Monday, December 04, 2006

2 new Street Advisors are due to start in north Moseley next Monday.

These new street advisors will be targeted at the following roads and the roads immediately off them: Trafalgar Road and Kingswood Road.

The objective of the street advisors will be to identify residents who are out of work and to guide them towards jobs or further education. The advisors will also be able to give advice on other Council services to residents.

Trafalgar Road and Kingswood Road have been identifed as two areas having the fewest number of residents in employment. At the north end of Trafalgar Road only 39% of the residents are in employment. In Kingswood Road only 32% of the residents are employed. As a comparison, Grange Road in Kings Heath 66% of the residents are employed.

Both Trafalgar Road and Kingswood Road have different characteristics. Trafalgar Road is predomently white with a large Afro-Carrabean community (25%). The properties are predominetly owned by Housing Associations. Kingswood Road is predominently Pakistani (mainly Chachi Pantans from the Attock district of the North West Frontier province in Pakistan) and mainly owner-occupiers

Street Advisors have existed in Birmingham since January 2006 - there are 6 advisors who cover Springfield, Sparkbrook and Small Heath. Within 6 months of starting, each advisor had helped 50 unemployed residents either find permanent jobs or get into further education courses for training.

The Street Advisors also have a fund to create training courses for local residents in these particular roads. One of the street advisors is able to speak Henko, which is the dialect mainly spoken by the Chachi Pantan community. In the case of Kingswood Road there is a large proporation of women who look after family members (30%) and ways of assisting them will be explored.

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