DISC Employment Initiatives

Having an income from a job is a major determinant of peoples' life chances. Despite the UKs buoyant economy, many individuals and groups are marginalised in the labour market. There are currently 750,000 18-24 year olds who are not in employment, education and training. Over 2 million people with disabilities are currently on Incapacity Benefit.

The focus of DISC's employment related initiatives is centred on supporting people to engage with the labour market and gain the skills needed to develop a career. DISC work with a range of groups including young people leaving school with no or limited qualifications, ex-offenders, recovering drug users, people with mental health problems and people with disabilites.

Our programmes are designed to offer a thorough assessment of people's skills and potential in relation to labour market need. We then develop an individual programme of support and access to mainstream training which will take them into the labour market and help them stay there. DISC works with a huge variety of employers to ensure that the support we offer meets their needs. The projects we run that can deliver this service to our service users are listed in the above navigation bar, all the above projects focus on employment initiatives for those facing barriers to work some of these projects include:-

Connect focuses on providing intensive outreach support to those engaged in government and community based employment initiatives.
e2e supports the success of young people. If you live in the North of England and aged between 16-19, finding it difficult to get a job, apprenticeship or college place we can help you.
In Work Support works with people who have previously been claiming Incapacity Benefit and have recently returned to employment.
PS Plus helps those that are 18+ years of age and currently under supervision of the Probation Service with help in finding empoyment.
Progress 2 Work engages with clients who have brought their substance misuse under control or who have stopped using altogether and who wish to move forward into training or employment.
Skills 4 Life this is a project aimed at 16+ living in Durham, it helps clients to gain confidence in learning new skills (English & Maths). Clients learn at their own pace and are offered one to one support.
Voluntary Sector Academy & Tees Valley Working Together provides a range of services around learning and skills to the Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS) in County Durham and Tees Valley which include; access to the latest information, workforce development programmes, Information Advice and Guidance (IAG) and signposting service and support for VCS learning providers (click here to visit the One Voice website (will open in a new window).

All these projects highlight the different barriers to employment that our sevice users face on a day to day basis. All our projects have the same goal of aiming to get our clients into employment and give them the right skills to sustain that employment.

The quality of all the services we run is stringently maintained from both internal and external audits. A recent Adult Learning Inspectorate report highlighted our strengths as particularly good strategic planning and direction, very good financial planning and controls, effective management of change, effective internal and external communication systems, very good support for staff, effective initiatives to widening participation, comprehensive equal opportunities training for staff, effective approach to continuous improvement, good quality assurance procedures and thorough evaluation of feedback from service users. These qualities placed us in the inspection report as being one of the best training providers in the country.