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Higher unemployment: what does it mean for welfare-to-work?
With the economy heading downhill rapidly, and JSA claimant numbers rising at a rate of knots, what will the impact on providers be? Will there be a huge bump in the number of customers, or will the difficult job market make it tougher to get people into work? Have you delivered job programmes in a recession before?
Will it make any difference to the industry? FND figures are based on a substantial rise in JSA claimants. The welfare reforms and the consolidation of contracts will be far more important. The only potential issue I can see is that a really bad economy might make it a bit more difficult to get people into jobs, but every provider would face that equally.
I remember the job schemes we had in recessions. It really was like the Full Monty. I hope we don't go back to that.
Jo
To the first poster, if providers get less people into jobs, don't they get less money? This could make them go bust if they haven't figured it into their sums.
I'd like some reassurance that funding won't be cut for proper support services in favour of just pushing people into jobs, but I guess that prime contractors will be making that decision rather than government once FND comes in.
Hi Noora,
The DWP should ensure that every FND contractor provides support services for customers with particular needs, e.g. a disability of some kind. As for 'just pushing people into jobs', hopefully the payment on sustained job outcome will curb any tendency to push people into jobs they won't keep.
Why am I not completely reassured by that? But we don't do much work with New Deal normally, so it won't be a huge change for us on that front at least.
I work on The Pathways to Work scheme where people on incapacity are made to come and see us or they may loose some of their benefits. 9 out of the 10 people are still too ill and the screening tool the Job Centre has makes no sense. You have someone with a mild mental health issue screened out and someone with Lung Cancer made to come and see us. Also it means I am spending 90% of my time and tax payers money on people who couldn't return top work whether they want to or not. I have loads of examples of inappropriate referrals but I would have to write a book to get them all in.
Hi G-Man,
It's very interesting to hear that. I expect more feedback from advisers will emerge as the provider-led Pathways courses begin to mature, but you're leading the charge at the moment. I know that there's a lot of discussion about whether any screening tool would do the job properly, but mandating people with lung cancer seems a bit embarrassing.
Can you filter out people who aren't job ready after the first interview? If so, the mandated interview could be seen as a screening stage itself. Also, do you have any suggestions for improving the screening process?
Hi Daniel
You can filter some but the percentage is so small that its only the terminal clients we want to use it for. The ones who come in with Oygen cylinders or with broken necks we can't as the Job Centre won't have it. I think the advisers could be used as a screening tool at the inial interview stage but that isn't going to happen.
The screening tool needs to be more detailed as it is far to simple in the questions it asks. Like you said it wouldn't make it perfect but could enable me to work with more people whom are keen to work.
Another side to this are the government doctors reports we are supposed to get when we see the client. To date out of the 125 clients I have seen so far I have had only two reports, one of them had started work the week before and the other had been taken of incapacity benefit. We have a pile of doctors reports but no referrals to put them with. Whats the point in that I ask, oh yes to waste even more taxpayers money.
So you're getting doctor's reports for patients you don't see and none for patients you do see? Leaving aside the data protection implications, it still sounds like a system that isn't working properly. Maybe things will improve once ESA comes in? You're currently seeing the tail end of the previous system, which wasn't really designed to incorporate Pathways referrals.
As a side note, the DWP held an emergency meeting for all the Pathways providers recently. The rumour is that every single provider-led contract is performing considerably below target. If it's true, I really hope things start to improve soon, not least because it bodes ill for FND if they don't.
Hopefull ESA will help but it just seems badly organised from the top. I have worked on several government employment schemes over the last 12 years and this seems to be the most poorly organised so far but will be positive and let you know if it gets better.
Not surprising about the targets as they are pretty steep and largely unattainable and unrealistic with the amount of paperwork and validation involved. An example was that we had targets whilst we were still training and learning the new system and hadn't even seen any clients.
We have reached 88% of our target in my office and are in the top 5 in the country but some are as low as 50% of their target. This isn't going to get better now we have a recession and 90% of our time is taken up with people who aren't capeable or ready to go to work. Basically its a cheap service and I believe a lot of organisations will take a loss if there private and maybe go out of business if they are a voluntary business. It happened on New Deal for disabled and that paid 3 times as much for a job start.
I am increasigly concerned that DWP/JCP are condoning the outcome only payments. I have Pathways to Work and trying to keep it viable is an absolute nightmare. We all know that jobs are hard to find generally in the current climate when you add the conditions that many clients referred to P2W it can be a thankless task. Regardless of what the Primes for P2w say 'cherry picking' is rife that's a fact when you look at prime performance compared to sub-contract performance. All this coupled with little or no income and very strict contract requirements means we are on a 'hiding to nothing' and P2W is in danger of becoming a Government clearing house tool to make figures look better. If this is how FND is likely to be rolled out then God help us all!
Noting much of the discussion above about job identification it seems unbelievable to me and my associates that the Self-employment schemes have never been fully recognised and exploited in this context.
For many IB Clients, as with Lone Parents,those provisions have always been an appropriate, attractive and sometimes only option - and especially so in the rural areas. Despite that, those Client groups have been consisitently denied (or only granted limited) access - all the way through from WBLA to the current Pathways pot-code lottery.
The really galling bit is that the Client outcomes are very good when they are able to partcicipate! The classic line is "I want to work - people won't let me work - so I should work for myself". So why the discrimination?
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