Why become a member?
- ALP has helped develop reforms in welfare to work programmes recognising that skills training is often key to securing sustainable employment for Jobcentre Plus clients
Welfare to Work
Welfare to Work
What is Welfare to Work?
The Government is aiming for Britain to achieve an employment rate of 80% and during 2008 record levels of employment at over 29 million people in employment have been achieved despite the slowdown in the economy. Under the Department for Work and Pensions, the Government operates employment programmes such as New Deal to help unemployed people back into work and Pathways to Work to help people on incapacity benefit. These are managed throughout the UK by Jobcentre Plus which contracts out a significant amount of its employment services to a mixture of private, public and voluntary sector providers. The Government is spending over £1.3 billion a year over the next three years on its employment programmes.
After ten years of operation, New Deal is being replaced by Flexible New Deal (fND) which reflects the recognition on the part of ministers that agencies and providers should be seeking to place more clients in sustainable employment. The Government has published a new commissioning strategy which will allow providers greater flexibility and creativity in helping jobseekers to overcome their specific problems. Contractors will be paid on results with rewards linked to how long each client remains in work. Links between the New Deal and Train to Gain programmes are also being established because the DWP has recognised that improving the skills of JCP clients who have found a job is more likely to increase the clients’ chances of holding down employment.
After a piloting stage, Pathways to Work has been rolled out nationally in an effort to reduce the number of people (2.6 million) on incapacity benefit. In a series of reforms published since David Freud’s far-reaching report on welfare to work, funding for all programmes is increasingly being channelled and provision managed by prime contractors at a sub-regional level.
ALP Policy
As a representative body of private, public and third sector providers, the Association of Learning Providers welcomes the increased trust that the DWP is placing in the private and voluntary sector in helping to reduce Britain’s long-term unemployment. The department has taken on board ALP’s concerns that smaller local providers should not be squeezed out of the new commissioning and contracting arrangements because many of these providers are very adept at reaching the hardest to help.
ALP recommends that Jobcentre Plus should concentrate its efforts on the administration of benefits and job-broking services for the early-duration unemployed, and not become involved in the design and delivery of training provision for its longer-term or more disadvantaged customers. The latter should be placed in the hands of private and voluntary sector providers, many of whom already have an excellent record of delivery in this area. We remain opposed, however, to the concept of regional prime contractor monopolies which add no value to the contracting chain, but instead introduce an unnecessary layer within it with no compensating benefits. ALP would suggest that a national agency working alongside the regional commissions can ensure that local solutions can be devised and implemented within an overall national framework. But it is vital that the Government makes it much clearer which, if any, of the City Strategy, Employment and Skills Board, Jobcentre Plus, Pathways to Work and Employment Zones options they ultimately intend to be a primary driver of skills and employment policy, and on what geographical level this is likely to take place.
Ever since departmental responsibility for employment and skills was split after the 2001 general election, ALP has been pressing for closer working between Jobcentre Plus (JCP) and the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) because we believe that arming the non-employed with skills results in more sustainable employment. This argument was also a major tenet of our submissions to Lord Leitch’s review of skills in 2006 and relevant select committee inquiries. Many ALP members deliver both JCP and LSC contracts and can see firsthand the benefits of offering a more holistic approach. ALP feels strongly that the outcome of the 2010 review by the UK Commission for Employment and Skills should be a merger of JCP and the LSC’s successor body into one national agency. This will not only contribute to more effective delivery of public services, but will benefit individual clients and employers.
ALP has noted that the Conservative Party has been very active in recent months in putting forward its own set of proposals for welfare reform, including a green paper published in January 2008. ALP welcomes many of the party’s proposals although it has reservations about the recommended contracting structures which appear to largely follow the Australian model.
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