Note for Financial Times readers
Indus Delta was mentioned on the front page of the FT on Friday. Their article was a write-up of performance issues with the Pathways to Work provision. This article on the Indus Delta website provided the source material for the FT story. If you're interested in finding out more about welfare reform, welfare-to-work, and unemployment programmes generally, you can sign up here to receive free weekly updates on everything that's happening in the welfare-to-work sector.
This article from inside the FT provides greater detail on the success of Pathways to Work and the new contracting model. Sample quote:
"Overall, the private sector-led employment programmes have delivered 60 per cent of the expected jobs in the six months to September, while consuming 98 per cent of the expected expenditure."
We're working on an article about the state of Pathways to Work for publication shortly - individual contract results are apparently due for release, so we'll be taking a more in-depth look at how each provider has been performing.
Comments
Dropping neutrality briefly (ahem), no other newspaper is even beginning to explore the welfare-to-work industry in the same way as the FT at the moment. It's a split between 'dole-scrounger' stories in the right-wing press and 'bullying the hardest-to-help' stories in the left-wing press. The BBC has a good series of stories about different people's experiences of worklessness, but that's about it. Whatever happened to the Guardian?
I agree. The FT's coverage of welfare-to-work is excellent. But I might add that Regeneration & Renewal's coverage is not bad either: www.regen.net
Hi Allister,
Agreed - I link to Regen stories occasionally in the newswire. Welfare-to-work is a very small industry compared to the wider regeneration field, of course. I was referring to the general press rather than industry publications.