The government’s Work Programme is now underway and we are welcoming clients through the doors of our east and west London offices. We’re proud to be delivery partners for three prime contractors: MAXIMUS and Ingeus Deloitte in West London and Careers Development Group (CDG) in East London.
Replacing a proliferation of welfare to work initiatives which preceded it, this single programme approach is designed to give people greater freedom when accessing services to help them into employment. This is a concept endorsed by Renaisi which has many years experience delivering tailor-made solutions for people wanting to improve their work prospects, but we accept the new approach with caution.
The Work Programme is perceived by many as a cost-cutting approach to dealing with worklessness. Getting people into meaningful work is certainly not something that can be done on the cheap or by cutting corners. There’s a broad range of issues that need to be addressed including employer engagement and specialist support for those seeking work, links with local neighbourhoods and community groups and the relationship with local authorities, local enterprise partnerships and training providers. With limited resources to address these issues, providers might be forced to work with the ‘easy to reach’.
There’s also the fact that the main contracts are now in the hands of large organisations, some of whom have greater expertise in logistics than employment, although we seem to have predominantly avoided those in London. Meanwhile, the smaller and arguably more knowledgeable third sector organisations will suffer the effect of payment by results as cash flow becomes tight. This seems to contradict the spirit of the government’s Localism Bill of devolving to a local level.
Additionally, the Work Programme is mandatory and there is nothing to replace the wider initiatives aimed at supporting self referrals or outreach for those who are economically inactive but not eligible for the scheme so it seems we’re left with a gaping hole in employment provision.
With these concerns in mind, we enter this new approach with guarded enthusiasm as we can see there will be some positive outcomes – the simplicity of the model can only be a good thing for the out-of-work citizen. We propose however that evaluation should start early and focus on the critical issues which, if missed, could have significant repercussions.