Take the aim of getting people off sickness benefits. We all know that a problem stems from the fact that sickness benefit has always been higher than unemployment benefit. We all know that there are many people claiming these benefits who could work. So what do you do? Well, this government employs a private company, Atos, to assess whether claimants are genuinely unable to work, and pays it £3.1bn. Both the company and the government deny that there are any targets, although it's hard to see how there could not be. For a summary of just how wrong this can go, see the Independent's article. But when you want to do another exercise in reassessing disability allowances, you hire the same company. What could possibly go wrong?
Or take the fact that large numbers of young people are not in education, employment or training. It's entirely reasonable that they should be given something useful to do. It might be reasonable to look back at what Gordon Brown did as Chancellor in the early days of the last government. "New Deal" started as a scheme to help NEETs. Some might see it as sensible to create jobs. But this government has decided to make young people do 3 months unpaid work or lose their benefits. Again, this could be seen as reasonable. Another article in the Independent describes the scheme, which sounds familiar to anyone who remembers New Deal. But this scheme will put people into placements with "charities and social enterprises". It assumes that there are enough of such organisations ready to take them (there aren't). And it will certainly be organised by a private company, for profit.
The payment by results model seemed a great idea to a government obsessed with profit. Take off all the restraints and inspections, tell companies they can do what they like, and they will pull out all the stops. Well, no. An interesting piece on the Guardian's website by Su Maddock claims that innovation in the Work programme can only come through local commissioning, not through prime contractors and financial incentives. Again, anybody who remembers New Deal, before David Blunkett privatised it, will recognise this model. (For those who don't remember, the Jobcentre Plus regional offices held the budgets and contracted with a variety of organisations, including very local ones.)
This government continues to confuse the reasonable with the ideological.
It does seem reasonable putting unemployed youth into work placements or something, but if they are doing what would otherwise be a paid job, then that means less jobs available & a lot of would be employers know they can use unpaid unemployed people. I don't think there will ever be an easy way to get people back into work.
ReplyDeleteThye Guardian article was interesting (if a bit technical). It would seem that the conclusion reached is that private sector profiteering and public services form poor bedfellows.
ReplyDeleteI think we could have told them that years and millions of wasted pounds ago!
Payment (or Profit) by results does not work in the employment sector. It leads to lack of innovation, creaming and parking, bullying, over complicated and expensive infrastructure and all sorts of other ills. Individuals' needs are forgotton in the race to meet targets and turn a quick buck. We have the wrong people advising - we don't need failed salesmen and would be Emmas, we need proper clued up, empathetic professionals whose aim is to help rather than create profit. Too many eyes on too many spreadsheets - not enough attention on the needs of people.
Rant over (for now, I may be back!)
Bit off the subject(as usual) The WP's ultimate goal should be to help the unemployed into full time employment,I have recently been offered a position,not what I want and I am over qualified,but it represents a little self respect and recent work history on the old CV,it is also only 15 hours a week with a chance of occasionally more or working a second 6 hr week job as well(could not consider this before as it would of cost me more than I made)Are the WP happy?NO "We can't stop you from taking this position,but you will still be required to attend JCP as well as weekly visits here,you must still be available for interviews and work shops deemed to help you back into fulltime employment.Ect,Ect" I pointed out that I only receive £72 JSA,(which will stop)have been on the WP for 11 months and this the only solid offer I have had..Any Ideas,because I am taking this offer.
ReplyDeleteIf you are no longer getting JSA they have no hold over you, I would have thought. You will, presumably, sign off. The WP provider has to follow you, and will harrass you to get a full-time job so that they can claim for it. (Do two part-time jobs equal a full-time job for the purposes of claiming an outcome?) What they certainly can't force you to do is attend their offices. At least, I think that's the case.
DeleteTake the job, and good luck.
If you haven't signed off they can try to force you to attend their offices, you will need to have evidence that you were working on the day/time in question.
