SEC January summary:

* SEC has been working with 52 clients in total and with 21 active clients in January;

* 2 new client has been referred to SEC this month;

* SEC has done 2 referrals to partners’ services for hostels;

* 13 clients have been in active employment;

* 15 clients have had a stable long-term accommodation but still 7 of them needed support with accommodation issues;

* 1 client has been helped to apply for new passport;

* 1 clients has been helped to clear his situation for tax issues and to register him with Job Centre Plus for Job Seeker Allowance

* all December clients had 199 sessions in total where 11 clients have benefited from job support sessions, 9 clients was helped with legal advice during 24 legal sessions. The most active sessions were job support sessions following by therapeutic sessions.

There were 2 discharged clients at the end of January

SEC December summary:

* SEC has been working with 50 clients in total and with 23 active clients in December;

* 2 new client has been referred to SEC this month;

* SEC has done 4 accommodation referrals, 3 for hostels and 1 for grant to Vicars Relief

* 14 clients have been in active employment, some of clients who started work in earlier months lost employment in December, 1 person started his new job in December

* 1 clients have a prospect to start employment within beginning of January 2011;

* 12 clients have had a stable long-term accommodation

* 1 client has been helped to apply for new passport;

* 2 clients have been helped to open new bank account

* 1 clients has been helped with working tax credit application;

* all December clients had 226 sessions in total where 17 clients have benefited from job support sessions

* 9 clients was helped with legal advice during 36 legal sessions. The most active sessions were job support sessions;

* There was 6 discharged clients in December due to lack of contact or their own decision to cease SEC services

SEC November summary:

-SEC has been working with 48 clients (from the beginning of the project) and with 32 clients in November;

- 4 new client has been referred to SEC this month;

- 20 clients have been in active employment with income and two was still self-employed without income, there were some people who took up employment and lost it in the meantime;

- 2 clients have a prospect to start employment within next few weeks;

- 14 clients have had a stable long-term accommodation, some of them signed up for winter shelters;

- 1 client applied for new passport and 1 scheduled appointment for it;

- 2 client has been helped to open new bank account

- 1 client has cleared his overdue tax assessment without penalties and is going to receive refund of almost £1000;

- 2 clients has been helped with working tax credit application;

- all November clients had 320 sessions in total where 18 clients have benefited from legal advice with total 36 legal sessions. The most active sessions were job support sessions;

- there was still an increase of clients interested to rent accommodation but this was probably influenced by an increase of clients undertaking employment, some of them used and are going to use winter shelters especially recently once the weather changed dramatically.

During 18-20 November Barka UK hosted the Chairman of Barka Foundation, Poland – Tomasz Sadowski. The purpose of the visit was the evaluation of the Social Economy Centre’s seven-month work towards employment of A10 nationals in the City of London and Tower Hamlets. The Social Economy Centre in London is patterned after simmilar market integration centres for vulnerable adults which have been initiated and developed by Barka Foundation in Poland in public-private partnerships. The report on the visit of Tomasz Sadowski will be available soon.

Thank you letter to Tomasz Sadowski

Barka UK’s Social Economy Centre which started its operation on the 26th of April, has been so far working with 10 Eastern European participants. Among the beneficiaries there are 7 Polish, 2 Lithuanians and one Latvian national. Few are ready to undertake employment at once but majority needs an on-going work with a therapist, job advisor, enterprise development worker and psychologist to prepare for employment. Barka team at Social Economy Centre has had first successes within the project as first participants have already been employed.