Meet the Mancunian - Talking supporting careers for the youth with Jane Wells

Meet the Mancunian-6.9 - Jane Wells-transcript

Intro

Hello and a warm Mancunian welcome to all my incredible listeners out there. I'm Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe, your friendly host, and you've just tuned in to the sixth season of the Meet the Mancunian podcast, where I share remarkable social impact stories from the heart of Manchester every Tuesday throughout the season.

This podcast is a celebration of the unsung heroes, the change makers, and the passionate souls who are making a real difference in our vibrant city. From social enterprises to non-profits and community groups, I bring you the voices of worker bees and volunteers, all coming together for a common cause.

Through heartfelt conversations, my guests share their experiences, dreams, and unwavering commitment to making a difference. From the challenges they've overcome to the triumphs that fuel their passion, their stories will leave you moved, enlightened, and brimming with hope. Join me on this audio adventure as my guests and I explore the transformative power of collective action and the remarkable impact we can create when we unite for a common cause.

Their tales are a testament to the power of community, collaboration, and the indomitable Mancunian spirit. They not only address pressing issues right here in Manchester, but also offer insights and inspiration that resonate far beyond these boundaries.

So whether you're commuting, on a run, or just relaxing at home, I invite you to tune in on Apple, Spotify, Google, or any of your favourite podcasting platforms. You can also log on to my website, www.meetthemancunian.co.uk. Let's embark on this journey of discovery and inspiration.

For my new listeners, you can catch up with the incredible stories from the first five seasons at www.meetthemancunian.co.Uk, where you'll also find out more about my own journey as a podcaster. And to all my returning listeners, I can't thank you enough for your support. You make this podcast possible and I'm immensely grateful.

So join me as I continue to share these inspiring tales of change and community support from the beating heart of Manchester. Together, we can spread a bit of good news, spark meaningful conversations, and inspire positive action. Thank you for being a part of the Meet the Mancunian community.

Welcome to the ninth episode of season six of the Meet the Mancunian podcast, social impact stories from Manchester.

Passionate about supporting employment in the youth, we hear from Jane Wells, Enterprise Coordinator, Greater Manchester Combined Authority in this episode.

Episode 6.9

[00:03:02] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: I'm delighted to introduce my guest, Jane Wells, Enterprise Coordinator, part of the Youth Employment and Opportunities team at the Greater Manchester Combined Authority. Thank you so much, Jane, for joining me today.

[00:03:17] Jane Wells: Thank you for having me. I'm really excited to talk about what we do.

[00:03:20] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: I'm really interested to know what you do as well. But before we get started with that, it'll be great to know how you found your passion for supporting young people. Where did that come from?

[00:03:31] Jane Wells: I've grown up in Greater Manchester. If my accent doesn't give it away, I am a native Oldhamer. I live in Oldham and I've worked in Greater Manchester all of my professional life. So when I left school, I started an apprenticeship with a technical education provider, which supported predominantly young people that weren't best suited to a mainstream post 16 setting. And then just job role after job role, I became more engulfed with supporting young people at different transition points.

I suppose it was a silent passion at first which, which creeped up at up on me all the time. And now I am very passionate about supporting young people, ensuring that they have a clear line of sight to their future and what they want to do.

[00:04:18] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: It's really interesting that you also went through your own apprentice program as well. And of course, the fact that your passion has continued while you didn't always do it full time.

So now tell us about how you got involved with the Youth Employment and Opportunities team and what it does.

[00:04:33] Jane Wells: It was a natural progression again in my career. So I started off as a youth mentor, supporting young people to re-engage in education after they'd been disengaged for a period of time. And then from that I went to the National Career Service supporting schools and colleges to engage with businesses into their careers programmes and then from that I went to regional government, which is the job I'm doing now. I've been here for five years.

[00:05:05] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Tell us more about Youth Employment and Opportunities team. What is the focus?

[00:05:10] Jane Wells: We form the Greater Manchester Combined Authorities Careers Hub and our fundamental purpose is to support schools and colleges strategically improve their careers education provision in line with the national framework of best practice so that young people are making better and more informed choices at key transition points.

For instance, when they're choosing the GCSEs in year 8 or year 9, depending on the setting, and then where they want to progress on to once they've finished year 11, whether they want to go to sixth form, do an apprenticeship, go to a college, and then the last transition leaving their 16 to 18 provision.

