Centre visit - Working Links and the FND experience

As someone new to the welfare to work industry, Claire is travelling round providers across the UK, recording her impressions and seeing how they're coping with Flexible New Deal and the recession. This week's visit was to Working Links in Nottingham.

Nottingham is home to one of the organisation's largest FND delivery centres, which has expanded the size of their operations threefold in the city. I visited their FND delivery centre to speak with ops manager Doug, and the general office where all of their voluntary contracts are based, managed by Kevin. During the visit I explored how they deliver FND, what differences they've found to New Deal, and how they're responded to the current recession.

How Working Links deliver FND

Despite having half the expected flow of clients through their doors so far, they have already managed to place 28 people in work in the East Midlands through FND. Working Links currently has a blend of people who are entirely new to the industry, existing people, and people who have come over via TUPE, and have had to adapt to the Working Links way.

Streaming and individual case management

The organisation has developed a process especially for FND that indicates an individual's closeness to the labour market, based on an assessment of their skills and motivation levels, for example. This in turn leads to them receiving a level of service appropriate to their specific needs Working Links has only used unofficial, internal streaming before via the 'traffic lights' system, but Doug argues that the new system helps themassess whether their approach is working, and if changes need to be made.

Doug has much experience within the industry, and was very pro-Employment Zone at the start of the programme, despite it not involving any real streaming. When I put the issue of 'creaming and parking' to him as a potential downside of streaming in FND, he maintained that, as far as Working Links was concerned, it 'won't happen' because of the standards he and the team set, alongside the company's ethos. In fact, he noted some concern that they may miss out on hitting some targets because of the time spent on harder to help clients.

Depending on their level of help needed, individuals come in for a maximum of four times per week. A key part of Working Links' FND delivery is a focus on job search. Of the 28 people helped into work so far, one of these was classed as 'harder to help', and Doug feels that a large part of this achievement was down to a good relationship built up between the individual and the consultant, and the ability to tailor job search and training to an individual's needs. The harder to help people are, according to Doug, by no means neglected, but in many cases the focus will not be on placing them in work right away, but bringing them nearer to the job market step-by-step.

A good working environment

Working Links has strived to create a flexible and informal environment to meet their clients in. Peppered with colourful sofas, movable perspex rooms (or 'pods'), and an open plan 'market place' where clients can either talk with their consultants, or each other in an unofficial setting. Clients sit alongside advisers at their desks, as opposed to on the opposite side, and typing whilst talking with a client is kept to a minimum. Additionally, consultants allocate as much or as little time to each meeting with a client, as opposed to having, say, rigid half hour sessions that may well not meet their needs.

Local research and customer satisfaction

Working Links take a very involved approach to the delivery of their contracts, and have commissioned research on FND regions into understanding which group of people has been hit the most by the recession. Although not yet published, they hope that this will help enable them to prepare in advance for new client groups coming in and for them to respond appropriately.

Every fourth week each client fills in a customer satisfaction form, as Working Links feels it is in to the advantage of all parties to ensure that their clients are responding positively to the guidance they are receiving.

Doug actually takes this a step further with regards to the possible implementation of the Star Rating system to rate and rank providers, in saying that the customer perspective should account for part of the result. He also raises the issue of a provider slipping down the rankings, yet 40% of clients still have to be referred to it by JCP. How in a choice based system do you get those 40% to pick that less successful provider?

Varied delivery methods and consultant rapport

Part of what Working Links considers as differentiating them from other providers is their emphasis on group work. Wednesday is weekly job search day, and at the end of the week comes 'follow-up Friday'. The key here though is that everyone partakes in these sessions together, regardless of their level of job readiness, encouraging them to share their experiences, pitfalls and successes.

Different types of consultants are available depending on an individual's needs. For example social work consultants can be allocated to help people with specific barriers who have been affected by their experiences to date. Working Links also supports people when they are in work, and stills looks to help them find long-term jobs if they have found temporary work, as the real upside of FND is that providers are judged by sustained employment.

In terms of integrated support mechanisms, performance managers do case reviews with performance consultants every 2 weeks. This is solely about case development, and not targets which are kept to one side for a later meeting. Doug feels this allows them to focus on the individual, and not get caught up in number-crunching and neglect their real aims.

Spirit of partnership

All of Working Links' FND subcontractors are local, voluntary/community organisations. something that both Kevin and Doug said directly was that they must not claim that they already know everything at working links, and that they could still learn a lot more from other providers. A good 'spirit of partnership' is key to the organisation, reflected in the fact that they have specifically not chosen to set up offices in areas where they would be in direct competition with local organisations working to achieve similar goals. instead, they choose to work with them, and in return ask that they apply the Working Links delivery model, the application of which both parties can gain from.

New Deal v. FND

As a whole, Doug does believe that FND is better than New Deal. He also feels that New Deal became overly regimented. In comparison, he thinks FND has much more choice, and payment by sustained results is a real step forwards.

Doug commented that FND has given both the provider and the individuals their freedom back, and hopes that FND will continue to offer the same level of freedom in terms of creative delivery that it currently does. He also noted that there has been a real shift in client attitude towards coming to delivery centres due to the personal touch that consultants can now afford to give. At Working Links, they aim to keep people active, and vary the days they come in, alongside the activities they take part in. This sense of improvement has also been felt by employees, and their enthusiasm for the new programme is in turn helping boost clients too.

Having said that, some issues with FND have emerged since it was rolled out in October. With low numbers of people coming through the doors, providers have had to hold off on planned recruitment drives, and costly, purpose built offices are largely empty. Also, it is not yet clear to people on the ground how the 'customer choice' idea will work in practice in areas with two FND providers. Doug picked up on this issue as, in his recent experience of customer choice, Jobcentre Plus have organised the client placements so that half of the total number of people go to each provider. It will be interesting to see how this develops.

FND phase 2

A question in the back of the minds of all those taking part in or bidding for FND tenders is whether FND phase 2 will actually go ahead, with uncertainty surrounding the upcoming general election. Both Kevin and Doug think that phase 2 will happen in some form anyway due to practical commitments and logistics. they say that they wouldn't want to see the return of previous restrictions that FND has just alleviated, and maintain that any other incoming DWP contracts would need to keep the focus on the individual.

Recession

There was some concern that with all of the new contracts brought in to help tackle the recession, alongside the sheer number of people needing employment-related help, and the complex process for allocating people to providers, Jobcentre Plus are feeling the heat right now. Kevin certainly sees these new, responsive contracts as the right move to make, and remains hopeful that they will work. A potential issue that he did pick up on, however, is that there may be some overlap and confusion at first with regards to which programme (FJF/FND) young people are supposed to be joining, for example.

A further issue, as Kevin sees it, is the lack of public knowledge about the introduction and availability of a number of these new programmes. He said that this was very much the case with Train to Gain as there was very little uptake at first. This has led to budgeting issues, now that the scheme has taken off, but the funds have been used already based on those early figures.

Additionally, the recession has led to some premises issues for Jobcentre Plus. As a result, Working Links are in discussion with JCP in Nottingham about advisers coming into their FND office to sign people on every two weeks to help resolve some of these space problems.

Working Links have seen an alteration in the client base since the start of recession, and particularly since the introduction of day one referrals for a number of programmes. This is in part due to the number of people who have, for example, been made redundant, and are naturally closer to the labour market than the long-term unemployed. With these new contracts creating further opportunities, and with a more job ready client base, hopefully it will be easier than it has been to help the casualties of the recession find alternative work.