Pathways to Work

An NAO report published today has concluded that "Overall, whilst a serious attempt to tackle an intractable issue, Pathways has turned out to provide poor value for money and the department needs to learn from this experience." 

The report says that private and voluntary sector providers have "universally underperformed" and were criticised for failing to deliver better outcomes than Jobcentre Plus. 

DWP has published performance figures for Pathways to Work (for ESA/IB claimants). These show an improvement in job entry rates.

As someone new to the welfare to work industry, Claire is travelling round providers across the UK, recording her impressions. Last Friday's visit was a bit different. Instead of focusing on FND, she went up to Leeds to visit A4e's Pathways to Work delivery centre.

The DWP have released official statistics for Pathways to Work performance, available through their website and as attachments at the bottom of this article. These differ from monthly league tables by being more accurate and less up-to-date. Here are the headline figures:

Various reports and results on Pathways to Work have emerged in the past few days:

• Updated statistics on starts and outcomes, available on the DWP website here, and also as a spreadsheet at the bottom of this article for easier calculation. The new statistics were released this Tuesday, and cover starts to April 2009 and jobs to January 2009. I'll put together some analysis next week
• A research report on quantitative outcomes for JCP-led Pathways to Work delivery. The headline result is no statistically significant impact on benefit receipts in the 2006 areas, but some impact on the pre-2006 areas. This appears to be due to the pre-2006 areas measuring from initial enquiry, whereas the 2006 areas measured from start of claim. Thus the only effect of Pathways to Work on benefits would be to act as a deterrent to claiming in the first place. Take this claim with a pinch of salt - I'll look into it more closely next week
• A qualitative research report on provider-led Pathways to Work delivery. No major surprises: some good experiences on all sides, but also a feeling of target-driven, under-resourced delivery resulting from overly ambitious provider targets, and issues with the handling of referrals and exiting of customers who lose their IB claims. The report is summarised below

Confirming rumours circulating over the past few days, the RNIB and RNID have both ended their support for people with sight and hearing issues in a wide range of Pathways to Work and NDDP contracts, citing excessive costs and market conditions for their decisions.

The RNIB confirmed contract withdrawal from Pathways in Wales, but made it clear that this was not due to contract issues with their Prime (A4e), but rather due to their support service simply not matching the available funding.

Update 5/11 - This analysis has been superseded by analysis of the figures released in October, available here

The DWP have released official statistics for Pathways to Work performance, available as a pdf on their website. These differ from monthly league tables by being more accurate and less up-to-date. Here are the headline figures:

Speaking with a (former) Pathways subcontractor the other day, they related an interesting experience of dealing with the DWP. The subcontractor's legal contract with the prime required them to give 30 days notification to the DWP when terminating their subcontract. They gave notice to the DWP, and were told that their subcontract had no legal value with the DWP in any case.

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.

News has come in that Reed in Partnership laid off 5% of their workforce and put 10% under consultation on January 27th. As one of the biggest Pathways to Work deliverers, this is not a positive sign for the future of the provision. Given that nobody is achieving target on Pathways, companies or charities may start collapsing if the targets, payments and referrals aren't sorted out soon.

Update - Reed in Partnership have issued the following statement:

The FoI request we submitted some months ago has been partially answered, and it made sense to put what we did get online. We asked for details on:

1. POEM bidders, their quality and finance scores, and agreed contract values and performance targets for the winners
2. Pathways to Work bidders, their quality and finance scores, and agreed contract values and performance targets for the winners
3. Portfolio management applied to Pathways to Work Phase 2

With confirmed contracts on Phase 1 and preferred bidders on Phase 2, it's about time we took a look at how things have panned out for the various bidders, and what it means for the industry.