integrated programmes. “We realized that there were a lot of initiatives in the various municipal bodies that were doing the same thing. Several years ago we set up a strategic alliance called Liverpool First (link), which brings together all the various public players involved in employment, education, fighting crime, health, etc. Today, when a social housing representative visits a tenant, he can also propose solutions for finding work or training.”
A local Co-Net project in the testing phase
The 11 partner cities in Co-Net have one goal: to explore existing integrated approaches that aim to boost social cohesion in disadvantaged neighbourhoods.
In Liverpool, Kim Griffiths-Parry has been working in the field for a long time and was inspired by the experience of Liverpool First. Her goal was to simplify integration mechanisms for the most disadvantaged populations by offering them a single point of contact. “Our Co-Net project targets families. At the moment, some families get help from a dozen or so different social workers, and they find this very complicated to handle. Our aim is to make sure that each family has only one contact point. We work in homes where there are sometimes as many as 3 generations unemployed under the same roof, which means we can also work on cross-generational unemployment, often experienced as a fatality.”
Before the project is rolled out across all of North Liverpool (63,500 inhabitants), it is first being tested in Pinehurst, a neighbourhood with around 1,000 families. “ Our first step is to focus on this small community to collect and analyse very precise data: Who are these people? What is keeping them out of work? We have already identified that there are a large number of single-parent families with very specific problems to resolve before they can even think about going back to work.”
Lasting changes in behaviour
With the help of social housing organisations, the Liverpool Co-Net project team opened an office in Pinehurst. Over time, it intends to touch a hundred or so families; eight have already accepted to participate in the project.
Kim Griffiths-Parry loves her work and is very committed. She used her connections to form an influential and effective Local Support Group (LSG): in addition to local political figures, the group also includes the heads of several public bodies. “By having decision makers on board, we can go beyond the usual onerous administrative procedures.” The LSG also includes members from all the social programmes that are currently underway in the neighbourhood. “It does no good to have everyone working separately in their own corners. My job allows me to get a comprehensive view of other integrated programmes in place in Liverpool.”
At the end of the 18 months of this test phase in Pinehurst, Kim Griffiths-Parry above all hopes that there will be long-term results: “We aim to get 20 people back to work out of the 100 families, and as many in training. The assessment of the Co-Net project impact in Liverpool will primarily be quantified based on how far the families have come in changing their behaviour. Our main goal is to give them back their self-esteem and their will to keep on going.”
“It is a great privilege to be responsible for this project in Liverpool,” she concludes with conviction. “When it comes to fighting unemployment, the majority of initiatives come from the government. With Co-Net, we have a rather unique opportunity to create an organic local model.” For that matter, the approach has convinced other neighbourhoods in the city, which have already begun to work on similar programmes.