Our purpose is to support institutions, so the information they give to young people will help them make meaningful decisions at key transition points.

[00:06:10] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Thank you for sharing that. A lot of what your team does might be bridging the gap between industry and education. How do you do that?

[00:06:18] Jane Wells: A key principle of our work is to, like you just mentioned, Deepa, bring industry and education closer together. One of our main offers to schools and colleges across Greater Manchester is to bring in industry volunteers and they'll physically go into school, and they'll support with the development of strategy, with programmes, with activities.

The concept is when a careers leader and an industry volunteer are sat down together making strategy and programmes, it's being developed not only with school priorities and how it fits in with curriculum learning and student need in the respective age ranges, but it's being informed by the needs of industry, the skills that employees are needing. It's highlighting within education the jobs of the future and it's putting onto the radar of young people these are what's available to them across the city region and not just the known jobs.

So when you speak to a young person it might be, I want to be a mechanic or a nurse and very typical jobs you think of when you're speaking to young people. When, in fact, the opportunity that's available to young people is much wider. It could be, offering them line of sight to becoming a pastry chef or physiotherapist or anything you can imagine and what's available in Greater Manchester.

[00:07:51] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Thank you, that sounds really interesting. Had there been challenges on this journey that you may have faced and had to overcome?

[00:07:59] Jane Wells: I think the biggest challenge that presents our sub sector in education, oh there is a number of challenges, the most recent one, not just education but the rest of the world the pandemic had a massive impact on schools, and colleges. What was offered and made available to young people during the pandemic and now we're in this post pandemic era where schools are still building up the offer of different careers, insights and opportunities to young people. So that has had a significant impact on schools and colleges and the way that they delivered careers education.

And then the quite sector typical challenges that schools face such as often Ofsted inspections and negative inspections can have a knock-on effect to school priorities and our purpose is to ensure that careers education is on par and considered as important as taught subjects because it has a massive impact on their transition and their destinations. So these pressures that school faced and have a knock on impact into the careers education that's offered.

And then another challenge that we see as a combined authority as part of the Youth Employment and Opportunities team is employers telling us this is what we need from young people emerging into the labour market This is what the skills that we need these things that the job roles that we need young people to be considering and ensuring that young people are work ready. So that is why employers engage in in school activities. The building of careers programme is so important because what we want to do is ensure that young people are work ready in line with what industry is telling us that they need.

And then another challenge that we want to overcome is ensuring that all our young people across Greater Manchester have social capital, whether they are a care experienced young person, whether they have special educational needs or disabilities. If it's a young person that's in a non-mainstream setting, that we are ensuring that every young person has the same opportunity, every young person has the same line of sight and the breadth of the careers education and wider education system is meeting the needs of all our young people. So that's, I'm not sure if it's a challenge or an ambition, but it certainly fits into that category of something that we're working towards and meaningfully trying to improve.

And then something else that is really important to us as a service is ensuring that not only we are creating these opportunities with industry and employees are engaging with schools and colleges and creating experiences for young people but once young people have got that information and they're informed about what's available to them post 16 and post 18 that they are progressing on to meaningful destinations and then that impacts on having an effective workforce that are in jobs that are relevant to their personal interests.

And another contributing factor to that is once we're creating social capital for young people and we're thinking about the destinations that young people can progress on to is raising the aspirations of all our young people and realising them as well. Someone from, I'm going to use Oldham as an example, because that's where I'm from, and when I was 13 and you said that you can work in Manchester City Centre on Oxford Road I just didn't know there was life outside of Oldham, so young people that were like me 15, 20 years ago, raising their aspirations, showing them that there's opportunity available to them in our own city region.

Especially for young girls as well, we have data sets available to us at the Combined Authority that show us that the aspirations of girls are lower than that of their peers that are boys, so when we are raising aspirations, we're doing it to meet individual demographics as well as a broader societal piece.

[00:12:39] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Thanks for sharing that, Jane. And it looks like there's a lot of challenges that you're trying to overcome and I think good aspirations as well, level playing field for all young people and offering them that support, both customised and overall and you read a lot about young people wanting purpose led jobs and jobs where they can see that what they're doing matters. That's really interesting.

[00:13:02] Jane Wells: Absolutely. And we talk about it a lot professionally. We have this ambition in Greater Manchester of new capabilities for a new world. So not just preparing young people for jobs that exist now, but preparing young people for jobs that we don't know will exist in the future.

