Customers
The Work Programme will provide greater freedom for suppliers to give people the support they need rather than prescribing one-size-fits-all programmes from the centre.
How can DWP best support providers to deliver this?
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The key to successful delivery is preparation, both for suppliers and statutory agencies. It takes a considerable amount of time to design a project, recruit appropriate staff, identify partners and start delivery. To often this crucial stage is seen as a needless delay. In reality, without it a programme is significantly less likely to achieve its goals and provide value for money. Similarly, we have found that often local statutory organisations such as Jobcentre Plus (JCP) are not ready to start supporting suppliers when a programme is first rolled out. Even within one local authority area, there can be a huge disparity between various JCP branches in their preparation for and understanding of a new programme.
More worryingly, critical eligibility rules can be interpreted in various different ways. This makes it significantly harder both for suppliers to deliver services and customers to access them. We believe that DWP needs to provide far clearer guidance to local statutory agencies on the eligibility for its programmes. Not only would this help to avoid a significant amount of confusion and anger, it would also allow JCPs to more proactively market various schemes. In our experience, young people, dependent on the quality of support they have received from their JCP Adviser, often don’t know about the various programmes that are available to them with the result that the Jobcentre is seen primarily as a place to collect benefits rather than somewhere to find a job.
However, would like to be clear that although JCPs can sometimes be unprepared, in many cases they are beacons of best practice. DWP should encourage all JCPs to adopt the flexible and committed approach that we have found is most constructive for suppliers and produces the best outcomes.
Finally, DWP should recognise that niche groups, such as young people or those with disabilities, have different needs. Unfortunately, specialist organisations with the appropriate experience to help are often unable to bid for contracts because they are too small or will be expected to provide for everyone. DWP should either grant smaller contracts or insist that large prime contractors sub-contract such work to specialist providers. Otherwise there is a risk that these groups will be left behind due to the difficulty and expense of providing appropriate assistance.
At YTKO we deliver self-employment projects in South West and East of England, particularly among disadvantaged and women. One concern is that these types of projects are seen as small in scale and low in impact, when the opposite is true. The primes are not interested in this non-process-led work – our work has always been ‘black (magic) box’ – and therefore DWP understanding is low, even though we can prove, using our Enterprising Women projects in the East and in NI, that value for money is as much as 2x that of regular to-work programmes.
Our concern is that the primes are being encouraged to get bigger, the medium sized deliverers like ourselves with less than 100 people, will be forced into (prime-specced) subbing, and the emerging ‘give yourself a job’ opportunities (particulary fitting when there are fewer traditional jobs created) will be overlooked in the primes’ dash for Work Programme mega-tenders.
DWP would like to thank all users who posted comments on Customers. This discussion is now closed.
We will consider your comments and publish a brief online summary.
Ixion welcomes a model that works against providers “creaming and parking” customers – generally those that are most vulnerable. This new Work Programme, should reflect a payment fee based on personal circumstances, so to ensure that those that are hardest-to-help receive dedicated and continued support to sustain independent living as an individual or as a family unit.
There should be a in-depth focus on family interventions, so that each individual within the family unit is included in the back-to-work journey. This will ensure that that we are supporting families grow stronger together – a key thing for today’s broken society.
Consider, Setting up academies as part of this programme, that are specific to the future employment requirements (engineering, construction, health and social care, childcare etc). This would be most beneficial to the younger unemployed or those that need to be re-skilled, ensuring that unemployed people are able to enter a long-term career path, that is skilled and paid well. Why not pay for accredited and employer-led qualifications instead of motivational, soft skills and non-accredited training that is not in demand or can not be measured.
Identify, regional and local contracts to reflect the needs required for those that are of a very local customer group. We need to provide orientation skills for those who are not willing to travel out of their local area and mind-changing support for those who have chosen benefits as a long term lifestyle. We should be digging much deeper into the actual reasons of long term unemployment. i.e benefit fraud, mental health matters, unafforable living costs, crime, no spoken language, motivation etc.
Develop ways in which we could further support sectoral labour growth; key to this is intensifying the support for self-employment and business start-up. Through this we can create further jobs that aren’t jobs that are just being recycled and for the longer term, provide a much more confident, experienced and skilled labour market, all of which extends to business growth.
As a final, the barriers faced amongst our customers vary from the cost of living, to generational claimants, to having little or no spoken English and therefore the tendering and procurement specification should be carefully considered for requirements of the local communities. Evidence of this is through the recent recession, where we saw many BME family-owned SMEs go into administration, this had a…[truncated by the system]
North West Network is a charity based in the North West of England which helps Voluntary and Community organisations to access funds. We are particularly active in securing ESF funds for organisations working with the unemployed and those distanced from the labour market. We have therefore a keen interest in the way that the Work Programme will impact on organisations in the North West delivering training, employment opportunities and learning. With respect to the particular issue of customers being addressed here what follows is a short summary of some of the common concerns conveyed to us on this subject by Voluntary and Community organisations accross the North West.Hope this is helpful. john@nwnetwork.org.uk
1. Skill development is vital for individuals who are being supported into employment, without skills they will remain unemployable. To support this there needs to be a re-thinking on remission fees (entitlement)
2. Concern that clients were so far away from the job market that Primes would not see the benefit of their involvement , ie.e what will be done to ensure that Primes don’t just go for the ‘low hanging fruit’?
