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Skills and training

We want to help you boost your skills and knowledge, whether you’re searching for a job, want to improve your performance at work, or looking to stay on top of your finances.

We've put together some tips, guides and links to courses below.

Person putting money in a piggy-bank alongside a house model

Free training and employment support services

Please check out our suggestions below.

Job Centre Plus (JCP) support

JCP support is localised and best accessed via Universal Credit work coaches – all provide support back into employment/building skills and some have youth offers. Here are some of the support schemes available via JCP: 

  • National Careers Service are in every JCP
  • Employment teams in each borough
  • Disability employment advisors in each borough
  •  Jobs fairs
  • Sector work academy programmes – work experience with a guaranteed interview

 DWP Flexible Support Fund

This is a discretionary fund provided by Jobcentre Plus to help individuals on Universal Credit overcome barriers to employment. It’s discretionary and can be used for anything that assists someone back into employment. Examples include:

  • Travel costs to interviews
  • Work-related clothing and equipment
  • Training courses
  • Childcare costs: help cover the upfront cost of childcare
  • Other costs: the fund can be used for a number of things relating to work/training and requests are at the discretion of the work coach.

Support for disabled people

Access to work grant

  • Special equipment, adaptations or support worker services to help you do things like answer the phone or go to meetings
  • Help getting to and from work
  • Mental health support
  • communication support at a job interview (for example, a British Sign Language interpreter or a lipspeaker)

What is the impact on welfare benefits if you're working?

Universal Credit (UC) taper

For every £1 you earn, your UC payment is reduced by a certain percentage. This percentage is known as the taper rate, and it's currently 55%. This means that for every pound you earn, your UC payment will decrease by 55 pence

Universal Credit: How your wages affect your payments - GOV.UK

Benefit cap exemption

You are not affected by the benefit cap if you’re on Universal Credit and you and your partner earn £846 or more a month combined, after tax and National Insurance contributions.

Help with childcare costs

Free childcare for working parents (Free Childcare for Working Parents: Overview - GOV.UK)

You may be able to get up to 30 hours of free childcare per week through the Free Childcare for Working Parents scheme. Your child must be aged 9 months to 4 years old and you must live in England.

Universal Credit support with childcare costs (Universal Credit childcare costs - GOV.UK)

If you’re in paid work you can get up to 85% of childcare costs paid back to you. The maximum amount for each assessment period is:

  • £1,031.88 for one child
  • £1,768.94 for 2 or more children

claim back Universal Credit childcare costs - GOV.UK

Benefit calculator

Use this calculator to find out what benefits you may be entitled to based on your wage/proposed wage.

Improve your digital skills

We've partnered with Barclays to provide all our customers with online training courses. Any Sage Homes customer can sign up - you don't have to bank with Barclays.

How to set up an account
Provide your name, email address and create a password (the sign-up process only takes five minutes). 

To get your free courses, type SAGEHOMES into the ‘Company code’ section.

Get started

Job opportunities at Sage Homes

You can view all our current vacancies here.