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    We support residents to improve their skills and employment prospects. 

    This isn’t just about getting a job – even if you’re not looking for work, you can still learn, develop and share your skills with your community. You don’t have to be a tenant to get involved.

    Our Training and Employment Officer is here to support you. We can help you understand what you want to do, set goals and support you to achieve them. We’ll help with CVs and application forms, find volunteering roles and work placements. We organise training courses and workshops and we’ve also got lots of great contacts with other organisations and charities who are there to help.

    Check our events pages to see what courses are currently on offer.

    Contact our Training and Employment Officer on  01732 749420 or email getinvolved@wkha.org.uk

    Check out our volunteering opportunities too.

    • Train and learn

      Do you want to boost you CV or learn some new skills? If you’re over 19 and on a low wage or out of work, we can help!

      Our FREE fun and relaxed courses are designed to help you take the next step to getting a job or improving your skills.

      There is no charge for any of these courses. If it's an all day event, we'll provide lunch. We pay travel expenses up to £10 to help you attend the course.

      We often run special courses such as cookery or a pop up business school. Get in touch to stay up to date with what's on offer.

      Upcoming courses are listed on our events page.

      For more information on this or to book your place onto any of the courses please contact Pauline Smith on 01732 749420. To book onto a course or talk to our Training and Employment Officer Pauline Smith, please call 01732 749420 or email getinvolved@wkha.org.uk

    • Work experience

      We offer high quality, short term work placements for adults and for young people. This valuable experience helps you develop your skills and talents and gives you an idea of what different jobs actually entail. It gives you practical and relevant experience to open up future employment and education possibilities.

      These are unpaid placements, but we’ll pay your travel expenses so you won’t be out of pocket. We will give you access to our staff and resident training courses where we can and give you an employer’s reference at the end.

      Want to gain some work experience at West Kent? Get in touch to find out how we can help.

      Please contact our Training and Employment Officer on 01732 749420 or email getinvolved@wkha.org.uk for more information.

    • What Works programme

      West Kent has been chosen as a partner for the Money Advice Service’s ‘What Works’ programme.

      The £7 million What Works Fund is set up to help establish the most effective methods of improving financial capability methods across the UK.

      Four out of ten adults are not in control of their finances and around 16.8 million working age people have less than £100 in savings.  But there's very little evidence for what is the best way to address this issue. The What Works Fund aims to build this evidence and to establish the way to best help people to manage their money. Ultimately, the aim is to scale up the most effective projects in order to improve the levels of financial capability of millions of people across the UK.

      Working with Canterbury Christ Church University as our learning and evaluation partner, our project will explore how support around financial management can help current and future apprentices and trainees aged 16-24 years old to prepare for making better financial decisions, including those relating to their employment prospects.

      We are looking for young people aged 16 – 24 living in Sevenoaks, Maidstone or the Medway towns, who have left school and are transitioning into independent living to volunteer for the project. From those volunteers, we will randomly select participants for one of four programmes throughout the year, each lasting for two months, which will include online learning combined with 1-2-1s and other direct support that will fit around the individual’s existing apprentice and trainee commitments.

      If you would like to know more please contact Heather Brightwell, Head of Communities, by emailing getinvolved@wkha.org.uk or telephone 01732 749420.