London Welfare to Work 2009 - Event Report 1

The London W2W convention was originally scheduled to take place on the day after London ground to a halt under a foot of snow. However, rescheduling didn't harm attendance - the event was packed out, with standing room only for some of the more popular sessions. As always, there were a range of simultaneous presentations, and the report I've put together only gives a taster of the day. CESI has its own webpage with slides and details of all sessions.

All the speakers at the conference stressed the need for different organisations to work together, and this was mirrored in a strong attendance from people working in skills (LSC), employment (DWP) and development generally (LDA).

First report: Keynote and Plenary Speakers

Harvey McGrath, Chair of the LDA, Vice Chair of London Skills and Employment Board

Harvey, while praising London as a world city, identified persistent inequality as an issue, and suggested employer engagement, skills training, and integrated skills and employment as solutions. Causes of inequality included:

• Availability of childcare
• A highly competitive labour market
• High cost of living
• Low skills among the workless
• Lack of integration between employment, skills, health and housing

Specific solutions from the London Employment and Skills Board's plan included a single employer facing brand, more work placements and training with employers, marketing of jobs and skills in London, a one stop shop for careers advice, and a single purse for London employment and skills.

While the recession will have major effects on skills and employment, the effects on London have been muted compared to the rest of the UK:

• Rises in unemployment were lower so far
• Entry level vacancies held up until Christmas, although they are likely dropping now. This may have been related to an exodus of migrant workers to their home countries
• Professionals were being most affected, with increasing unemployment rates in the outer boroughs where they mostly reside
• He was concerned that welfare reform was proceeding too quickly given the pressures on delivery, and the lack of information about what was to be delivered
• Welfare-to-work delivery should support both short and long term unemployed, and the newly unemployed where they are lacking in job search skills

Dave Simmonds, Chief Executive of CESI

In addition to the economic analysis of the recession that followed roughly the same pattern as Workless in 2009, there were quite a few London-specific goodies:

• Owing to a predominance of young workers, half of London's working population has never experienced a recession
• Despite its strong economy, the unemployed in London were more likely than elsewhere to become long-term unemployed during previous recessions
• The predicted rise of over 100,000 claimants in the next year will put the total number of London claimants above that of the 80s and 90s recessions. This is primarily because the long-term unemployed from those recessions are still claiming
• Young people, white people, and women are being hit harder by the recession, with disproportionately higher increases in unemployment. Child poverty is also likely to increase substantially

First Q&A

• Q: Given the limited resources and exploding demand, do you prioritise the long term or short term unemployed?
  A: Harvey said that both should be delivered to, and that there are enough resources
• Q: The point was made that strongly outcomes-based funding forces organisations to focus solely on their primary goal and ignore wider partnership delivery
  A: Harvey accepted that outcomes focus can often remove an organisation's ability to look at sensible, joined-up delivery, and recommended that they fight against stupid targets even if that means pushing for softer outcomes. Dave pointed to LAA plans that assume permanently increasing employment as an example of targets that need to be torn up
• Q: How does integrated employment and skills work alongside nationally awarded contracts to deliver programmes (e.g. FND)?
  A: Harvey said that the argument for localised policy and contracting flexibility had been made to the government, but (particularly in the case of the DWP) this had yet to change contracting practices

Tony McNulty, Minister of State for Employment and Welfare Reform

The concrete elements of Tony's speech were mirrored in an accompanying press releases about LEP targets and Day 1 jobsearch. Previously announced ESF funding will be used to pay for providers to support customers from day one of their claim from the beginning of March. There was also a certain amount of grumpiness with the press for his portrayal in the newspapers, and the editing down of a 30 minute interview to a 30 second soundbite in Dispatches the previous evening. While still promising support for the long-term unemployed, there was a strong feeling that the main priority would be preventing the newly unemployed from joining the ranks of the long-termers in the first place. There was also the same emphasis on partnership that every other speaker talked about.

