PEOPLE on long-term incapacity benefit in the most deprived areas of Staffordshire are to be offered support to get them on the first steps back into work.

The Community Buddies project is a three-year scheme funded by Advantage West Midlands and targeting 1,000 of the 4,800 residents who have been on incapacity benefit for more than two years.

Almost 40 people are now on a training course before the final 15 will be selected as buddies later next month. They will begin working between 10 and 20 hours a week in the 43 Super Low Output areas which have been identified in Staffordshire as the places of greatest deprivation. The SLOs tend to form clusters in North Staffordshire, Stafford, Burton-on-Trent, Tamworth and Cannock.

The buddies will have a good grassroots knowledge of the communities they will be in and a strong network of contacts. Their role is to identify people and to try to befriend them, offer encouragement and motivation and then refer them to organisations best placed to take them onto the next step towards a job, through training and support.

The project is being administered in Staffordshire by the Leek-based Staffordshire Moorlands Community and Voluntary Services.

Rob Arnold, the Community Buddies Co-Ordinator, said that the aim of the project is to identify people who need help, to identify their barriers to work and encourage and motivate them to take the first step on a journey back into employment.

He said: “The approach will vary from person to person. In some cases it might be a case of a buddy simply building someone’s confidence to the point where they can summon the courage to leave the house, in others it might be identifying organizations which can help people with some degree of physical impairment into employment.

“The role of the buddy is to motivate and encourage people who have been out of work for a long time to prepare themselves for employment and to take the first step towards that with the support of organisations best placed to help them.

“The buddies will all have strong grassroots-level links to the communities where they will be working and will make GPs, health centres and local authorities aware of the project.

“There are nearly 5,000 people in Staffordshire who have been on incapacity benefits for more than two years and we are targeting about 20 per cent of them and offer them the support this project will provide.’’

If you would like to find out more on Community Buddies, call Rob Arnold at SMCVS on 01538 381356