Friday 17 July 2009

Questions to the Secretary of State

theyworkforyou.com records a written question to Yvette Cooper on 15 July, asked by David Davies, Con, Monmouth. He asked: "how many training and skills contracts her Department has with A4e; what percentage of people who have attended such A4e training and skills courses have been placed into permanent employment; who supervises and inspects sites where A4e are giving such courses; and if she will make a statement." Yvette must be away. He was answered by Jim Knight, who always gets put up to answer awkward questions: "The Department currently has 47 contracts with A4e for the delivery of a range of welfare to work provision. On those contracts where we count job outcomes, during the period 2008-09, 20 per cent. of people starting provision delivered by A4e have started work. Some customers, however, will still be on provision. The delivery of provision is monitored by the Department and is also subject to external inspection by Ofsted in England, and Estyn in Wales. Areas for improvement identified at inspection are addressed through the Department's contract management process."
theyworkforyou.com gives you the chance to vote on whether you think the question was answered properly. Do you?

11 comments:

  1. "On those contracts where we count job outcomes, during the period 2008-09, 20 per cent" notice they never said how long that job was, if it was permanent, or temporary, part time or full time..

    ReplyDelete
  2. They mean permanent and full-time; those are the only job outcomes which are counted.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Job Outcomes >>should<< be sustainable which is around 13 weeks. Whether or not they have been that long it is unsure, I think it is worded as "expects to last..". So temporary, and the job has to be a certain amount of hours a week, 16 I think.

    ReplyDelete
  4. The employer has to certify that the job "is expected to last for 13 weeks or more" and is for 16 or more hours per week. An outcome can still be claimed if it doesn't actually last for 13 weeks. The recent revelations of fraudulent outcome claims concern jobs with agencies where the work was effectively casual but the agency was willing to sign that it was permanent.

    ReplyDelete
  5. The trouble is, permanent doesn't even have any initial bigger meaning then temporary. A lot of jobs have probationary periods written in to the contract where either party (in favour of the employer, however) can escape the contract of employment early.

    Thus it is perfectly legal to, for example, advertise as permanent then within 6 months pull the plug. I am sure many employers will be doing this especially with Jobseekers to obtain the (up to) £2500 grant, where if its over 3 months, £1000 is in the bag.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I got told it was upto £4000. were do you get the £2500 from

    ReplyDelete
  7. I'm also not clear about this. I think NDS is talking about the proposal by the Conservatives to give a grant to employers to take someone on; but in that case any figure is purely hypothetical.

    ReplyDelete
  8. It is a Labour scheme that has already gone ahead involving Recruitment Vouchers - employers can get £500 for taking a jobseeker on (16+ hours) and another £500 if it is for more than 13 weeks. Up to £1500 can be claimed for training.

    See http://intensiveactivity.wordpress.com/2009/05/22/companies-get-2500-to-employ-jobseekers/

    ReplyDelete
  9. I must confess I'd not heard of this as having actually come into force. There's an explanation at http://tinyurl.com/nj5ymj But there has always been the opportunity for employers taking someone from a New Deal programme to claim a wage subsidy for a limited period, and few employers take it up. If it's a genuine, long-term job they are happy to pay the going rate.

    ReplyDelete
  10. my new deal ended april this year, i new about the money for the employer my adviser told me about it, cant remember how much i have some leaflets somwere that they gave me. i also no about the traning grant, but when a person is at a4e and gets a job a4e claim money for that person(from job center) getting the job if its over 13 weeks i got told its as much as 4k per client is this true or not

    ReplyDelete
  11. I've explained before about the job outcome payment. For every client there is a maximum payment to the provider. A proportion of this is in "on programme payments", a set amount for each week or part-week on the programme. The rest is paid if the client finds a full-time, permanent job. It gets complicated, but it's set out at http://www.dwp.gov.uk/docs/pg-chapter-4.pdf The maximum payment per client is less than £4,000.

    ReplyDelete

Keep it clean, please. No abusive comments will be approved, so don't indulge in insults. If you wish to contact me, post a comment beginning with "not for publication".