Binks Hub co-director Emma Davidson has been working with Fife Gingerbread on several different projects.
In this research, Binks Hub Co-Director Emma Davidson and Associate Researchers Christina McMellon and Mallory Hybl have been exploring the interconnected and complex relationship between family life and employability in the context of lone parent and low-income families. To do this, the research used Fife Gingerbread’s Family Approach as a case study. Family Approach has been delivered by Fife Gingerbread since August 2023, and in this time has come to exemplify, locally, how a support service can adopt a holistic, whole-family approach to employability. It is delivered in partnership with Citizens Advice and Rights Fife, and offers family-wide support to overcome barriers to securing and maintaining sustainable education, training or employment, build confidence, and maximise household income.
The project currently offers a place-based approach, with support provided to ‘priority family groups’ (children in lone parent families, minority ethnic families, families with a disabled person, and families with three or more children) living in areas with persistently high levels of poverty, including Kirkcaldy Central, Kirkcaldy East, Methil, Buckhaven & Wemyss, and Cardenden and Lochgelly and Benarty.
The concept of well-being was used as an analytical tool for exploring the things that families (adults and children) say make them feel well, happy and supported. What the research found was a tightly knit relationship between employability, family and well-being. Parents had strong aspirations in relation to work, training and education. These were connected to their own hopes about their family’s future – both in terms of what they wanted the family to achieve, and what they hoped for their children as they grow up.
The research demonstrates that the route out of poverty for families is not simply ‘getting a job’. The families faced a range of cumulative and recurring structural issues that prevented them from accessing sustainable work. Family Approach support was unique in that it focused on creating conditions for employability that are right for each family. This means adopting a broader and holistic definition of employability support that includes parenting skills, resolving housing or financial issues, building community and social connections, or addressing health and well-being.
While Fife Gingerbread is limited in the extent to which it can make structural change, practices such as offering traineeships through an employment partnership with the local council, providing volunteering opportunities, and targeting financial inclusion are creating pathways that build confidence, strengthen families, and provide parents with the tools to improve life chances for both themselves and their children.
You can see the findings of this project by reading the briefing paper:
You can view our project slides:
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