flexible New Deal

The producers of BBC Radio 4's "File on Four" are preparing a programme about welfare reform and New Deal. They would like to hear views (good and bad) from New Deal and FND clients.

In the last of the current series of site visits, I visited i2i's Manchester FND delivery centre earlier this week. As a subcontractor to Serco, I thought it might be interesting to see how they are finding the move from delivering the Gateway stage of New Deal over to FND.

Before Christmas I went to visit Remploy's Waterloo branch, where they deliver WORKSTEP. The organisation has changed and branched out a lot in the last few years, and it was interesting to see their welfare to work side in action first hand

Moving back to FND, last Tuesday I visited A4e's FND delivery centres in Wolverhampton and Dudley to see how they've adapted to the new contract.

Updated 10/12 - This story started out as a list of all subcontractors for everyone everywhere on FND1, but thanks to an FoI response received by Steph at W2W Solutions, and some judicious reconstruction of redacted information, we've now got a complete list of which providers put which subcontractors in each area. These are the lists that were included at the point of tendering, and not the ones that have actually ended up delivering in each area.

I've got a request in progress for an up to date list, broken down by prime and CPA. In the meantime, be aware that some primes had to redo their subcontracting pretty much from scratch after winning FND.

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.

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.

CDG is a strong 3rd Sector Organisation delivering quality services in the Welfare to Work environment; we believe in individualised support and good stakeholder engagement and partnership management. We are continuing to develop partnerships and build links with stakeholders, potential subcontractors and other local organisations interested in potentially working with us on Flexible New Deal Phase 2 (FND2). Our goal is to work in partnership with organisations of all sizes and sectors in order to deliver a local service that meets the needs of our customers and the communities we serve.

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.

Working Links is a leading UK provider of Welfare to Work services, we believe in working in partnership with the best quality-driven organisations to deliver our services responsive to the needs of customers, employers and stakeholders.

We will deliver Flexible New Deal Phase 2 as a Prime Contractor, and are looking to engage with providers as potential subcontractors to deliver front-line services through locally developed delivery models. We will partner with organisations with a proven track record to deliver high quality support, including assessment and action planning, case management, and post-employment support. If you are a public, private or third sector organisation and would like to work in partnership with Working Links to deliver Phase 2 Flexible New Deal in: