Link Up and adult literacy volunteering

What was Link Up?
Skills for Life has made changes in the way that volunteers support adult literacy teaching. Together with the Active Communities Unit at the Home Office, the Adult Basic Skills Strategy Unit - now the Skills for Life Strategy Unit - allocated £3 million over three years for the Link Up Project, which ran until 2004. The project was established to pilot new ways of working with volunteers ("supporters") to help adults with their language, literacy and numeracy skills in 21 of the most deprived communities in England. It aimed to recruit 6,000 new supporters by March 2004.

The pilot areas included a mix of city, rural and seaside locations spread across all areas of England, and developed systems for recruiting, training and supporting basic skills volunteers. Pilot programmes were also run in prisons and in the Army.

The consortium running the project, led by the Basic Skills Agency, included the BBC, Birmingham Core Skills Development Partnership, City and Guilds, The National Tenants Resource Centre, Groundwork, The Princes Trust, Tesco and the Trades Union Congress. The Army pilot projects were managed directly by the Army, and the regional projects were managed by a range of different organisations from the voluntary, community and education sectors.

The Link Up Project operated in:

North East: Middlesborough, Stockton on Tees
Eastern: Basildon, Great Yarmouth
West Midlands: Birmingham, Stoke on Trent
East Midlands: Derby, Leicester
Yorkshire and Humberside: Barnsley, Sheffield
South West: Plymouth, Penwith
North West: St Helens, Blackburn
South East: Thanet, Isle of Wight
London: Brent, Camden

The volunteers
The Link Up Project focused on disadvantaged communities where there wais little history of organised volunteering. The project ran a marketing campaign to recruit the supporters, including local press and radio advertisements. A diverse range of volunteers was recruited, including members of the black and minority ethnic communities (20% of all Link Up recruits), supporters with moderate learning difficulties and ex-offenders. The relationship with the voluntary and community sector was strengthened by customised training that met their specific community needs.

Link Up also encouraged its supporters in need of help to brush up their own basic skills and get nationally recognised qualifications, including the national literacy and numeracy tests.

Adult Learner Support qualification
The Link Up Project supported the Skills for Life strategy and built capacity in the voluntary and community sector by providing opportunities for volunteers to get the nationally recognised Level 2 certificate in Adult Learner Support. This allowed supporters to progress in a range of ways, including community development work or Level 3 and 4 training programmes leading to paid teaching work.

The Level 2 certificate consists of three units; these can be completed in isolation but all three are needed to get the qualification. Getting this qualification will:

• prepare you for helping in an adult classroom by providing one to one support, working with small groups or making resources
• help you identify clients or users with basic skills needs and how to signpost them to get help
• provide valuable experience if you want to go on to become a teacher of adults

Links:

• More on literacy teaching qualifications
  
• Find out about volunteering
• For more about training to be a tutor visit www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise/tutors/tutorcourses
• For more on the Link Up project, and contact details of projects still being run privately, visit www.basic-skills.co.uk