What's new with Progress Futures?

Our Progress Futures Team is here to help any tenants who are looking for employment, education, training and volunteering opportunities and need a little help.

We support customers through a person-centred approach to improve their employment prospects and achieve their career goals and aspirations.  We can do this one a one-to-one basis, or as part of a peer group.

We can also support with:

• job searching and applying for roles,
• CV writing,
• preparing for interviews,
• accessing training courses or education and qualifications,
• finding volunteering opportunities or work experience placements.

We work with support services and local authorities, community groups, foodbanks, schools, colleges and job centres to ensure customers receive the support they need, as well as working with learning and training providers to put together training courses and workshops to support our customers. These courses include employability, health and wellbeing and household budgeting. 

Celebrating the success of MPT Steps

We celebrated the end of the externally funded MPT Steps project in December.

The project was aimed at enhancing the employability skills of residents in some of Lancashire’s most deprived areas.

We are proud to say that through the project, we have supported more than 300 people with improving their employment prospects, skills and confidence.  We supported 58 unemployed people to get back into employment or self-employment, and 47 people who are not required to look for work into employment or job searching.

To mark the project’s success, we held a thank you event for MPT Steps customers at one of our community centres. It was a great opportunity for us to meet with past and current customers to talk about their successes and plans for the future. 

We are excited to move forward into 2024 and continue our commitment to supporting our tenants through employment and training.

Project SEARCH

We are thrilled to celebrate the third year of our partnership with Runshaw College and the innovative Project SEARCH programme, which provides internship opportunities for young autistic people and young people with learning disabilities. 

The seven interns will complete placements in various areas within Progress Housing Group including Compliance, People Team, Property Services, Group Customer Experience, Key and the Group’s Internal Audit Team.  By offering meaningful placements within our organisation, we hope to offer the interns valuable experience of working within a social housing provider and support them to further their knowledge and skills and gain confidence in the workplace.

To find out more about Project SEARCH click here. Welcoming our new Project SEARCH interns

Brighter Futures

Progress Housing Group continues to offer six-month paid work placements to our tenants through the Brighter Futures initiative. 

One of our tenants, Alex, joined us in October, taking on the Talent Administrator role and has become a real asset to the Recruitment team.  She said: “I am absolutely loving the job. I work with brilliant people and I already feel like part of the best team.”

One of our previous Brighter Futures recruits, Hope, has been successful in gaining an apprenticeship with Progress Housing Group, and started in her new role at the beginning of November 2023.

We now look forward to welcoming another tenant to join the Marketing and Communications Team as a Digital Content Assistant next month (February).

If you are interested in finding out more about Brighter Futures click here: Join our Brighter Futures programme

Key dates for your diary

Tuesday Job Club – The Paddock Room, Civic Centre, South Ribble Council offices – 10am to 12pm every Tuesday

Thursday Job Club – The Place Community Centre - 10am to 12pm every Thursday

How can I contact Progress Futures?

If you, or someone living in a Progress Housing Group property, would like some support from the Progress Futures team, please get in touch by text/ phone on 07976 812 535 or 0333 320 4555, or email futures@progressgroup.org.uk. 

Once we have received all your information you will be assigned to one of the Progress Futures officers who will arrange to meet with you to discuss your goals and any potential barriers, and then create a plan to support you moving forward.