Current Job Vacancies
Most of the staff at People First now work in community support. Visit our jobs page for more information on current vacancies and why you should consider applying for a position at People First.
As a housing provider the association has long recognised the important role support can play in enabling people to manage their home and sustain independent living in the community.
We were confident that with the right opportunities we could deliver effective support packages which would not only promote independent living, but enable people to grow and realise their potential. The community support service has developed from a vision into a reality in a short space of time and has now been in operation for more than 5 years.
All our services with the exception of one are funded by Supporting People. The Tameside Young People service is funded by New Charter Housing Trust.
Read more about the community support service...
More about community support
Having set up our first services early in 2003 to incredibly tight deadlines we now work across four offices in the North-West, supporting in excess of 250 households and employing the full time equivalent of 40 staff. We have been able to build on these firm foundations, successfully securing 4 new contracts and expanding an existing service.
This additional growth has been achieved against a back-drop of cuts in Supporting People grants and a climate of uncertainty across the sector.
Central to our approach has been the delivery of services at a local level, with offices in Tameside, Manchester, Rochdale and Vale Royal we are better placed to respond to the needs of service users. Primarily we provide floating support services, but we also have some supported accommodation.
Our expertise in delivering support has developed over the last few years and we now work with people with a range of issues and from diverse backgrounds. For example, we work with Asian women in Rochdale and with the wider black and minority ethnic community in Manchester with issues around mental health; with Irish men in Manchester with issues around alcohol misuse and homelessness and in Tameside and Vale Royal with homeless families and young people at risk. In practice people can not be defined by specific ‘problems’ and categorised into neat groups, many of the people that we work with have a range of problems.
During the period of development of the community support service we have also had to gear up to the challenges presented by Supporting People. We have had successful reviews in all areas of operation and received positive feedback on the quality of the services that we provide.This has been echoed by our own consultation with stakeholders. Our success in getting the services up and running and securing contracts is to a large extent attributable to the commitment of the staff who work at People First, the vision and support of the Board and the partner organisations that we work with who have provided the association with opportunities to develop new services.
Our biggest challenge now is to ensure that we retain our contracts in a time of great uncertainty about funding levels, but we are confident that we can achieve this if we ensure that as always we put ‘people first.’ This means regular consultation with service users, stakeholders and partners and working towards continuous improvement and excellence. Crucially it also means ensuring continued opportunities for our staff to develop and grow.We have built a strong base from which to develop further and ensure our continued success.