We're uncertain what how different sectors will develop and the new opportunities as they emerge moving into the future. So not only supporting or developing opportunity and progression routes for our young people now, but future proofing future industry needs.

[00:13:43] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: That must be quite interesting as well.

What is the impact would you say that you've made so far through all this work that you're doing?

[00:13:51] Jane Wells: We contribute to a national network. So our work is being replicated in some way in all regions across England. Our work started in Greater Manchester seven years ago, eight years ago and I have been with the team five years.

I've worked in Bolton for the past five years and I've been very fortunate to see the journey of school improvement because we talk about careers education. Careers education isn't a standalone thing. It's something that should be integrated into all areas of school and college life, regardless of the setting.

So whether that's a mainstream setting, whether that's a special educational needs school, whether that's alternative provision for young people that don't flourish in a mainstream setting, whether it's colleges or sixth forms. So careers education quite literally spills into every area of education.

So I've been really fortunate to see over the past five years going into schools looking at how they were delivering careers education and how it was a standalone topic that would happen in an ad hoc way which wasn't supported by industry voices to now seeing in a lot of schools, not only in Bolton, but across Greater Manchester, careers education becoming school priority.

We're well on our way to seeing schools and colleges view careers education as important as taught subjects and graded subjects in school, which is very exciting because what that means is, and I've mentioned it a few times already, is young people will ultimately be the beneficiary of it.

They won't see policy change in school or strategy change. What they'll experience is more conversations with employers from all different types of industries and backgrounds having conversations with employers that they can see themselves in, whether that's whether that's ethnically or socio economically, coming from the same backgrounds of them, it will raise aspirations for young people.

I have been really fortunate to see over the past five years, that the impact of our work, working with educationalists, and educationalists working with each other, and industry professionals is a city region wide improvement of careers education. That's very exciting. I think, anyway.

[00:16:33] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Definitely, I think it's fantastic because at the end of the day, young people are the future and, making sure that they are empowered, energised and informed so that they can make those the right career choices is so important.

[00:16:46] Jane Wells: Absolutely.

[00:16:48] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: How can interested people reach out to you and learn more? Where can they find you? Website? Social media?

[00:16:55] Jane Wells: Social media will be easy. We are across most mediums as at your GMACS. So you can find us on Instagram and Twitter at your GMACS. And then we also have an inbox that people can get in touch with to have to speak with us about getting involved in our work.

The ways that I could advise people listening to get involved can vary depending on how they're listening to this conversation. So hopefully the vast majority of people that are listening are in employment, will work for an organisation or a business and my advice would to them would be is your business doing enough to support schools and colleges and young people?

Do you have the capacity to go into schools on an ad hoc basis to talk about your career and your sector and what it is that your organization do to inspire young people to consider it as a career option? Are they offering opportunities to young people, for young people to come out of school and college, to visit the workplace? Now that might not be in a traditional work experience way, as you and I might have experienced it where it was five days out of school. It could be a half day experience, a one-day experience, but offering young people the opportunity to peek behind the curtain, to see how a business is run to see what what different jobs are available in their workplace. So that would be one thing I'd encourage people to do, whether it is on an ad hoc basis, or they'd like to support longer term with one individual, either school or college.

And then the other way I would encourage somebody to get involved. Maybe not as directly, but if you're a parent or carer, have these conversations with your child or your young person.

We spoke about challenges earlier. One of the challenges that schools face is the messaging that they're giving to their students isn't necessarily always mirrored at home. So they're giving students these experiences and this information to support their transitions and destinations, but a really key part of that is that parents and carers are also supporting that messaging. They're having conversations with their child or young person about what's available to them and challenging their own perception of what pathways are for young people.

So if you're speaking to your child about what's available to them. Be talking about not just going doing your A levels or going doing a BTEC but talking about apprenticeships and T levels and where these different pathways lead to and how they're all interconnected.

So they would be my two. If you're in business, offer opportunities to young people, get in touch with your local school or college through us, so you can offer information and then support the messaging of your young person, your child's school, visiting the website, finding out what information your student, your child's getting and then just having that conversation over tea at night.

[00:20:25] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Those are really great tips and thank you for sharing that. It probably spills over a little bit into my next question is what advice would you have for people looking to start a similar movement in their local community, whether it be across the UK, and you said there are teams across the UK, as well as it could be, we have listeners now from 50 countries, someone somewhere might get inspired by what you've shared and look to do something similar. How do they get started?

