Futures Recognised for Commitment to Minority Youth Groups with ‘Transforming Lives’ Award

This project is part funded by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport through the Life Chances Fund, and administered by The National Lottery Community Fund. By 2025, the Life Chances Fund aims to support over 51,000 individuals nationally to achieve better life outcomes in areas such as health, employment and housing.'

The Futures service beat competition from across the UK to take home the ‘Transforming Lives’ award. This award recognises the successes made by local authorities and partners in transforming lives of those with a disability, health condition or significant life barrier.

Esther Murray, Contract Manager at Futures, commented: Winning the Transforming Lives Award means so much to myself and all the coaches who work on the Future Impact programme. Over the last four years the coaches have worked tirelessly with passion and dedication to enable hundreds of young people to have a much more positive future.

The Future Impact programme is funded and supported by the Life Chances Fund through DCMS and the Community Lottery fund, along with commissioning from Nottingham City and Nottinghamshire Local Authority Councils.

This programme offers long-term support to young individuals with Special Educational Needs and or Disabilities (SEND), developing soft skills support around four key areas: Good Health, Employment, Community & Friendship and Independent Living with ultimate aim of gaining, sustaining and prospering in employment and work activities. There is a heavy emphasis on building relationships with customers and their support networks and in identifying bespoke areas of support meaning everyone’s journey with us is personalised for them and their needs and hopes.

Service users advocated for their local services, with 100% of participants sharing that they were ‘able to talk to their coach about the things that mattered to them’, had a ‘clear understanding of their next steps’ and felt the service ‘had made a real difference to their lives’.

Some of those who have benefitted from the Future Impact service shared their support for the help they had received:

 “My CV used to get ignored and now I get responses. It’s more realistic now. It was intimidating thinking you had to get a job and write a CV and not know how. It feels a lot better now.” 

“I am a lot more confident. I like talking it all through, it makes me feel like I can achieve it.”

Rebecca Langton, Portfolio Holder for Skills, Growth and Economic Development at Nottingham City Council has said of the programme: Improving outcomes for disadvantaged young people is a key priority for the Council and we are proud to be part of a unique project that has already over delivered on supporting young people with special educational and complex needs into sustainable employment, education, and training opportunities. We are equally thrilled to hear first-hand from participants about the positive impact the project is having on improving self-confidence, wellbeing, and independent living skills.

In a recent SEND inspection at Nottingham City Council the inspectors also highlighted this project and relationship with authorities as a strength and stated:

“The partnership with ‘Futures’ strongly supports young people with SEND to transfer from schools into further education, employment or training…Highly effective partnership working through ‘Futures’ supports young people to prepare for adulthood….It offers an individualised approach to support these young people through this key phase in their lives.”

The MJ Awards were held on Friday 24^th June 2022 in Westminster, London and were attended by Esther Murray, Contract Manager, and Deana Goode, Life Chances Fund Coach.

Esther Murray further commented: The MJ award ceremony was a wonderful event. We were surrounded by so many inspirational and pioneering people from Local Authorities across the UK. To be part of the Future Impact team and to raise the profile of our amazing local authorities in Nottingham and Nottinghamshire, was an amazing achievement and one that I am so extremely proud of.

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