cheat sheet

As ever, I'd suggest reading the entire executive summary of the skills review, even if not the entire document as there are almost 160 pages! A lot of content throughout, and interesting to read in the light of the recent National Skills Strategy announced only a few weeks ago.

'Learner accounts' and more information for employers, as well as those currently employed, are amongst the initiatives that may ring familiar. Published a year before the Freud Report, looking at welfare to work as a whole and changing the focus and landscape of the industry, this review should definitely be read in its context.

Updated 17/12 - DWP published their White Paper on Tuesday, aimed at 'Building Britain's Recovery: Achieving Full Employment'. I've had a good read through, and would defnitely recommend reading the summary which is here, as it really is full of content. The summary below is made up of useful excerpts I've picked out from the White Paper, including a bit of background to set out what the Bill is being based on.

Overall, there are a lot of reforms set out here, including more information on skills accounts, 'better off in work' credit, and additional plans to tackle youth unemployment. There is also a lot in there for working families, lone parents, carers, and people with disabilities. This White Paper is by no means a short-term plan to fend off the recession, but outlines reform in all key areas - more powers to Jobcentre Plus staff, Housing Benefit reform, a review of Pathways to Work, and an aim to work back up towards full employment.

This is, hopefully, a fairly useful summary of the key points of the 2007 Freud Report in quote form. I've kept them in this format as the report is actually very clear in itself, and doesn't really need too much picking apart in the way that some others do. I would definitely recommend reading it in full if you have the time/interest.

Flexible New Deal is now live and delivering across half the country, but it's become evident that lots of people don't know what this means. Therefore, for your enlightenment and edification, we have put together a brief guide of the differences between the old and new support regimes for job seekers. Note that this guide does not include Support for Newly Unemployed Professionals, Programme Centres, or the Young Person's Guarantee. They all have an impact, but we're discussing New Deal in this article.

Earlier in the year, Theresa May promised that the Conservatives would set out their own welfare reform plans in detail this Autumn. The party conference this week unveiled a new set of proposals, including various recession responses and an all-in-one support provision called the Work Programme. However, the question of what was going to happen to existing contracts and bid rounds was left open.

The Centre for Social Justice, a think tank set up by Iain Duncan Smith, has released a report calling for the replacement of 51 separate working age benefits with just two:

• Universal Work Credit would replace out of work benefits (JSA, IB, ESA, and IS), and would require participation in welfare to work programmes in order to 'earn' it
• Universal Life Credit would replace more general support benefits (HB, CTB, DLA, WTC, and CTC).

The other main element of the proposal is tapering the benefits so that they are gradually reduced as people do more work. The authors claim that the proposal would cost money in the short term (£3.7bn a year) but would be self-financing in the longer term.

The following summary highlights the key impacts of the 2009 Budget on welfare-to-work delivery. For each section, I've included the relevant part of the actual Budget report, for reference. This report is still being edited and added to - check back later for more content

More money for delivery

The Select Committee were broadly supportive of the current contracting reforms, but had particular concerns about the future of local delivery and small organisations, and about the deliverability of FND in a recession.

Channel 4 ran a documentary about welfare-to-work services in the recession on 16th February. They also have a small accompanying website here in case you missed it. I've put together a summary of the programme's content below which hopefully captures the major points.

The New Opportunities White Paper is making its way toward law. The major impacts of this on welfare-to-work are:

• £500 training entitlement for parents or carers returning to work
• Employment support programme for young people leaving care
• 35,000 new apprenticeship places
• Full time community volunteering programme for people not in education, employment or training in 33 local authorities
  

The White Paper is essentially the Green Paper plus the Gregg Review. Some of the more controversial proposals (Work for Your Benefit, mandated support for lone parents with younger children etc.) will start out as pilots or trailblazers. The responses to the consultation are outlined in some detail in the appendices, but the only major changes are the softening of drug-testing proposals and the freeze on transfer of carers from IS.

Paul Gregg's review of benefits and conditionality was published on 2nd November. The web page and full report are available here. For ease of reference, I've put the main points and press coverage below. However, the actual report is definitely worth reading - just the list of recommendations at the end of the report is 7 pages long!

The SSAC have expressed major reservations about both the content and method of the government's welfare reform proposals, to a quite surprising extent. Their overall conclusion recommended a drastic slowing down in the pace of reform, the establishment of a commission to consider proposed benefit reforms, and the creation and use of a base of evidence that the proposals would work before imposing them wholesale.

This year's conferences posed both parties with an interesting problem. Both of them are heading in essentially the same direction on welfare reform. How could they paint themselves as different to the opposition?

The SMF report builds on their presentation at the Inclusion Welfare-to-work conference in June. The report identifies various flaws with FND, and suggests solutions to each of them: