In February 2009, HEFCE invited universities and
colleges in England to submit proposals to take part in a £50 million initiative to help individuals and businesses through the recession. The ECIF was launched as a rapid response to the economic downturn and aimed to enable institutions offering higher education to provide tailored training, development and professional support to vulnerable groups.

The West Yorkshire Lifelong Learning Network secured funding of £1 million from ECIF with a further £1 million match funding provided by Yorkshire Forward. The project runs from April 2009 to September 2010.

The West Yorkshire Lifelong Learning Network (WYLLN), working with other regional responses to redundancy, will support individuals suffering from or at risk of suffering from the impact of the economic downturn in West Yorkshire.

ELEMENT 1:
Information and Advice
• Additional advisory session (to that currently
available through Jobcentre Plus and Nextstep)
• Access to initial specialist information resources
• Access to current general and specialist labour
market databases
• Access to partner support and development
information available from all providers

ELEMENT 2:
Guidance and Career Development
• Further 1:1 guidance interviews
• Supported access to web-based career package
• Psychometric testing
• Job search strategies
• Executive CV
• Interviewing and other job selection approaches

ELEMENT 3:
Upskilling and Personal Development
• Accredited bite-sized learning (levels 4-7)
• Accredited full-programme learning (levels 4-7)
• Non-accredited learning (equivalent to levels 4-7)
• Recognising and accrediting prior experience
and learning (APEL)
• Entrepreneurship development and support

The WYLLN aims to benefit 1000 individuals from the following groups:

• Experienced Employees
(e.g. with three or more years of experience)
• Middle Managers
• Senior Managers
• Unemployed recent graduates (i.e. within
three years, but excluding 2009 graduates),
particularly those from a non-traditional
education background

Individuals supported must meet the following criteria:

• Be West Yorkshire based
(residing or working)
AND
• Be able to benefit from higher level skills education and training
AND
• Be one of the following:
- Unemployed
- Employed, but on notice of redundancy
- Employed, but at risk of being unemployed
- Employed in a high risk sector

For further details on the activities offered by individual institutions please contact John Turner at Wakefield College at servtobusiness@wakefield.ac.uk or by calling 01924 789715.

We have a number of Higher Level courses available under the ECIF Funding, including:
-Retail
-Logistics and Supply Chain
-Marketing
and
-Leadership and Management.