[00:20:53] Jane Wells: Advice from my own professional journey would be to look at opportunities available in the public sector. So we do work for regional government but our partners are in local government, they're in national government. So if professionally you're interested in this work, have a look for opportunities in them spaces.

But if people are interested in just contributing to this work more generally having a look on our website, which is www.gmacs.co.uk have a look at how employees have been working with us today over the past seven or eight years.

Because there is so many different ways that people can support the information that's given to young people to raise their aspirations, to realise their aspirations. And we have over 200 industry volunteers now that are working with schools or colleges long term. And they come from all, they come from all different types of professional and personal backgrounds.

 If somebody is interested in this work, then there is no exclusion from what your background is. Professionally, we work with people, young people who are still apprentices, right the way through to people who are retired and they just want to give back.

If someone is interested in it, speak to us. We can offer advice. We can introduce people to schools and colleges and if they want to do it on their own, then just go to the local secondary school or college's website. And then have a look at their careers section because schools have to publish what they're offering to young people as part of their careers education provision. So they'll be able to see how they fit into the system.

[00:22:46] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Thanks for sharing that and it takes me back to my very first job when I was still in college. I was figuring out whether I wanted to be a vet so I went and worked for a vet for one month and then of course I did some other summer internships as we used to call it in those days before I found my passion for communication which I've been in for many years now. But it's always very interesting and maybe something we can discuss later about how I could think of getting involved.

[00:23:16] Jane Wells: Absolutely. We have not offered a volunteer to a school for somebody who creates podcasts. So that would be, I think, definitely something that young people would like to hear more about.

[00:23:30] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Interesting. So we'll talk about that maybe at the end.

An opportunity now for you to talk about anything I haven't asked you about.

[00:23:39] Jane Wells: Our work is ongoing, we don't have any sort of big showcase that's happening in the foreseeable future so we'll continue to work with schools and colleges and businesses to bring them all together To ensure that they're having conversations and they're sharing best practice with one another to ultimately support young people But what I will mention we've just had results day for A Level B Level and T Level students, and we have results there for GCSE students coming up this week.

Our offer of support, our direct offer of support to young people through GMACS, the Greater Manchester Apprenticeship and Career Service website so just shining a light on that. , it's a fantastic website with tons of information for young people and parents, and then also shining a light on RPAS as well, which supports young people to move around the city region on public transport for free and RPAS will continue to develop so that would be just something I'd like to draw attention to softly -GMACS and RPAS because they do have a direct instant impact on our young residents.

[00:25:02] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Thank you and I'll make sure to include your website in my show notes so people can find it easily.

[00:25:08] Jane Wells: Wonderful.

[00:25:09] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: I now ask you my signature questions that I ask all my guests and the first one is describing the Mancunian spirit in a word or a phrase.

[00:25:18] Jane Wells: I thought the Mancunian spirit in a word would be kindness. I think we're a very kind city region and we care about each other. We look out for one another. I think there's a lot of humility in the greater Mancunian.

[00:25:35] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Thank you for sharing that. I do agree.

Can you share a Mancunian who inspires you and tell us why?

[00:25:41] Jane Wells: I'd like to think I'm a girl's girl, I'm a woman's woman, and I just meet on a regular basis so many inspirational women, so many women who are strong and determined and share the same passion I do.

I don't think I could identify as a very proud female Greater Mancunian without mentioning Emmeline Pankhurst and our wonderful suffragettes.

[00:26:07] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Thank you. She is very popular and of course has had a huge impact on the city, and the culture of the city as well,

[00:26:15] Jane Wells: Nationally as well, of course, her reach was far and wide.

[00:26:20] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Very true. What's the most important life lesson you've learned so far?

[00:26:25] Jane Wells: I think a nice thing that somebody once said to me was, Nobody thinks about you as much as you think about yourself. Not to stress the small things, whether that's personally or professionally, because nobody's thinking about your own mistakes more than you think about your own mistakes.

So that would probably be a life lesson that I've probably learnt the hard way, along the way. But learn from something, improve, and then just get on with it, just crack on.

[00:26:57] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Very true because, we are hard on ourselves and we hold ourselves to very high standards.

[00:27:02] Jane Wells: Especially in our sector public servants. Just want to ensure that residents are getting value for money, they pay our wages, we want to do the best we can for our residents and for our service users. So we do hold ourselves to very high standards.

