NRS-15386 | Employment project files - Community Employment Schemes

Full description

These files detail the administration and funding of Community Employment Projects designed to assist the unemployed or otherwise disadvantaged. Recruitment and referrals to participating agencies were arranged through the Commonwealth Employment Service (CES), with priority given to the long-term unemployed, women, migrants with English language difficulties, Aboriginals, and people with disabilities. The records consist of a sample taken from the Completed Employment Project files.

The files include project proposals and estimates, and record details of funding received from Commonwealth, State, and Local governments, and from community sectors, with progress reports and an audited statement of income and expenditure provided at the completion of the project. Projects ranged from building renovation, road repairs and improvements, landscape reclamation, community support programs, provision of office and clerical assistance, and private industry opportunities.

The series is arranged by file number, the format of which changed over time. The original Ministry of Education file number took the format nnn-AAA-nnnnnn, e.g 049-NCS-000500. The first group of numbers represented the local government area, the letters the program code, and then running numbers. The files transferred in this consignment have program codes of ‘NCS’ which appears to represent Northern region Community Schemes for State government departments, ‘NCJ’ which appears to stand for Northern region Community Schemes JOLOR program (for local councils), and ‘NCE’ which appears to stand for Northern region Community Employment Schemes for community-based groups. When the activity was taken over by the Department of Industrial Relations and Employment (DIRE), no clear file numbering scheme emerges, as some files have annual single numbers, others ‘YS’ and ‘JS’ prefixes. The earliest Youth Employment Scheme (YES) files have a ‘YES’ prefix and are in file covers from the Department of Public Works. However, all the documents on these files come from the Ministry of Education thence DIRE.