Second Q&A

• Q: Given the high numbers of job ready applicants, why would employers take on the hardest to help?
  A: Tony pointed to the success of the Local Employment Partnerships
• Q: Is FND in crisis?
  A: 'No.' FND remains the same, with new numbers being submitted to cope with the 300,000 customers. Tony also made an interesting point about the joint culpability of politicians and journalists for sensationalistic news coverage
• Q: An employer representative complained about the lack of employers at these events, and also expressed strong reservations about Golden Hellos
  A: Tony pointed to the LEPs again, and said that Golden Hellos were being held back until April in order to make sure they were implemented without perverse incentives. Pat Hughes (sitting in) said that there are 4-500 dedicated employer-focused staff in London
• Q: The downturn has been obvious for some time. What lessons could be learned to stop contracts from going back to the drawing board when the economy changes?
  A: Tony stated that FND already has the flexibility to do this

Patrick Hughes, Jobcentre Plus Director, London

With two previous recessions under his belt, Pat was able to draw out lessons from previous recessions, likely pitfalls, and key themes to get through it.

Lessons:

• London is normally First In and Last Out during recessions
• London's employment rate did not bounce back from the 90s recession as quickly as the rest of the UK
• Long term unemployment reduces far more slowly in London than elsewhere in the UK

Pitfalls:

• "There aren't any jobs anyway" - giving up on job search
• "Don't want to be flooded with no-hopers" - employers stop advertising their vacancies widely to deter too many applicants (specifically JCP customers?)
• Long term worklessness is allowed to grow as short-term unemployed are focused on
• Partnerships get more edgy and frail

Responses:

• Everyone active - everyone needs to work at meeting the challenges
• No one left behind - not giving up on anyone and allowing them to sink into long-term unemployment
• All working together - the importance of partnerships

Philippa Langton, Skills Director for London, LSC

Philippa went through the LSC Joint Action Plan for London, in detail.

Third Q&A

• Q: What's your response to Dispatches?
  A: Pat argued that, while he didn't agree with many of its findings, it was important to listen to people, and to avoid a bunker mentality when confronted with feedback
• Q: The final BME-focused DWP programme ends this month. How does JCP intend to help BME claimants?
  A: Pat said that a large proportion of all claimants are from BME backgrounds in any case in London. He pointed out that FND gives primes the ability to deliver BME-focused provision if they choose. It's worth noting that Leigh Lewis (?) was tackled on the same subject by the Public Accounts Committee a few months back. Philippa agreed that more needed to be done to make LSC provision responsive to the communities it served
• Q: An LDA official argued that flexibility and the ability to develop complementary services would be key, and cited the example of LSCs, the LDA, and JCP all having childcare budgets which don't work together at all well
  A: Pat pointed out that the most important thing that LSPs could do would be extended school hours as standard, so that parents could go back to work
• Q: Should self employment be an important part of the mix of support?
  A: Pat quoted figures that 4-5% of people starting a JSA claim could go on to self employment. Philippa highlighted specific problems with startup support in Haringey, where many business were started but promptly folded due to the lack of ongoing support

Kate Green, Child Poverty Action Group

London has the highest rate of child poverty in the UK, with no improvement since 2000. The London Child Poverty Commission has been working on identifying the reasons for this and finding solutions. Very low parental employment rates are a large part of the reason. The individual causes include:

• High cost of living
• Expensive childcare
• High transport costs
• Higher proportion of backgrounds prone to child poverty (lone parents, ethnic minorities etc.)
• Fewer part time jobs
• A highly skilled, mobile, flexible young workforce in competition with parents for the same jobs

Kate also cautioned against pushing people into unstable employment through overly forceful welfare-to-work delivery, arguing that this would damage child welfare in the long term. Instead she argued for Work First Plus, using skills training and support to move people into good, sustainable employment. She also advocated better employer / in-work support, with particular reference to the Business Commission on Ethnic Minority Employment.

Kate's speech was the last major speech of the day. There were a couple of summary speeches from other speakers, and a question highlighting the lack of integrated debt advice services.

In report 2: pre-employment training, New Deal subcontract management and FND setup