Working Together to Remove Barriers to Learning

Guest Blog: FIRST - Working Together to Remove Barriers to Learning: The Power of Partnership in Adult Skills Education

As part of our package of member benefits, VONNE’s Gold and Silver Membership+ supporters have the opportunity to submit a guest post for our website.

This blog from Associate Silver members FIRST, shines a light on their partnerships in action, and showcases some of the fantastic programmes that have been achieved through co-creation.

At FIRST, we meet people every day who are full of passions, talents and ideas, but haven’t always had the chance to explore them.

As a learning and development agency specialising in enterprise and entrepreneurship skills, we meet many learners who face barriers to education. These could be mental health challenges, caring responsibilities, financial hardship, neurodiversity, low digital skills, cultural and language barriers, or simply a lack of confidence after difficult experiences. Too often we hear that traditional learning environments haven’t worked for them.

Across the North East, the systemic causes of these barriers are widespread. Adult learners in our region are more likely to have low or no qualifications (ONS), and communities continue to feel the impact of inequality, rising costs and the toll on daily life these can take.

But we also see something else every day: People thrive when the VCSE sector and education providers work together.

Each year, our 40+ partnerships with VCSE organisations are creating opportunities for adults who once thought learning “wasn’t for them”. They’re gaining qualifications, building courage to take action, reconnecting with their aspirations, and building the social capital to help them realise their ambitions. This blog is about why the partnership model works, and why we’re seeking more VCSE partners to take it further.

Partnerships Matter

Government‑funded programmes like the Adult Skills Fund are a lifeline for learners across the region. But funding alone doesn’t remove the barriers many people face. Some learners simply don’t feel ready, or able, to walk into a formal classroom, face-to-face or digital. Others need practical, cultural or emotional support to stay engaged and succeed. This is where the VCSE sector shines.

Community organisations understand the people they serve. They offer trust, stability and a sense of belonging, alongside frontline expertise and understanding of lived experience. When we combine that with the flexible, person-centred approach to learning from an education provider like FIRST, something powerful happens and education becomes accessible and meaningful.

Over the years, we’ve learned that partnerships thrive under certain conditions:

1. Mission alignment: When both partners share the same values, such as empowerment, inclusion and a belief in people’s talents. Then learning becomes more than a qualification, it becomes a stepping stone to a better life.

2. Co‑creation: We build programmes with partners, not for them. That means shaping sessions around what the community needs: adjusting pace and delivery styles, ensuring the right people are in the room, embedding wellbeing techniques, removing jargon, or focusing on goals that feel achievable and useful to learners.

3. Complementary strengths: VCSE partners bring trusted relationships, lived‑experience insight and informed wraparound support. We bring accredited enterprise skills learning delivery and tried and tested approaches for supporting individuals to progress. Together, we create a learning environment that feels safe and possibility‑driven.

Partnership In Action: Barnardo’s JOBS Project

Since January 2025, FIRST has delivered an enterprise qualification within Barnardo’s 8‑week JOBS Project in Gateshead. The programme supports 18 to 29‑year-olds navigating a range of vulnerabilities, including SEN, mental health difficulties or complex home lives.

Karen Hardy, who leads the programme, captures the heart of this partnership: “It’s important to have good networks with organisations that share the same goal… of wanting these young people to thrive and to give them hope.”

One of the benefits for Banardo’s is that a third-party coming in to support allows Karen space to observe, understand and support learners more holistically, “Having FIRST in the room helps me see the young people from another perspective, how they behave in a training environment and what support they’ll need to maintain a job. The debrief with the FIRST tutor is invaluable”.

For learners, the experience is often transformational. Many tell us it’s the first qualification they’ve ever achieved and the first time learning has felt accessible.

Through practical activities and mini‑enterprise projects, young people begin to imagine a different future. For some, this includes self‑employment, something they previously believed was out of reach.

“It’s also great that FIRST can then offer the correct advice and guidance for next steps if a young person is considering becoming self-employed or wants to pursue more opportunities to learn about business.”

With four more cohorts planned for 2026, this partnership continues to demonstrate how mission alignment and co‑design can unlock confidence and opportunity.

Partnership In Action: Creating personalised support for women - FIRST and The Angelou Centre

Our work with The Angelou Centre shows how partnership can deliver truly bespoke learning. Together, FIRST and The Angelou Centre designed a Level 1 Enterprise and Personal Development course for women facing intersecting barriers, including recover from gender‑based violence migration, poverty and isolation. Every aspect of the programme was shaped around the specific needs of the individuals attending.

Jocelyn Kwofie, who coordinated Training, Wellbeing and Inclusion Services at the Centre, spoke about the impact. “The course was crafted around the women’s individual needs. FIRST’s communication and dedication created an empowering environment where each woman felt supported.

“It is making a real difference in the lives of the women we support.”

One learner, aged 38, joined the programme after she had shared her hope of becoming self‑employed. With childcare costs rising and the impractical hours of her job as a pub chef, she feared being forced back into work that no longer fit her family’s needs. She had a clear business idea but no roadmap for turning it into reality. Supported by Angelou to identify her unique barriers to learning and explore solutions, FIRST provided her with a reliable laptop to remove digital barriers and reassured her that she could keep her camera off when caring for her baby, with all sessions recorded so she could revisit learning in her own time and access one‑to‑one support. By the end of the programme, she had completed qualification, secured a start‑up loan and officially launched her business.

The Wider Impact on Communities

Across all our partnerships, we see the same powerful outcomes emerge again and again, courage grows and learners begin to believe in their abilities, trust to engage with opportunities like training increases.

Alongside this, qualifications increase opportunities. Whilst for some, a short course may be small on paper, it can be life‑changing for someone who has never undertaken learning as an adult or achieved a certificate endorsing their skills.

Social capital is also strengthened as people make new connections, feel less isolated and are linked to wider support services. Learners do not just begin imagining futures that once felt out of reach, but are increasing the knowledge and networks that will help them make them a reality.

Importantly for FIRST, people feel that learning is truly for them. This is the heart of our work, and it’s possible because of the VCSE sector’s deep understanding of community need and its ability to nurture trust.

Could Your Communities Benefit?

At FIRST, we believe wholeheartedly in the power of partnership and are seeking to take this further. We are actively seeking more VCSE organisations who want to work with us to deliver accessible, accredited enterprise skills learning in their community settings.

Our goal is to reach more people with our funded learning, whilst reducing the barriers to learning that may stop some individuals undertaking the opportunity, whilst ensuring community‑embedded learning continues to be championed by sharing the stories and numbers that show this approach works.

If your organisation is interested in exploring partnership opportunities, we’d love to talk. Together, we can remove barriers, open doors and build a future where everyone, whatever their story, has the chance to learn, grow and thrive.

FIRST are a learning and development agency that empowers enterprise skills and entrepreneurship in under-resourced and underrepresented communities, promoting individual stability, social progress, and inclusive economic growth.

Find out more about FIRST on their website, or if you would like to explore partnership opportunities please email Joanna.Thompson@youarefirst.co.uk.

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