Support Centre

Staying on top of your finances when your circumstances change can be a real challenge - especially if there’s a lag between benefit and salary payments, or you’re having to manage an existing debt.

Free financial advice from IncomeMax

Our friends at IncomeMax can provide you and your family with free financial advice. This is great for anyone who takes the families financial worries on - you're not alone. They'll help you navigate debts, benefits and find out what you're entitled to. This is particularly helpful during transition into employment.

Low-cost pay advances with Hastee

Hastee works with a growing number of employers to help you get some of your salary up front for a small fee instead of paying loan shark RATES of interest for a payday loan. They’ve also got some great advice and tools on their site for managing your budget debt and making wise financial choices.

Our skills and qualifications partners offer a wide range of opportunities for you to improve your skills, gain new qualifications and make yourself more employable. They include:

Career discovery with SORT

Sort is the ultimate career discovery platform. You tell SORT about your interests and experiences, and it matches you to jobs, careers and roles that you might never have heard of but which you're suited to. It's a fantastic way to open up new ways of thinking about your working life.

Skills development with City & Guilds

City & Guilds are leaders in skills development. Employers across a variety of sectors and all around the world recognise and value their qualifications and apprenticeships, and they can help you develop your talents and abilities for career progression. Choose from vocational qualifications, technical qualifications and apprenticeships.

Hospitality training with Springboard & Careerscope

Springboard is the leading charity providing skills and training for the in-demand hospitality sector; their sister organisation, Careerscope, connects registered users with a network of other training and career development opportunities in the hospitality sector. As these industries start to expand again post-pandemic, there’s an urgent need for people who are skilled in catering, customer service, event planning and so on. Their training programmes are completely free.

Hospitality training with IHG Skills Academy

Our friends at IHG Hotels and Resorts have helped more than 80,000 young people gain valuable employment and life skills through work experience, internships and apprenticeships in some of the world’s best hotels. The IHG Skills Academy offers the opportunity to enjoy personalised, immersive experiences with access to self-serve educational resources - for free.

​If you’ve had time off work for personal reasons, or been living on benefits for a while, you can feel like you’re on the back foot when it comes to getting back into work. Our job-seeking skills get rusty and our confidence collapses. We’re here to help with these.

Severn Trent Academy Learning Library

Severn Trent's Academy includes three months of free access to courses designed to improve your employability. Their Get That Job training course includes advice on how to write a great CV and how to present yourself in interviews, and their Grow Yourself training courses can help you to improve your confidence, think positively and build relationships with colleagues.

CherryTree Foundation

CherryTree Foundation helps young people and adults from mostly disadvantaged areas with workshops, mentoring and training programmes that get their service-users into employment, self-employment or full-time education.

Many of our registered candidates come to us from referral partners - typically charities who've worked face-to-face with them to help them face and overcome barriers to work and got them 'job ready'. If you're not quite ready for work yet, and need additional support or advice, one of them may be able to help you. Here are some popular examples.

Physical and mental challenges

• Ways Into Work: Supported employment for people with disabilities.
• Andy's Man Club: A nationwide network of meetings for men where #ITSOKAYTOTALK about mental health.
• Mencap: A range of services to support people with learning disabilities.

Accommodation and related challenges

• St Mungo's: Helping people with a history of homelessness to become employable again.
• Homeless or at risk in London? Thames Reach and Centrepoint both offer services that might be able to help.
• Rise: Supporting and empowering refugees and asylum-seekers.
• Veterans Launchpad: Provide accommodation and employment support for those transitioning out of military service.

Career history challenges

• Inside Connections: Provides transitional support for people who are leaving/have left care, prison or the armed forces.

• Walking With The Wounded: For those who served and need employment, mental health or care support.
• Bounce Back: Provides construction industry skills training for prisoner leavers / ex-offenders.
• Working Chance: Employability support for women with criminal convictions.

Young people in need

• Key4Life: Crime-prevention charity with radical, practical programmes to help young men in prison or at risk of prison.
• The King's Trust: One of the UK's biggest charities for youth offers free employability courses and practical support.

Other avenues of support

• ​York LGBT Forum: A range of community and support services for people who identify as LGBTQ+.