More stuff in more places

A "national celebration of enterprise" has been held in Sheffield, with Peter Jones of "Dragons' Den" as the chief attraction. It's a big annual event apparently. There were government ministers there and - you guessed it - A4e's Emma Harrison, who "was introduced by Sheffield MP David Blunkett, the former Home Secretary". She "told the audience about her schooldays as 'the naughty girl' who failed her A-levels She set an ambition to become the world’s largest organisation that improves people’s lives with a business plan focusing on scope and geography – or 'more stuff in more places'. This year, her company is set to turn over £250m." (Yorkshire Post) I'm sure it was inspiring.

Most of the Work Programme prime contractors have, in the past, been content to let A4e do all the publicity-seeking. But it's a competitive business, and some of them are now honing their own PR. Ingeus (Australian) isn't shy. And now we have Maximus (American) putting out PR stuff about how they got the best results in Flexible New Deal. They were "top-ranked provider" - but nowhere in the piece are there any figures. I suspect that the figures for FND were so bad all round that no one wants to boast about them.

Emma Harrison once said that she had wanted to convert A4e into a mutual organisation but had found that the obstacles were too great. Perhaps she should talk to the people from Prospects, which has been doing welfare-to-work and similar stuff for 16 years and now has a WP contract. It started out as a company limited by guarantee (no shareholders) and has now turned itself into an employee-owned mutual.

In the run-up to the WP contracts, CDG was arguing, and organising conferences, for an army of volunteers to mentor the unemployed. It's now a sub-contractor of Maximus in West London, and is advertising for a "volunteer co-ordinator". It will be interesting to see how volunteers will be enticed to help make profits for business.

Waiting

In the privatisation of public services there are often periods like this, when some new contracts have yet to be given out and others are under threat. No new contracts are forthcoming from the majority of local authorities yet. They are desperately trying to cut chunks out of all their services. But the situation could well yield profits for A4e and the others, because it will seem cheaper to contract out than to pay your own staff. We know that this doesn't work in the long run, either for the employees or the public. But it does secure profits for the private companies for a fixed period, and when you're faced with impossible budget decisions that can seem like a good deal.

Most of the prime providers are advertising for "partners" in the Work Programme, as the government wants. A4e doesn't seem to be doing this, probably preferring to keep the dealings to themselves. Some of the voluntary sector organisations are agonising about whether they should engage with it at all. The real deals are being done with the banks which will finance the companies, and the question is whether the £400 - £600 "attachment fee" for each client will be enough to get them on board. Among many interesting aspects of the contracts will be how many of the existing FND providers get the new contracts in the areas in which they've been operating. My guess is all of them, because to do anything else would cost a lot of money in compensation.

CDG are still pushing the "Expert Volunteer Initiative", the plan to recruit an army of volunteer mentors for the unemployed. They have appointed as Chair of a working group Dr Mike Nussbaum, former chair of Volunteering England. They say that the initiative is designed "to complement the work currently carried out by welfare to work providers" but don't explain how this can sit alongside the payment of large sums of money to private companies.

Publicity for Emma Harrison seems confined to the Sheffield press at the moment. The Star says: "Unstoppable Emma Harrison is riding high with her ever-expanding welfare-to-work business A4e. But it's not all been brilliant news recently. She talks about the highs and lows of life at the top in tomorrow's Business Monthly." Has anyone seen this article?

Contracts, tweets and volunteers

All the attention at the moment is on the Work Programme; and the government is still saying that it can't give any figures for the cost of ending the Flexible New Deal contracts because they are still negotiating. Obviously the incentive is huge to give the new prime contracts to the firms which are already running FND, rather than having to pay them off.

But meanwhile A4e picks up more small contracts. There's something called Hartlepool Works where they're running a project funded by the European Social Fund and the Learning & Skills Council delivering basic skills. And there's more life skills on offer in Blaenau Gwent with £1.27m from The Big Lottery Fund.

We've had A4e's Roy Newey on Twitter for some time, and Mark Lovell occasionally tweets. Now Emma Harrison has joined in (she's emmachat) with news of "A4e summit. Manchester. Senior people from around the world. All of them passionate about our single vision to improve peoples lives."

CDG, one of the providers seeking to expand, is still going on about getting an army of expert volunteers involved with the Work programme, mentoring the jobless. They held a "summit" which doesn't seem to have been attended by any of the other providers. "It is an effort owned by all those with an interest in helping those who have been unemployed for a long time back into work, with CDG’s initial role being to put the initiative forward, and to give it shape and structure so that it gains momentum," reports the Indus Delta site. As we've pointed out before, it's hard to reconcile the use of volunteers with profit-making private contractors. CDG is a charity, and it's boss may think that it operates differently. But charities are involved in contracts on exactly the same basis as private companies, and they employ people on the same basis. If CDG take this forward they are going to come up against some difficult questions.

Jobs, failures and volunteers

Some snippets of news today. First, A4e has a new Group Chief Executive, replacing Bob Martin. He is Andrew Dutton, who is currently Executive Director for A4e’s International Business. He has been with A4e since 2007, coming from a medical services business and, before that, from Vertex, one of the biggest outsourcing companies.

The Commons Public Accounts Committee has reported on the Pathways to Work programme. You may remember that the committee grilled A4e's Steve Marsland and Reed's Chris Melvin on why results had been so poor. Now the Chair, Margaret Hodge MP, says that Pathways "was not well implemented and has had limited effect." The committee's report said "the performance by the mainly private sector providers has been universally poor in relation to their main target group, those people who are required to go on the Pathways programme". The providers are accused of cherry-picking clients but still only reaching a third of their target figure. The saddest aspect of this story is in the last paragraph: "Employment minister Chris Grayling said: 'This report is hugely disappointing and just underlines how misplaced many of the previous Government's labour policies were. They just never got to grips with the challenges of getting people back to work.'" A political point, rather than facing the real implications. And this will have no impact on future contracts, so A4e and the others who failed needn't worry.

We've mentioned once or twice that A4e advertises for volunteer "mentors" to work with the unemployed. Now CDG, a rival provider, has gone a step further. The Indus Delta site reports that the company wants "an expert volunteer corps" of people with the necessary skills and experience to "complement the work that welfare to work providers such as CDG and the government undertake." Has CDG stolen A4e's thunder? "CDG is a dynamic charity that seeks to help those who are unemployed find and sustain meaningful employment" says their website. But like other such third sector organisations they have contracts from the DWP in the same market as the private companies. It is hard to see how large numbers of volunteers can be recruited to assist these companies in making money.