Interreg 2 Seas 2014—2020 is a European Territorial Cooperation Programme covering England, France, the Netherlands and Belgium (Flanders).

The Programme is part-financed by the European Regional Development Fund and has a total of €241m ERDF to co-finance projects in the 2014 – 2020 period. Proposal for helping low-skilled young job-seekers into apprenticeships, followed by employment in 4 EU provinces, including Kent in the UK. The multi-national Partnership was successful in winning a funding grant of just over €3m. The Tavistock Institute will contribute in the professional development of the young people, research on the impact of family influence, train the tutors and mentors, evaluation of the UK intervention and whole-system consultancy.

Context

The context is the presence in each of the project’s three regions of about 10,000 young low-skilled job-seekers, aged 18-24. In many cases, the young people have left school or been excluded from school after the 5th form so that they have not managed to achieve even the most basic minimum requirements to get onto a vocational training programme. The project will also include older low-skilled people aged up to 30 who are in low-skill employment that could be lost in the future through the changing nature of work and technology.

Objectives

To provide educational programmes in science, English and maths, and supervised work placement experience in the engineering and construction industries that will up-skill the young job-seekers sufficiently to achieve an employment interview, and hopefully employment.

Methodology

Tavistock ‘Learning-from-experience’ methodologies will be applied to:

• five selected families of the cohort during the 12-weeks of the programme to help the families support their young people on the programme;
• the cohort of 30 young people will meet with Tavistock consultants to participate in here-and-now experiential learning events to promote their constructive participation in apprenticeships, employment and communities;
• Tavistock Institute consultants will do study group work with the cohort’s tutors and mentors; 
• the Tavistock will undertake the evaluation of the UK part of the project.