DeleteWill the JSA stop if you are only working 15 hrs? Or, perhaps, can you sign off if you are only working 15hrs? Most jobs won't pay you enough to allow that, so you'll be signed on as working 15 hrs and the pay will be deducted from the JSA until you have had £72/week deducted from it, so they end up paying you nothing. This has interesting consequences if your WP provider then tries to sanction you, as sanctions can't be back or forward dated, so they have no effect. This is what has happened to me, in fact the JC advised me not to sign off until I was guaranteed 16hrs work a week. So I still go to the JC and sign, but I get paid nothing. And no, A4E are not happy with the situation, but they can't do anything about it.
Actually I will be paid £93 by the employer and nothing from DWP (I receive no other benefits) If I still have to sign on it would actually cost me the bus fare £4.80 (WP uses vouchers,I would have to wait around for 4-5 hours) Start Work next Wednesday,if I do not benefit from the DWP/WP what can they sanction?
DeleteThey should be encouraging you to take the job, conduct telephone reviews in line with Dwp guidelines for minimum contact and assisting you in finding an additional job to top up your income, not forcing you to attend centre weekly!! That just sounds stupid!
Delete"What can they sanction?" Obviously nothing, but this is a really interesting situation, and I hope you'll keep us up to date with what happens. The WP provider is required to track you, and will want you to get a full-time job. If you sometimes go over the 16-hours-a-week threshold, does that count? (Or would you not tell them?)
DeleteThey tried to (did) sanction me, due to A4E's incompetence - make sure you conduct all your telephone convos with them via mobile and keep the call records for sending to DWP as evidence you spoke to them.
DeleteThe JC said that as sanctions can't be back or forward dated there's nothing for me to worry about as long as I am earning over the £72 in the week they do it. And they are quite happy with me not being paid JSA, but earning it myself, but won't let me sign off until I have guaranteed 16+hrs a week. Which I don't have yet, although A4E are trying to get me to sign off anyway as self-employed and to make up the remaining hours as self-employment related admin.
So I am also going to the JC every fortnight to sign, even though I am not actually being paid anything by DWP. Unless you sign off, you have to fill out forms each time you go to the JC detailing how long you worked, how much you earned etc. You need details/copies of your payslips so the JSA can be deducted, I don't think therefore that you could pretend you hadn't gone over the 16hr threshold?
And yes, in my case, even though I am not being paid JSA because I am earning more than £72 a week, A4E are still insisting I get a full time job "because it's not getting you off benefits is it?"
"but won't let me sign off until I have guaranteed 16+hrs a week"
DeleteThey can't stop you signing off! But I think what you're saying is that because of your irregular earnings you might have to sign on again, so it's too much hassle. I wonder how many people are simply walking away.
Had a bit of a funny one today,told JCP that I would be signing off in 2 weeks(waiting on CBR)still have to go in to actually sign off,no problem,also will be paid £100 extra, brilliant, also informed by employer that hours will be extended to 31 hrs per week(not 15) all good? Not exactly,WP excited as they are due for a big payout...NOT..Why? I will answer this later in my next post(historian you have a clue in those E-mails I asked you to look at,thanks for the advice) till later,feel the self esteem rising.
DeleteOk,in a nutshell,after repeated attempts to find out what the Provider had on offer, training, placements,Ect,Ect.This was the edited response from the Head of Operations..."After speaking to the authority's Legal Representatives,I am now in a position to reply" lot of Mumbo Jumbo about commercially sensitive info.."If you are unhappy with the programme,you are entitled to remove yourself from it{By signing off benefits}..The JCP has accepted this as an offer to terminate the 2 year contract with the Provider,with no expectation of any benefit to the provider other than the attachment fee ,in return as long as I sign off,regardless of employment this will not effect my ability to sign back on at a later date.The DWP also accepts that it has no liability regarding any outcome payments that may of been due to the Provider as the contract was terminated at the agreement of both parties..Brilliant!
DeleteWould you like to send me, not for publication, copies of the actual correspondence? It would be interesting to see what you've achieved and whether it's applicable to other people.
DeleteAnd well done, with this and with the job.
Yes,I will E-mail you.
DeleteSend me your email address.
