Consultation open on future of Warwickshire Employment Support Team (WEST)

A consultation has opened on the future of the Warwickshire Employment Support Team (WEST) and the impact of Warwickshire County Council's (WCC) savings target of £92 million from 2014-2018. As part of the council's financial plan, the WEST service needs to save £280,000 per year.

Warwickshire Employment Support Team (WEST) is a countywide service for people with a learning disability, Autism or Asperger's who want to find paid work. The specialist team help people find full and part-time employment by providing:

• expertise on disability employment and benefit issues;
• personal profiling and job matching;
• developing the skills people need for employment; and
• on-going support to employees and employers

In order to meet this budget reduction, WCC's WEST service would need to close. They are therefore consulting on the impact of such a decision if it were to be implemented and seeking views on other support that may be available.

For customers who currently use the WEST service or would do so in future, Warwickshire County Council will be looking for ways to make better use of other services to support customers to find a job or stay in work. These could include:

• Greater use of the Learning Disability Wellbeing Hubs for North Warwickshire, South Warwickshire and Rugby.
• Signposting customers to support available through Job Centre Plus.
• Signposting customers to support available from community and voluntary sector organisations such as Scope, Mencap and Remploy.
• For customers living in an accommodation with care setting; ensuring their commissioned support provider enables them to meet their employment outcomes.

Access the on-line survey https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/WESTConsultation

Download an easy read version of the survey https://askwarks.wordpress.com/2016/08/02/west-consultation/

If you need help with completing this, would like the survey in an alternative format or have any other comments, please contact elainecoates@warwickshire.gov.uk

Face to face consultation events for current and future WEST customers will take place in Rugby on

Wednesday 7th September: Job Club. 12.30pm to 1.30 pm at Rugby Library, Little Elbow Street

Monday 19^th September Speaking Up group 1pm-3pm at RCCG House, 37 Albert St, Rugby CV21 2SG

The consultation will run until midnight on 30^th September 2016.

The results of the consultation will be included in a report to Warwickshire County Council's Cabinet in December 2016.