Workforce Pages

If you work in OCYPS with any looked after child aged 13 - 17 or a young person aged 13 - 16 who is in receipt of free school meals then you will have a role in delivering the g2g Card. Mainly this will be doing what you are best at: providing high quality advice, guidance and support so young people can reach their potential. However if you work in schools or directly with looked after children then you will also have some additional responsibility in distributing cards and PINs during March 2008 and assisting young people to call customer services when a card is lost, damaged or stolen. To do this you will need to register with our banking partner Raphael's Bank and give some basic information such as your name, work base and a password, this will be collected from you during February 2008 by your area business support team. This is simply for customer services to verify you when you call them, much in the same way as the Benefits Agency when you call on behalf of a young person.

We would like you to be the first point of call for young people to support them. There are many reasons that young people don't take up activities: finance is one but they also need information, encouragement and confidence; this will come from parents and carers but will also flows from the positive interactions they have with our workforce. We also hope they may find the experience of working with a professional a positive one and come back for other advice, perhaps around health or job hunting.

These are new areas of work for Children's Services. Many authorities have interesting and exciting activity cards for young people; we are the first to combine a bank card with the new styles of youth support. This will mean trying out new ways of working and being creative with how we advise young people to use their card; do they go for a weekly swim or club together with other g2g Card holders and go for a big trip to learn horse riding or wind surfing at Gratham Water Centre? To help, each locality has an embedded 'g2g Card Champion' who meets regularly with the project manager to feedback information to you; a workforce information leaflet is in the pipeline and basic FAQs are available on this site. By the time you read this page, your locality or team manager and champion will have a full list of all young people taking part in the scheme so you can plan how you will make contact with recipients.

If you have any further questions, please get in touch with your locality champion, they will contact me if they cannot deal directly with the query. For now, I would like to thank you for your support in this exciting project and hope that we can make this pilot a great success.

Simon Bates
g2g Card Project Manager