Pathways performance improves
DWP has published performance figures for Pathways to Work (for ESA/IB claimants). These show an improvement in job entry rates.
The statistics are published separately for Jobcentre Plus led Pathways and for Provider led Pathways. JCP-led Pathways cover around 40% of the ESA/IB claimants and Provider led Pathways the remainder. Because we are in the election "Purdah" period, there has been no official commentary on the figures.
A quick assessment of the figures shows that job entry performance in Provider-led Pathways has been increasing, although these results appear to fall short of the very optimistic assessments suggested at contract-letting time. Trying to place people with health problems into work is more difficult than the majority of JSA claimants at the best of times, a recession just makes that more difficult.
The recent improvement in job entry rates parallels the improvements in job entries for JSA clients, so the bottoming out of the recession is affecting this group, as well as the work of providers.
DWP statisticians advise that the official statistics are not comparable with the management information circulated to providers as there are different definitions and time periods used. Notably, the official figures contain nothing on job sustainability. The job entry figures are up to July 2009 and starts figures to October 2009.
The report for Jobcentre Plus led Pathways (the original earlier areas) is at http://research.dwp.gov.uk/asd/workingag... and the report for Provider-led Pathways (the later areas) is at http://research.dwp.gov.uk/asd/workingag...
At the same time DWP has published figures on the Health Professional assessments for ESA. These show that the proportions being found fit for work and those withdrawing claims before assessment are not changing despite much protest (including by providers) that people are being found fit for work who do not seem to be so. There are appeal figures showing that around 60% of DWP decisions are upheld (meaning around 40% are not upheld). It appears that about one in four of those found fit for work actually appeal.
The ESA figures are published at http://research.dwp.gov.uk/asd/workingag...
Comments
It is interesting when you start to dig underneath these figures to see that they are measuring starts on the programme in very different ways for the two programmes. For JCP Pathways they count anyobdy who starts an ESA claim as a programme start, and subsequently anyobdy who gets a job after claiming ESA as a job outcome. For PL Pathways they only count a person as a start after they have have had the initial WFI with JCP at week 8-13 of their claim, and therefore only count job outcomes for this group. This means it is a realy big missed opportunity for DWP to compare performance across JCP and PL Pathways performance because the performance is being counted in different ways. The impact of this is that for similar size areas JCP Pathways has almost 3 times the number of starts as PL Pathways (compare similar size districts like Derbyshire and nottinghamsire to see this).
It is also interesting to note that PL Pathways performance is increasing at a much greater speed than JCP performance (altough the groups for which the performance is being measured are not the same). This is of interest because DWP's research of the 2nd phase of JCP Pathways areas (from 2006) conclude that Pathways has no emlyment impact and they have taken that togther with the fact that PL Pathways is underperforming to conlcude PL Pathways is not having an impact either. Besides the logical invalidity in their argument/conclusion it seems that the performance data might contradict this. Afterall, if there is no employment impact we would not epexct to see an increase in perofrmance unles it was caused by signifant external factors like a change in the labour market or client group. That being the case you would epxect to see broadly the same pattern across the country, but it seems that the improvement is only happening in PL areas. Of course as I have pointed out performance for the two programme is measured agiasnt slighty different groups and it may be that performance with people beyond 8-13 weeks on ESA is improved at the same rate in JCP areas as PL areas but has been offset by a roughly similar downturn in performance in thjose who are 0-8 weeks in their claim in the JCP areas. This seems unlikely.