Person-centred change

We all achieve more when we feel empowered. Person-centred change is about empowering people to reach their goals.

We empowered people who’ve experienced marginalisation through tailored support. Our support reflected individual needs and circumstances and helped people develop the confidence and capacity needed to make big life changes. Changes that did’t just benefit them as individuals – but which benefited their families and their communities, too.

“Renaisi has made me strong emotionally, financially, and given me a lot of clarity in terms of employment.”
Participant feedback from 2022 customer survey.

Renaisi empowered refugees, older people, those who had been impacted by long-term sickness and those who had taken time out to care for others to find work or to connect with businesses that wanted to become more inclusive employers.

We worked closely with marginalised communities since 2010 – supporting almost 1,200 people in 2023 alone.

Learning what works

By helping people in Hackney and Lewisham to find jobs through the Work Programme, we deepened our knowledge of the needs of people in East London.

In 2016, we took on a small service in Islington designed to help non-English-speaking families engage with their child’s school. That work grew to supporting families with their English, their understanding of local services, and with social issues such as parenting and wellbeing.

Following on from that we delivered numerous employment support contracts, including:

Southwark Works – a place-based employment support programme working in partnership with multiple local providers called
Transitions – a specialist service connecting top-tier firms with skilled and qualified refugees in engineering, architecture and professional services.
A refugee support programme, RISE, which helped over 500 refugees into employment in five years.

Large-scale, standardised support programmes simply scratch the surface of the support that marginalised people need to thrive.

Our flexible, person-centred support was tailored to the needs and circumstances of each individual. It acknowledged the barriers faced by marginalised people, and valued every step on their journey towards thriving.

It included:

Support to learn English language and culture.
Access to housing, health and legal advice.
Focus on the person and their abilities.

Partnering with inclusive employers

A diverse workforce creates vibrant cultures, greater innovation and creativity, and helps organisations compete in an increasingly globalised market.

We connected businesses that wanted to become more inclusive employers with people from marginalised communities who were looking for good work.

Finding work can be hard for anyone. For people facing economic and social exclusion, it’s even harder. When individuals are locked out of good work because of conscious or unconscious bias, we all lose out.