site news

We'd really like to to offer a couple of FJF placements at the Indus Delta office in Islington, starting sometime between October and December. So far, the process for actually arranging a placement has been bizarrely difficult: organisations have been difficult to get in touch with, have seemed largely uninterested, and have dropped out of touch once we've filled in the necessary paperwork.

Update 2 - Completed. The site should remain live and fully functional.

The Indus Delta website will experience some downtime this weekend. It's difficult to know in advance how long this will last; we're reinstalling our hosting platform to better handle client websites, and taking steps to prevent slowdown during busy times. Indus Delta will likely be offline on Saturday, and should come back up before Sunday.

I've disabled comments on welfare to work contracts. Apologies to those who had commented on them in the days prior to their removal - it was never intended that people be able to comment on individual contracts, but I hadn't got round to removing the ability previously.

For a change, this is a request rather than a story. If you're thinking of bidding for the Merlin tender, or you know anyone who is thinking of bidding for it, then please get in touch, either using the web form or by calling 07876 618040. Part of Merlin is 'developing databases and web based portals to share information and best practice', i.e. a site with a database of current providers, the ability to post provider news and best practice, and links to Ofsted reports and the like.

Building on the new website software, some new features have now been enabled on the site:

A lot of people who sign up for the site never get round to confirming their email address. We've decided to make this mandatory in future, as there have been quite a few spam sign-ups recently.

Basically this means that if we're not sure you're a real person with a real email address, we'll send you a verification email next Monday, then delete your profile if you don't respond within 24 hours.

The back end of the website has been heavily upgraded over the past week, and in consequence the entire interface has been rebuilt from scratch. Don't be alarmed if it looks a bit different - it still has all the same functionality, and your information is entirely safe!

We've changed the site design a bit, to make it easier to find the stories and information that interest you. Take a look around, why not? Feedback welcome.

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.