European Social Fund in England

Family Learning receives Convergence investment

A project aimed at reducing child poverty and supporting family learning to equip parents with employment skills has received £570,000 from the European Social Fund (ESF) Convergence Programme.

The FLAG (Families Learning and Growing) project will engage 1300 families and aims include improving family literacy, language and numeracy; improving family relationships and improving the skills of parents to enhance their employment prospects.

The ESF convergence investment has been approved via the Learning and Skills Council. Of that investment 65 percent will be invested by the Cornwall County Council Cornwall Adult Service for FLAG.

Morwenna Vernon, Family Learning Development Manager, Cornwall Adult Education Service, said “the aim of the FLAG is to provide additional learning resources to support Cornwall’s recently published parenting strategy. Many of these courses improve family relationships and in turn improve parent’s confidence. Sometimes a parent will receive their first ever qualification and we often have the child present their certificate to them at a ceremony.”

Carleen Kelemen, Director of the Convergence Partnership Office, added: “this ESF Convergence investment will support parents who feel detached from their community and have lost their confidence in seeking work. The investment will be used to offer practical support, encouragement and skills and as more people benefit I hope others will be inspired to follow this route.”

Speaking on behalf of the Learning and Skills Council, ESF Director Mark Williams said his organisation was delighted to be able to fund the project.

“FLAG is likely to make a real difference to vulnerable families in Cornwall, helping them integrate into their local community and generally improving their sense of self worth,” he said, “Developing stronger approaches to intergenerational learning has to be one of the key planks of Cornwall’s neighbourhood and community regeneration plans will contribute to the economic resilience of the most disadvantaged communities especially during the current downturn.”

The other 35% of the ESF Convergence investment will be approved in chunks of £10,000 each to other organisations that bid in.

Successful bids so far have come from PACT (Parents and Children Together) – which is part of the CPR (Camborne Pool Redruth) Success Zone and will be running courses for parents around social and emotional learning; Action for Children – which will be running teenage parenting courses; Penwith Community Development Trust – which will run a range of courses including cookery and ICT; and Cornwall Neighbourhoods for Change (CN4C) – which runs engagement activities to encourage families and give them more confidence.

Devon and Cornwall Probation Service is a non-funded partner and will be supporting work with ex offenders.

FLAG will build on a previous successful project – FLY (Family Learning Years) – which ended in August 2008. FLY receives Objective one investment and exceeded its targets by engaging almost 2000 families via children’s centres.

For further information please contact Clare Morgan, Media Relations Manager for the Convergence Partnership Office for Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, on tel: 01872 223439 / 07973 813647 or email: cmorgan@cornwall.gov.uk