ReAct

angelax

Hi

I am being made redundant (should be getting my 2 months notice this week) I am going to apply for the ReAct grant, they fund people that are made redundant to learn new skills to get back to work (Wales only I think)

I have had one meeting with Careers Wales (they need to assist the application) but they are very slow! I am going to ask for funding for cake decorating courses as ReAct said they should be able to fund this and I can apply as soon as I get my letter of redundancy. .

My problem is that Careers Wales seem to want me to take really small steps and don’t want to speed up my application. Has any one else on here had any experience applying for the ReAct grant? I have managed to get my next Careers Wales appointment moved from the middle of April to next Monday, is there anything else I can do? I have researched the training I would like to do and contacted the training providers to let them know what ReAct expects of them (they just need to fill in a training plan)

e0cs0r

Hi,
I applied for ReAct in May of last year for a number of sailing qualifications. I found the companies willing to train me for 5 different courses mounting up to 2K.
Careers wales do very little in the application unless they find the courses for you, once you get the forms, find the courses and get them all filled in, the careers officer in charge just writes a note saying it is all good and they support it and you send them off, I applied for the forms myself and kept in contact with the careers officer by email.
The funding eventually came through in early July and only then when I started emailing and ringing the ReAct team, I had to reschedule some of the courses because they had already passed.
If the course you are doing doesn't come up to the full 2k I would suggest applying for connected course you may be interested in, as long as they can be combined as a career they WILL grant them. I spent 2 weeks on a yacht in West Wales that they paid for, The reason being is that they have fixed funds that we as tax payers have paid for from the EU and anything they don't spend goes back.
You have 12 months from application to do the courses, even if you are employed by the time they start as long as you get the funding before you start work.
Hope that is some help.