A short video showcasing Manchester Cathedral Bees by Adam York Gregory Manchester Cathedral Bees from Adam York Gregory on Vimeo. Bee Hive Cameras We currently have two bee hive cameras upon the flat roof of Manchester Cathedral, click on the play button below to view the bees and their hives. Heavenly Honey produced by our […]
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Sir David Richards has become a patron of Volition Community following a visit last year to see the work of this charity. Welcoming Sir David, the Dean of Manchester thanked Sir David for his commitment to this programme which runs from Manchester and Liverpool Cathedrals. Sir David, encouraged at the outcomes of this programme of […]
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What a difference a year makes! As I wander through the silence of the Cathedral, making my way to the spiral staircase that will take me to the roof, I am reminded that only a year ago we were celebrating Manchester City’s Premier League title win. The Cathedral was bustling with people and equipment the […]
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During 2019, we welcomed a new programme manager Donna Denston from the Combined Authority. Donna joined a team of seven staff and has grown into the role very quickly. We took 115 volunteers onto the programme from job centres across Greater Manchester with 103 received formal accreditation. The major reasons for some volunteers not attaining accreditation was down to the following:
We had a significant rise in the under 30s (33% in 2019 vs 20% in 2018), a number of whom are graduates (13% of the overall intake in 2019) or have dropped out of university and are now unemployed and have experienced recurring bouts of under-employment. We are well aware that inactivity and unemployment have a negative impact on mental health. This statistic has remained similar at a ‘disclosed’ 58%, although we would argue that the true figure is higher.
We saw good news in the drop of referrals from worklessness households (67% in 2019 vs 82% in 2018) and overall higher previous educational attainment levels, but in part this is a reflection of the younger age group who are still living at home. The ethnic and gender mixes were both slightly stronger in 2019. As a point of interest, 19% of referrals have had English as a second language. Known progression to employment is 36%. This is ‘day 1’ data and from a mixture of part-time and full-time employment outcomes. We have also included those we personally consider to be very distant from the labour market as ‘unable to work’ (10%). 38% are still volunteering or known to be actively job seeking.