DeleteI do voluntary work with various organisations and we depend on volunteers. There's a big difference between people who are forced to do the work and the people we have. It's something A4E have never understood either, as when I was on the ND I tried to explain this to them. My adviser insisted it was because the organisation was "snobby". Nope, it was because our work is in public places, and there is a certain amnt of health and safety needed and the last thing we want is people there who don't want to be there and who consequently do shoddy (and therefore dangerous) work. If they do any at all and don't stand around chatting or talking on their mobiles all day. We're the public face of the organisation and someone who is forced to be there (teenage job seeker or otherwise) can be detrimental in more ways than one. But, hey, we're a charity so who cares?
ReplyDeleteIt's probably also why A4E appear to believe that voluntary work is something which will guarantee you a job - their thinking seems to be that if the organisation you are volunteering with doesn't offer you a job, then you go elsewhere until you find one that does. They don't understand about doing voluntary work to put something back into the community, doing something you enjoy.
And as an example of what I mean - I did a bit of gardening with a charity/not for profit organisation which aims to help people just released from prison, homeless people and drug/alcohol addicts. They were very nice guys, but if it rained (for which read drizzle, not monsoon rain) they refused to do anything "because we're not being paid to do this", despite the fact they got a uniform, plus £5 Tesco vouchers/day for 5 hrs work. They only did the gardening because they got the vouchers, but they didn't consider it being paid. Contrast that with one of my voluntary groups where we do drystone walling 7 hrs a day in all weathers (torrential rain, snow, gales, blazing sun) two days a week. We get no payment at all for that, and no nice warm potting shed to sit in while it rains either. we work through the rain because we have a grant deadline to meet, because we like what we do, and because we actually take pride in our work. The homeless guys, nice though they were, didn't take any pride in doing their gardening, it was just a means of getting a £5 voucher. I don't think the government really knows anything about volunteering at all.
To put the other side - I've known unemployed people who happily served their work placements with charities, doing everything an ordinary volunteer would do, and sometimes continuing to work for the charity when they no longer had to.
DeleteI know, but my point was that not everybody is like that, so the government's scheme can do more harm than good as you only need one unhappy person to cause a great deal of trouble.
DeleteI wouldn't personally mind doing work placements with charities, at least then I know I'm not being used as cheap labour to generate profits or I'm not depriving working people of possible jobs by doing them for free.
DeleteOn Polly's point, if charities feel like they're damaged by providing placements for the WP or Workfare then they can always stop or decline to participate in future. I hope they don't, though. The worst thing that can happen for this country out of the WP and Workfare placements is that young people end up cyclically doing free work where there could be paid work going.
I do voluntary work with a charity, and they wouldn't touch A4e with a 10 ft barge pole - such is their reputation. There can't be many charities in the UK who haven't heard one bad thing after another in relation to A4e.
ReplyDeleteIf I got a placement with anyone via a4e, i would tell them the absolute truth. All the things I saw, the fact I wanted to qualification in teaching computers, they promised but said no funding. Even though if I had it I could have walked into jobs.
DeleteCharities are different for a for profit company. Voluntary work is a choice, Work programme "voluntary" is NOT a Choice. That is the big difference.
A4e appear on the Advertising Standards site again! This time they are in the "Informally Resolved cases" section (i.e. gave up without a fight because we didn't have a leg to stand on m'lud)
ReplyDeletehttp://www.asa.org.uk/ASA-action/Adjudications.aspx#2
The fallacious claims removed were to do with getting someone into work every 7 minutes (ha! ha!) and saving £1.95 of taxpayers money for every £1 given to A4e.
They were unable to supply any proof of either of these claims so backed down without a fight.
Other challenges still outstanding.
It is disappointing to find that some companies are using WP facilities to find staff who will work in the area of claims - that is claims like mis-sold PPI. Ok, that sounds reasonable? - until you discover that the regulated activity of making claims for the public is followed up with an approach to those 'customers' about their Wills and Pensions, now this sounds like sales to me and is certainly not covered by the Ministry of Justice authorisation being used to get a foot in the door. The WP companies could acquire a vicarious liability in the matter.
ReplyDelete