Mock Interviews with homeless people

DH directorate volunteers provide mock interviews for clients of a homelessness charity in Westminster

The Department of Health’s VASEMH (Violence And Social Exclusion Military Health) team that address policy areas including domestic, sexual, knife and youth violence, as well as veteran health sought a way to develop an ongoing engagement with disadvantaged members of the local community. Wishing to volunteer as a team but at times convenient for individual team members, Time & Talents linked the DH team with a local homelessness charity in a project where they would carry out mock interviews with homeless or badly housed families, refugees, asylum seekers and migrants helping them to obtain employment and break out of the cycle of poverty, homelessness and exclusion.

For the charity, the volunteer project addresses an urgent need to provide spaces where the barriers to employment can be overcome. The Department and the charity work in partnership to provide an opportunity for many clients who are not familiar to the working environment or to those that have been out of work for a long time, thus giving them the chance to familiarise themselves within the workplace.

The mock interviews aim to foster employability skills and confidence within a work-place environment, it was therefore logical to establish that the mock interviews take place at the Department of Health offices.

The volunteers receive a brief from the charity about the individual being interviewed, an interview is scheduled and the volunteers adapt interview questions so that they are relevant to the homelessness charity client. Because the DH have a highly developed competency based approach to interviews the scheme works for charity clients who are applying for jobs that are both entry level positions and for more advanced roles.

After the interview, the client is given oral feedback from the volunteer. The volunteer follows this up with written feedback that is submitted to the client via the charity whose employment team use the feedback form as a working document in the client’s action plan in developing specific areas of the client’s interview skills. For the homelessness charity, the DH partnership provides a key tool that is part of a broader approach in supporting their clients out of homelessness.

Development of leadership, facilitation and communication skills

Real community contexts of homelessness, informing policy development within the directorate

Staff personal satisfaction in engaging with community need

Supports the DH's overall aims & objectives of translating 'Big Society' into action + Third Sector engagement

Authentic interview experience progressing client’s development of employability skills
For the organisation, the feedback becomes a working document and part of the client’s action plan, in developing specific interview skill areas
For organisation’s employment team, it is useful to be able to say that the DH is working with them when presenting to external potential partners or funders

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Service users are given mock interviews at the Department of Health

“It’s been really good. The volunteers visited right at the start of the project so they could get a better understanding of the types of clients and their needs. The team leader who coordinates interviewers is very efficient, professional and accommodating; we could not ask for more.” Employment Officer, homelessness charity

(Author: )

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