[00:27:21] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Yes I've also become a brand new public servant. I'll talk to you about that later.

If you could have one superpower, what would it be?

[00:27:32] Jane Wells: I'd love to fly. I'm quite an avid mountaineer. So I do a lot of hiking and hill walking. And it would make my hobby much easier if I could fly up the side of mountains instead of having to walk up the side. That would be my superpower.

[00:27:49] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: That's again very popular with guests, but I like that everyone's got a different reason. So you've got your mountain reason, which is unique, but flying is seems to be one of those almost universal interests, which is very interesting.

Is there a funny story or a heart-warming story you'd like to share with listeners to end the podcast?

[00:28:09] Jane Wells: We organise, as well as supporting employees to organise their own experience of the workplace for young people, we do organise some experiences of the workplace as well, which we invite schools to bring young people to. And a recent one was an opportunity that we developed in June where we invited just over a hundred young people to a site. And the industry was surrounding hospitality and musical events.

And there was one young girl that was brought along by her school and I got the impression that she was made to attend and it wasn't something that she chose for herself. And at the beginning of the session where we was walking around, having a look at the different roles that were in the music industry and hospitality she was quite disengaged . She didn't really see the value of the experience right at the beginning and then slowly but surely talk by talk she was really coming around to it and then she was asking more questions.

And then by the end of the tour, she was like, this is what I want to do.. I don't know what specifically But I'd like to work in the music industry or in hospitality in some way and I think it was just It epitomises what we do because this young woman had never thought about this as an option for her.

She was from one of the more removed districts aligned with central Manchester in Bolton, so she didn't really see the connection from where she lived to the city centre and then by the end of it she was really enthused and then we got a lovely note from the event organisers just saying that this young woman, she was the shining light of the day and she was really engaged and they enjoyed meeting her and speaking with her.

That would be a recent example of something that just validated specifically what we do. It was lovely to see.

[00:30:23] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: It sounds really nice. It's like what you said, it's an experience that you created for that young person. And suddenly she has a new career path shining in front of her. And, she must be so excited and I'm so happy for her. And other people who are finding their passion through the work you do.

[00:30:41] Jane Wells: It's wonderful. And anybody can do that. That was just one employer that offered an opportunity. These things can happen every day. And it just takes that one person in business or in our business to say. We've never had young people come to our site. Can we invite them in? Can we send people out to do an assembly in school or a curriculum talk in a school or a college? Because it's marginal gains. It's small shifts like that, which will accumulate over time and have a substantial impact on young people and inspire them to make more meaningful decisions.

[00:31:20] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Thank you so much, Jane. That's a really lovely note of, future hope and optimism to end the podcast on. Thanks for your time today.

[00:31:29] Jane Wells: Wonderful. Thank you so much for having me. It's been lovely talking to you.

Outro

Jane, I really enjoyed learning about supporting career opportunities for the youth today.

Dear listener, thank you so much for listening to the ninth episode of the Meet the Mancunian podcast season six.

Tune in every Tuesday for a new episode or log on to www.meetthemancunian.co.uk to listen to all the episodes and learn more about my podcasting story.

Next week on Tuesday 7 November, 2023. I speak to Charlie Butterwick about community-led architecture.

Thank you for joining me on this enriching journey through the social impact stories of Manchester with the Sixth season of the Meet the Mancunian podcast.

I hope the stories you heard today have sparked a fire of inspiration within you. May they serve as a gentle reminder that no dream is too big or no passion too small. Your feedback means the world to me. Visit www.meetthemancunian.co.uk to share your thoughts, suggestions, and the causes that touched your heart.

Your input helps me craft a podcast that truly touches hearts and makes a difference in our community. Stay connected with the podcast on social media. You can find us @MeettheMancunian on Instagram, on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter @MancunianPod. Sharing and leaving a comment would be a fantastic way to spread the word and build a vibrant community of changemakers.

Before I sign off, remember to introduce this podcast to your friends and family, so together we can amplify the impact and reach of these incredible stories. Once again, thank you so much for being a part of the Meet the Mancunian family.

Your support fuels my passion and I can't wait to bring you more compelling stories that will touch your heart and fuel your soul. Until we meet again in the next episode, let's keep creating waves of change together. Remember the world needs the Mancunian spirit so go out there and be the change you wish to see.

Take care, stay inspired.