3. Large contracts such as those awarded to the Primes (and sub-contractors) may mean that individuals get less attention.
4. The current client stock will change as the cuts to public sector make more people redundant – there will be higher skilled people in the mix which will push marginalised individuals to the back of the queue (those who the government are trying to get to) – volunteer centres are already seeing a change in clients and some are now hard to place.
5. FJF has been good for NEET young people and had positive outcomes in terms of reduction of substance misuse; receiving a wage rather than a benefit has been a motivator for many, many don’t want to go back onto benefits, will this be part of the mix in the new rogramme?.
6. Informal learning has been an important engagement tool (linked to formal learning as a progress) – will the Primes recognise and fund this as part of the move into work?
We strongly support the “Black Box” approach, but would encourage DWP to ensure that this is not compromised by unnecessary administration/ procedural requirements.
Benefits need to be much easier to claim, with safety nets in place, to reduce fear of accepting temporary jobs.
The 16 hour rule should be terminated.
The government could consider changing the system so that all benefits (JSA, housing, child benefits etc) are paid by the same agency. This would improve efficiency and increase client confidence in being able to regain all the benefits to which they are entitled quickly in the event of a job ending abruptly.
Strongly endorse this view of benefits simplification and creating much clearer ‘better off in work’ choices for individuals and families. The current DWP consultation – 21st Century Welfare – is well worth visiting for a range of options as to how this might become a welcome reality.
• The black box approach resonates with the existing public services agenda which focuses upon flexibility and choice. It is essential that any provision is driven by what is best for the customer and providers are given the autonomy to deliver this.
• We already engage and work in partnership with a rich tapestry of providers. This will enable us to compliment and provide real additionality to existing provision and funding streams in the local area which will enhance the customer journey.
The Social Enterprise Coalition supports the aspiration of providing greater freedom for suppliers to give people the support they need in accessing the jobs market. Social enterprises are experienced at providing innovative, targeted and supportive interventions to tackle issues around unemployment. They provide tailored solutions that are commissioned and which drive economic development at a local level.
DWP can best support social enterprise providers to deliver support that people need by:
• Allowing smaller organisations to act flexibly and respond to local circumstances. Social enterprises are deeply connected with their communities and have a strong track record getting long-term unemployed, disaffected youth and those with mental health issues or disabilities into meaningful employment.
• Creating mechanisms through which bespoke solutions can be scaled up, replicated or learned from.
• Issuing contracts that reward steps towards achieving job outcomes, not just the outcomes themselves and avoiding being prescriptive about how to achieve these outcomes.
• Supporting social enterprise solutions to employment and welfare issues that prioritise particular groups that would otherwise be excluded from the working world. These solutions, such as those provided by Social Firms, can have profound implications for government welfare policy, often providing alternatives to dependence on benefits and having wider benefits in terms of social cohesion.
• Encouraging social enterprise through the commissioning strategy and reviewing procurement processes under the prime contractor model which currently favours larger delivery partners.
• Implementing a payment scheme that is a continuum with many gradations to avoid the ‘creaming and parking’ of clients, and prime contractors simply working with those closest to the labour market and referring others to sub-contractors. Those people who are furthest from the job market may need long-term support to move them towards employment over sustained periods. In order to reward progress towards the labour market for long-term unemployed and the most disadvantaged groups, a measure of improved employability that is widely agreed upon would be needed and DWP could usefully support the development of this.
Jon Woolfson, Senior policy officer, Social Enterprise Coalition
There has to be an element of trust here and a recognition that providers dealing with difficult or challenging client groups know what needs to be done and how best to do it. This needs to be paid for but at the same time, what the provider does needs to be effective. If the provider doesn’t really know what they are doing or the quality simply isn’t there, then this has to be addressed.
Whilst understandingly trying to protect spending and focus on outcomes, there is a real risk that the DWP inadvertently or otherwise further disadvantage some of the already most disadvantaged.
There is no easy answer to this but the closer to reality the DWP are, the more aware they will be of challenges at the coal face.
As has been commented on previous discussions, when the DWP is mitigating as much risk as possible to providers you cannot expect providers not to behave in the same manner and mitigate as much of their risk as possible. Therefore, will anything have really changed?
