Home » Our services » Community regeneration » How we focus our activities
How we focus our activities
Our regeneration activity is primarily based around four key areas:
Employability
Case Study: Youthbuild
We work in partnership with Action for Children Scotland to provide opportunities in the construction industry for young people in Craigmillar, Edinburgh.
Youthbuild offers participants the change to train, gain valuable work experience, receive accredited industry-recognised qualifications and have the opportunity of a real job at the end of their training.
Environment
Case Study: We have launched an exciting project in partnership with The Waterways Trust Scotland aimed at young tenants in the Falkirk area aged between 16 and 24.
Green Action is a volunteering and employability project providing opportunities for young people from the Falkirk Council area to enrol on an environmental or tourism 12-week volunteer training programme, contributing to the local area and developing their skills for life.
Through an environmental programme, based at the newly built Action Outdoors Acitivity Centre on the Union Canal in Falkirk, volunteers receive training such as landscaping, tree planting, maintenance and gardening.
During a tourism programme, based at The Falkirk Wheel, volunteers receive training in retail, catering, waterway operations and customer service skills.
Quality of life
Case study: The Linkwide Advice Team advises Link tenants on welfare rights and debt issues. During 2008/09 the team dealt with more than 1500 clients, sourcing benefit income of £565,000 and dealing with £440,000 of debt.
As part of the Advice Team, Older Person's Advice services are successfully tackling benefit under-claiming among people over the age of 60.
Since its launch in 2005, the Older Person's Advice Project has made nearly 1250 home visits and secured £2 million of additional benefit income for its clients. OPAP is currently funded by:
- the Scottish Government (Wider Role)
- Falkirk Community Planning Partnership (Fairer Scotland Fund)
- Coalfield Regeneration Trust
- partner housing providers Paragon HA, Abronhill HA, Wishaw and District HA, Almond HA, Weslo Housing Management and Link itself.
OPAP delivers services to Link tenants and sharing owners, tenants of the partner housing associations and over 60s households in the Falkirk Priority Regeneration Areas.
For more information about the Advice Team's services, visit the 'Money and benefits advice' section of the Tenant Zone.
Following OPAP's success, the Scottish Government has provided funding for a pilot over 60s advice service in Clackmannanshire, West Lothian and North Lanarkshire. The Older People's Advice Service will run until March 2011, with the potential to reach 22,000 households.
Capacity Building
Example: The regeneration of the Oatlands estate remains one of the largest regeneration projects in Scotland, involving the development of 1250 new mixed tenure houses, community facilities and a raft of infrastructure measures.
In 2006, Link was invited by Glasgow City Council and other Oatlands partners to play a role in the area's regeneration.
Link acquired housing stock in the estate and is heavily involved in broader regeneration activities.
These have most recently included sponsorship of the area's new youth football team, Oatlands United, and an involvement in the redevelopment of the local St Margaret's Church for a combination of business and community use.
