Getting hard information about Emma Harrison's project Working Families Everywhere has been difficult. Our correspondent in Hull, one of the pilot areas, put in a Freedom of Information request to the Council but got a very uninformative reply. To a question about how participating families were selected, the reply was that it was "through a structured process of referral". According to a blog by Anna Gaunt (who is accompanying Ms Harrison) they were "meeting with families who had expressed an interest in having support on the road to employment." There's a strong clue, however, as to what's going on in a piece on the Working Families Everywhere website. It's in the form of a Q & A with John Bell, Policy Editor of ESF Works. What's that? It "exists to share the stories of the people, practice and policy that the European Social Fund in England supports." And its website has an interesting piece about the roll-out of Community Budgets. It explains that there have been 16 pilot schemes "tackling social problems around families with complex needs" and that there are 4 new pilots to develop this. "In response to this, the DWP invited companies on the Employment Related Support Services Framework to tender for ESF funding to work with families with multiple problems, helping them overcome these and break the cycle of intergenerational worklessness." It goes on: "Payment will be made mainly by results, on progress measures and job outcomes which move family members nearer to and into work and put families on the road to recovery. Bids must be made by 30th August, and a key element in their evaluation will be how well bidders have integrated partnership working with local authorities into their proposals." So that explains everything. Another big contract in the offing.
In the WFE piece Harrison again talks about "hidden jobs". The phrase was also used by a person from Working Links in a news item on BBC radio recently, talking about the Work Programme in Glasgow. It appears to mean that the providers forge relationships with employers and persuade them to take people on.
You'll be pleased to know that Emma Harrison is writing her autobiography.