Papworth Trust believes the DWP needs to give providers greater flexibility than we have been afforded in the past. We have questions concerning the requirements of the specification and the degree to which the provider guidance places obligations on providers under the Work programme, including:
• What prescribed activities will be made for client interaction?
• How long do clients remain on the programme – is it a set period of time or the length of the contract?
If provider guidance is set too rigidly, it does not allow the provider to create a personalised programme and will increase delivery costs without necessarily increasing outcomes. Providers will also require support from Jobcentre Plus to carry out sanctions in an appropriate and timely manner. This has not always been carried out in the past.
Setting the right price per customer will be a key determinant in the success of the work programme. If the price per head is too low there will be insufficient resource to support many of the long term IB claimants who will require substantial support to obtain work.
We believe differential pricing is the preferred route to address this issue. This will require a meaningful and effective means of matching customers with their pricing group. Whichever organisation completes this will need training in order to fulfill this role well. We would have concerns if the Department uses an extended WCA to determine differential pricing as there is a widespread acceptance that the WCA is flawed. However there is logic in replacing the WCA with a single assessment which would determine the relevant benefit and price based upon the combination of the barriers to work they face.
Finally, all future Jobcentre Plus customer engagement needs to be positive and employment focused. In the past customers have reported their engagement to be negative and demotivating, something we then have to correct.
On behalf of the North East Enterprise Agencies Ltd, we welcome the opportunity to comment on the development of the new welfare to work support offer and would like to offer our thoughts on the programme, particularly in relation to self-employment.
Firstly, we believe it is essential that the programme encompasses intensive self-employment support to ensure that participants who are interested in pursuing self-employment have access to the support they need as entering self-employment is very complex and can indeed be very daunting, particularly for those who have been long term unemployed – the core client grouping of the Work Programme. This is essential not only in terms of reducing worklessness but also in generating economic growth through the development of the Country’s business stock.
We feel it is important that potential prime contractors fully understand the skills that are required to deliver this support. Most Work programme participants will never have considered self-employment as a viable career option and indeed the very mention of it could be very daunting. In addition to have motivational and interpersonal skills, self-employment support requires an in-depth knowledge of complex issues such as: book-keeping, marketing, sales, financial skills and legislation – resulting in a very specific knowledge set held by a limited number of organisations.
We believe local organisations who hold respect and credibility within their localities should be involved in the delivery wherever possible. Engaging with this client grouping is intensely challenging and is a skill that is developed through many years of experience. NEEAL’s members have been in existence for over 25 years and all have an extensive outreach presence and even despite this experience find engagement at times challenging.
We believe that programme participants must be able to understand the various support options available to them from the different providers (whether that be self-employment or otherwise) to ensure clients are not just referred to the organisations who advisors across the programme know best – we see this is a key responsibility for both DWP and for prime contractors.
Finally, we believe the Programme as a whole should complement local provision so that providers deliver what is truly best for the programme and not simply what is best for their own organisation.
There has to be a concern that a system based upon ‘payment by results’ will leave those people with the greatest journey to make to be in a position to access work, i.e. the most vulnerable, will not get the attention required as it will be not be economic to work with them. The programme needs to be clear how it will ensure that those in need of the greatest support, and in reality those most likely to fail, will actually recive a service.
Paul Smith, National Housing Federation
The Community Allowance approach gives people the opportunity to start work for a few hours a week and be paid a fair wage for the work they do, while remaining on benefits. Participants would also be offered training and support to help them back to work. Our model was developed as a result of what unemployed people said they needed and what community organisations could offer – flexible, interesting and rewarding work. If you would like to find out more please visit our website http://www.communityallowance.org
Hi Louise – the link doesn’t seem to work? Vanda
Hi Vanda, the link has been amended. Thanks
Through the Employability Skills Programme (ESP) unemployed customers can choose to improve their levels of literacy and numeracy. The ESP initiative has been particularly successful at addressing skills for life needs and customers where volunteering for the programme is the norm have achieved qualifications. There is a concern under The Work Programme that one of two things will happen. One being that addressing skills for life needs will be mandatory for customers, the other is that it will not be addressed by providers as it is expensive. Where programmes have made skills for life mandatory the success rate is often much lower than that achived by volunteers. As ESP requires 20 hours a week of training and can go on for up to 15 weeks it can prove to be expensive. Will there be an incentive for prime contractors to invest at this level, or will some of the most vulnrable customes be put on the sidelines?
