Pauline Anderson

The non-profit sector has been a mainstay of the ESF provider base for many years, and has been at the forefront of many innovations and development of good practice. Last year’s House of Lords inquiry into ESF acknowledged the ‘special value that the sector can bring to the programme’, based on its ethos and specialist knowledge and skills with specific types of need. In the current programme the third sector is working in all parts of the country and at all levels, from large ‘prime’ providers to small, specialist organisations based in the most local of communities.

The Shaw Trust in Bolton is a good example of a large, well-established non-profit company delivering mainstream employment services; other big players with a powerful presence in the evolving welfare to work ‘market’ include Tomorrow's People and TNG/Avanta.

The Age UK Milton Keynes FLOW project uses its origins as a charity working with older people to develop new volunteering and employment opportunities for older workers, as well as increasing the flexibility and quality of services to older people in the city. This is a good example of the specialist knowledge voluntary organisations have of their constituencies being used to identify new opportunities.

Bloomin’ Arts in Surrey, and Media for Development in London work at an even smaller but highly effective scale, using the stimulus of the creative process to give new opportunities to disabled people and offenders respectively to learn, develop and move closer to the labour market.