KDS, Citizenship and Youth
At KDS, we understand the need of young people to find their ways in life and become fully integrated members of society. After all, today's young people are the citizens of tomorrow. We owe it to everyone's future to give them the best chances in life
We are passionate about using our tried and tested KDS Training models to support young individuals into employment. And because of our unique partnership structure with businesses, we are able to "spot" young talent and place them with occupations that will mean something to them
A Helping Hand into Work
Our training academies aim to recruit trainees from different backgrounds and areas of social deprivation.
All our trainees have been both long term unemployed and unable to access the training necessary to make the transition into employment. No walk of life or background is too challenging: our training academies aim to help anyone who is willing get back into work.
Since February 2008, KDS has developed and implemented an extremely successful training programme, which so far has had a 90.54% success rate in helping people gain employment, and has had a very high success rate for those people staying in long-term and sustained employment (93.54%).
We work with people who may face multiple barriers to employment such as, for example, people on long-term incapacity benefit and people who with childcare commitments. In other words, we aim to help those people who are furthest from the labour market.
Who We Help
The project helps all participants who are enthusiastic and willing to engage with the training. An essential aim of the academies is to help those with particular challenges which have in the past acted as a barrier to employment. We have been able to do this with close partnership from local agencies and government departments, as well as employers who identify jobs that can be ‘ring fenced’ for Training Academy participants. This gives them an end goal to work towards. It means that our courses provide tangible results and the very real outcomes of real and lasting employment.
Many of our participants have issues that would normally act as a barrier to employment within certain sectors, i.e within logistics, drink driving endorsements and criminal records. We have been able to negotiate employment for these individuals based on the progress and dedication of the individuals throughout our courses.
Examples of such barriers that hinder people from finding employment, which KDS has helped them overcome include:
- Lack of self-confidence and self-belief
- Poor physical and / or mental health
- Being second and third generation unemployed
- Social and economic deprivation
- Social Inequalities
- Poor literacy and numeracy
- Criminal convictions and offending
- Inadequate housing
- Further support needs
Vital Work
In the current economic climate, it is more important that we help people retrain and re-skill so that they can gain sustained employment. Each of our courses helps a group of unemployed people, with a variety of different backgrounds and skills sets to retrain with skills useful to the distribution industry, care sector and the food sector. By the end of our, course we aim to have all our recruits in employment.
It is this unique offering that makes training with the KDS Group really mean something, and is a part of our strong commitment to encourage social responsibility throughout the UK.