For Professor Malcolm Harrington (BB4 Discussion 9 Aug Works & Pensions)
I work for a charity Integrated Newurological Services providing long-term support for life – for people with neuro conditions from the ages of 18 upwards, covering Richmond and Hounslow. In 2002 the government recognised that people with chronic conditions needed supporting but they did not increase funding. Therefore people are much more disabled than they should be, less fit and less psychologically geared for the working life. When many of our patients go into hospital in their more chronic state they are discharged often worse physically, mentally and spiritually. We provide support through home visits and self-help rehabilitation groups, outings, activities and support for the carers. We also have many medical students from St George’s Hospital, Tooting, who really appreciate the time to listen and learn from patients and their carers of life with such conditions. Our greatest hurdle is to work with social service carers – for them to be trained and allowed to help their patients improve or maintain their level of independence with the support of a neuro team and therefore their chances of returning to work. This is especially relevant for people who have had a stroke, head injuries or with cerebral palsy. Neurology has always been undervalued, probably because the situation is often very complex – hence the very low number of neurologists in this country. Our patients and their carers need greater understanding if they are going to be able to return to work. Eleanor Kinnear, physiotherapist and founder of INS.
Especially with benefits payments being tightened and redefined (the stick) individuals need options (the carrot) in order to be motivated and incentivised beneficially for them, their families and our communities. How might the Work Programme ensure that options are available but not so numerous and confusing as to make them inaccessible to individuals and/or destroy their effectiveness. Whether that’s through one framework provider per CPA that offers options within their delivery model or through more than one prime per CPA (?)… is an important question for each region. Even subs can offer customers choice at the local level in terms of complementary e.g. specialist provision, but at what level do the main service options become defined (for employability, in-work support and skills)? DWP, Prime or Sub? DWP should assess the reality of the provision landscape within each region and CPA to assess whether or not ‘monopoly avoiding duplication’ is better than ‘competition with likely multiplication and duplication’ of services. The Work Programme specifications should mitigate against the disadvantages of either approach in terms of what is required of the primes in their provision of a realistic and understandable ‘menu’ of services/courses/routeways at the point of delivery to individuals (customers)and families .
Blackpool Council have been doing some very bespoke work with long term Incapacity Benefit claimants offering a 6 month LMI programme with training (Working for Health). We would hope that this type of intensive support will still be able to be delivered as part of the work programme otherwise this particular group, who are likely to be moved from IB onto JSA, will potentially not have their support needs met to enable them to access work. The current funding for this programme (LEGI) is unlikely to continue past March 2011. For a full evaluation of this excellent programme by Sheffield Hallam University please go to http://www.blackpool.gov.uk/NR/rdonlyres/3954D426-DDDE-4D37-BBAF-48E8B3A5DCEF/0/WorkingforHealthEvaluationReportJune2010.pdf
There are some key issues for people accessing supported housing services which act as barriers to employment. The most fundamnetal of these are levels of suppported housing rent costs – which are unaffordable for people if they take first rung employment. This perpeptuates and exacerbates the culture of worklessness in hostels, group homes and supported housing accommodation. If the work programme could review this so that people could make part payments towards rent for their first period of employment – this would lead to sustained employment and independent living for people who are most vulnerable and facing the highest levels of disadvantage. The transitional spaces project carried out by ‘Off the Streets and Into Work’ – provides a cost effective model for implementation http://www.osw.org.uk/tsp. One other key aspect is the current legislation around the issue of community care grants. People have to apply after they have taken up their tenancy and in some cases people are forced into living in flats/houses with no furniture or resources. This impacts on their ability to seek work or take up employment and there are cases when people have relapsed into drug/alcohol addiction due to inability to cope in the circumstances. The LEAP project being run by Norwich City Council can provide contemporary case studies to support this and is another model where barriers to housing and employment are being overcome.
Christine Chalmers, Worklessness Development Officer, Supporting People, Norfolk County Council.
These circumstances you describe Christine are universal; I work in a similar role in Suffolk and people who have multiple disadvantages are the most likely to be out of work and to be unable to access the services of the new work programme. In my opinion the better options would be for a decent incentive to the providers of the new work programme to get the harder to reach clients into work, coupled with rent and travel cost type payments for those who find work that would continue for a reasonable amount of time after the job was found. Included in the providers role should be individual support for the client when they are in work; support shouldn’t just stop just because they have a job. These though are expensive options much more expensive than CTB/HB & JSA.
Following on from Christine’s comments, as someone who works for a responsible social landlord who provides (amongst other types) supported housing for people with both enduring mental health issues, and learning difficulties, I have real concerns on how this is going to impact on these vulnerable groups. Many of these people would like to return to meaningful employment, however, to do so, in some cases they would still require the support they receive in the 24 hour supported housing to maintain and sustain that employment. However, with the costs for supported housing being high, and currently covered by HB and SP, they would never be able to maintain their rent charges, especially if employed in a level entry capacity. There needs to be a flexible approach to these vulnerable groups who may require continued support to maintain/achieve independent living. Also whilst the goal maybe for many of these individuals to achieve independent living, where and how are we going to house them in an affordable manner, which they will require if employed on a low income, as we are already have waiting lists at bursting point