Clarion Housing Case Study

About Clarion Housing Group

Clarion Housing Group was formed in 2016 by combining two of the national housing associations, Affinity Sutton and Circle Housing.

With over 125,000 homes, Clarion is also one of the biggest housebuilders in the country. Committed to helping to tackle the housing shortage, the Group is set to build 50,000 high quality homes of all tenures during the next ten years from 2019. Two thirds of these will be affordable homes to help those in housing need.

In addition to new homes, Clarion transforms existing communities through sustained regeneration, helps people to access employment and training opportunities and gives young people a better start in life.

The Challenge

Clarion’s award-winning community investment programme is one of the largest of its kind in the country and focuses on three key areas: financial and digital inclusion; work and training and improving neighbourhoods. The Group’s Ready 2Work scheme is a national award-winning service, initially implemented by Affinity Sutton, which helps tenants move towards work. With thousands of properties across some of UK’s most deprived areas, the Group operates with 122 local authorities throughout the country and works closely with associated regional LEPs and employer networks.

The Ready2Work service is Matrix accredited, a unique quality standard for organisations to assess and measure their advice and support services, which ultimately supports individuals in their choice of career, learning, work and life goals.

/n/nWhen the Group was looking for an e-learning programme to help support its tenants’ move towards work, it needed to ensure that it could offer:

• a wide range of courses to meet their varied needs
• straightforward and accessible online material which could be completed by a range of residents with a spectrum of IT skills
• employability courses such as interview skills and job searching
• life skills courses such as personal budgeting and managing a home
• sector specific courses such as food hygiene and health and safety
• IT courses such a MS Office or basic skills

Online learning would help the Group to offer tenants in areas of low housing density, in particular, an accessible learning solution.

The Solution

Ryan Matthews, Clarion Housing Group’s Employment and Training Team Leader, said:

Free employability support is provided to its tenants by the group, including online courses from Virtual College. Sector skills courses are also offered by the group, at no cost, which deliver the specialist training required in certain types of jobs.

The scheme has been relaunched this year with Virtual College providing a wider range of over 30 courses, handpicked to meet the specific needs of the group’s Ready- 2Work service. Tenants now have access to IT skills, including Microsoft Office training, and courses in life skills such as ‘managing a home’ and ‘healthy living’.

The Results

The results of this partnership were significant.

Clarion uses dedicated e-learning sessions, provides access for tenants to do the training at their own homes or runs the online sessions alongside other face to face Group training sessions.

In 2015/6, its Ready2Work team helped 1000 people into work, placed 110 apprentices, created 350 work placements and supported residents to achieve over 2500 training outcomes.

Last year over 3000 of the Group’s tenants accessed the online learning resources from Virtual College. A sophisticated ‘social value calculator’ is used to determine the benefits accrued.

For 2014/15, this equated to £1670 every time a tenant completed some training. All of the tenant training is voluntary and is often the result of recommendations from the network of employment support workers who work alongside their tenants.

The Support

Support played a vital role in the success of the program.

For over eight years, Virtual College provided dedicated account management to ensure the Trust received consistent, personalized attention and support.

An effective onboarding plan included step-by-step guidance, detailed training materials, and hands-on assistance, helping the staff maximize the benefits of the new LMS.

The organization also benefited from dedicated customer support, which offered prompt and reliable assistance, ensuring that any issues were resolved quickly and without disruption.