High Trees

High Trees is a Community Development Trust based in Lambeth, London. We’ve been around for the past 25 years, supporting people and communities to strengthen their skills, voice and capacity. Our work is sectioned into five broad, but interlinked areas, supporting over 1700 people each year;

• Education & Training;
• Employment & Careers;
• Children Young People & Families;
• Community Action, and;
• Research & Sector Support.

All of our work is underpinned by an understanding that the individuals and communities in our local area face multiple long-standing structural disadvantages and inequalities which impact on their lives in numerous ways including education levels, employment rates, living conditions, financial security, and health and wellbeing.

The work we do is all driven by community need, and manifests differently across our different service areas, but, ultimately, we’re passionate about designing and delivering services that will result in life being better for individuals and communities in Lambeth and further afield. We also believe we have a role to play in helping strengthen our peers and partners in the charity sector - sharing our learning and best practice wherever possible as well as wishing to contribute to changing the wider systems that impact our beneficiaries lives.

High Trees are one of Lambeth’s largest and most established community-based ESOL providers, and our ESOL learners make up over half of those who access our Community Education provision.

Traditionally, free ESOL courses such as ours are delivered during the typical school day – which works for many learners but leaves minimal free provision for those who can’t access courses at these times. This project funded through The Bell Foundation will focus on influencing how ESOL can be better designed and delivered for individuals who are currently in paid employment, specifically those why remain stuck in-low paid work as a result of poor English. We aim to understand barriers to progression in more detail from both the perspective of individuals and employers, allowing us to design and test new approaches to delivery and inform learning and recommendations for ESOL providers, policy makers, employers and commissioners of ESOL, on how to improve access to ESOL provision for individuals in work.

High Trees and The Bell Foundation have recognised that the problem of a lack of ESOL provision for those in work has far greater implications for people’s lives than just struggling with English. A low level of English almost always guarantees you will only have access to jobs that are capped in terms of earning potential, and also, increases the chance you may not be aware of your rights in the workplace. The obvious impacts of this are that these individuals and their families find themselves in poverty, with all the recognised consequences for their health, happiness and life chances but we also know from the impact of our wider ESOL provision that a good level of English allows people to participate in their communities and with their wider environment in a way that is life changing – whether this is accessing healthcare, being able to participate in their children’s schooling, getting to know their neighbours, use public transport confidently, or accessing other services they may need.

Through this project, we hope to influence how ESOL is provided to ensure it takes into account what can be the hidden needs of those in low paid work and, as with all our work, will approach this in both a very pragmatic, but also a strategic manner. Delivery of ESOL provision throughout this project will enable us to increase and improve the range of ESOL provision available locally for individuals in-work, both through community and employer based-delivery, and longer-term, use this learning to influence employers of the benefit of investing in ESOL as part of employee CPD, and, commissioners of ESOL with a series of recommendation and considerations for how ESOL can be done differently. We would like to ensure that no learner who needs ESOL provision is unable to access it because they are in work.