Action
Social housing provider Clarion Housing Group works with charities, social enterprises and businesses to provide employment support and apprenticeship opportunities to its young residents through its charitable foundation, Clarion Futures.
It provides support for 360,000 residents, many of whom live in the top 20 per cent of income-deprived neighbourhoods.
Each year, its charitable arm invests £15m into helping residents to secure training and employment opportunities, manage their money and improve their digital skills. It also awards grants to local community groups and charities, supporting projects that benefit all age groups.
Clarion Futures’ employment advisors collaborate with over 50 employers, such as the NHS, Morrisons, Royal Mail, Primark and Pret A Manger, to provide apprenticeships in business administration, customer services, retail, health and leisure. The organisation also uses its buying power to leverage social value from its supply chain, encouraging contractors such as Equans, United Living and Wates to offer apprenticeships.
“We are a business for social purpose, reinvesting our surplus into building and improving homes, as well as providing support and opportunities to our residents,” says age friendly communities manager, Sarah Mitton, who leads Clarion Futures’ youth programmes and has employed seven young apprentices on her team in the last five years.
“We provide holistic support that is tailored to each young person. We partner with frontline organisations, such as job centres, colleges, youth clubs, schools and youth offending teams and we also run resident engagement days and drop-in surgeries in community centres to spread the word about our apprenticeship programme and help identify young people that might benefit from our support. These young people – residents and non-residents – are offered specialised training, on-the-job mentoring and work placements,” she adds.
Mitton’s team also connects with young people that might otherwise go under the radar, such as those living in Clarion neighbourhoods that are vulnerable, affected by violence or knife crime, or young care leavers.
“We offer one-to-one mentoring and support to any young care leaver moving into a Clarion home and we refer them into our dedicated jobs and training team, as well as offer them interviews for jobs within our organisation,” Mitton explains. “We also work with partners to run awareness-raising workshops around violence affecting young people in schools and colleges.”
Over the last two years, the landlord has also funded 75 young people to act as “connectors” in their communities, alerting their peers to opportunities around work and apprenticeships.
“We act as an anchor organisation, reaching out into the local community and working with local partners to make a difference to residents and communities,” Mitton says.
“We play a massive role in people’s lives because we’re giving them their home. This gives us a unique opportunity to develop relationships and support them with wider issues.”
Younger residents are supported to develop “soft skills”, such as communication and confidence through youth social action and volunteering programmes, many of which are supported by joint government and National Lottery #iwill Fund. The Generation Future project, for example, works with 400 young people aged 11-25 until August 2025, building on the skills developed through volunteering when looking for work and careers.
Impact
Since April 2023, Clarion Futures has supported 78 young people into apprenticeships. The majority of those who sign up go on to secure permanent roles with the same organisation, Mitton says. In 2022/23, it invested almost £250,000 into its apprenticeship programme, which generated more than £1.4million in social value.
Mitton says: “This demonstrates the wider economic, social and environmental impact of our work. To date, we have helped more than 1,000 people across our communities into apprenticeships across hundreds of roles.”
Jess, a Clarion resident, joined Mitton in the age friendly communities team as an apprentice in April 2021. She now works as a communities officer, project managing a programme for care leavers.
She says: “Since starting this new role, I’ve gained valuable project management experience and I now line manage an apprentice. I learnt so much about the housing sector while working on my level 3 qualification and I supported the #iwill youth initiatives and with various youth events throughout the year.”
Clarion Futures also led the Kickstart Housing Partnership, bringing the social housing sector together to take part in the government’s Kickstart scheme which launched in 2020, offering paid six-month work placements for unemployed 16 to 24 year-olds. The Partnership created more than 500 placements in the housing sector, with many of the 130 young people who joined Clarion through the scheme going on to secure permanent roles in the organisation.
