Those "entrenched worklessness" ESF contracts out

The winners have been announced of those contracts which A4e couldn't bid for, after Emma Harrison convinced the government that her own "family champions" project was the way to go and said that she wouldn't make any money from it. The big winners are Reed, with 4 of the 12 areas. As usual, past failure is no bar to further contracts. EOS Works Ltd (formerly Fourstar) get 2 areas and there's one each for WISE Group, G4S, Skills Training UK, Twin Training International and Paragon Concord International. It will be interesting to see whether any of them will sub-contract to Families Unlimited, the outfit which Harrison set up with the former civil servant.

Another interesting aspect of this is the potential clash with Local Authority provision. Many LAs already have the organisation and staff in place and are doing this work, and yet are expected to pass families on to the private contractors. Most sensible people will think that the ESF money should have gone straight to the local councils, rather than have some sliced off for private profit.


You might be amused (or not) by the Daily Mail's take on all this.  Hysterical, vicious and inaccurate.  

Questions and answers

A4e's Steve Marsland was giving evidence yesterday, along with Chris Melvin of Reed, to the Public Accounts Committee of the House of Commons. You can watch it all. The National Audit Office had reported on the results of the Pathways to Work Programme, saying that they were well below the contracted figure, and the terms of the contract had been adjusted to give the providers more money. Margaret Hodge MP, Chair of the committee, asked why they had been unable to deliver. Marsland said that they had based their bid on assumptions which were right for the voluntary client group but didn't work well with the mandatory clients. It took quite a bit of questioning to elicit the actual figures. 42% of the voluntary clients had got work, but they only formed 40% of the total. The outcome figure for the mandatory group was 15%. Hodge pointed out to Melvin that they have performed less well than Jobcentre Plus, despite JCP working in tougher areas. She gave Melvin short shtrift when he tried to refute this. Will they be happy, she asked, with more outcome-based payments. Marsland tried to say that the new computer checking system will help, but Hodge pointed out that the NAO had said that these checks are inadequate. What, she asked, were the targets for mandatory clients. Marsland said it was 32%, more than double the figures achieved. Reed's were even worse, between 7% and 10%. Asked why the performance was so poor for this group, Melvin talked about the high drop-out rate. Has the recession had any impact on performance? Marsland said they had no cast-iron evidence that it had. Hodge said that she couldn't see how they think they're going to improve. Did they bid too high? Marsland said no, because outcomes are going up and they are delivering better performance.

I wrote recently about the media treating unemployment as entertainment. A review of episode 2 of "The Fairy Jobmother" on the arts desk website illustrates the point, treating it all as a joke. On the Digital Spy forum there is a comment from a Jobcentre worker which paints a very different picture. I'm tempted to quote it all, but that wouldn't be fair. Apart from the point about salaries, which is dubious, it's an excellent summary.

For a different point of view you could read A4e's Mark Lovell's blog post on welfare reform. It seems to be aimed at potential partners but doesn't tell us much.

A4e's answer to Facebook, and other oddments

An article on the website onrec.com describes A4e's launch of "The UK’s first ever social networking community to help reduce unemployment". "The site," says the article, "MyA4e Community, has been specifically designed for Flexible New Deal (FND) employees, with each having their own unique personal profile which converts into a copy of their CV and provides access to forums, messaging, available jobs plus news and events in their local area." A jobseeker from Hull describes the site as "very similar to Facebook." Now, I'm not disparaging this idea. I think it's a good use of technology, and it will be interesting to see how it works out in practice. Linking up a lot of unemployed people could have its drawbacks.

Meanwhile, an intriguing piece appeared on a Polish website (in English, I hasten to add!). A4e has welfare-to-work contracts in Poland. The piece is about using the private sector in social housing (I hate that term). One paragraph reads: "Michael Dembinski, the BPCC’s head of policy, mentioned PPP projects in the UK that linked social housing with training and resocialisation, delivered by private sector benefits-to-work companies such as Chamber members Reed in Partnership, Working Link [sic] or A4E. He described one such project in Glasgow, run by Reed in Partnership, where participation in a 20-week course leading to vocational qualifications in the construction sector was linked to the provision of social housing." Alarm bells started ringing. Does it mean that your tenancy is linked to undergoing training by private providers? Apparently not. The only link I can find is on a presentation by Reed in Partnership, delivered in March this year, which says "DCLG and DWP are working more closely together on the housing and worklessness agenda. Nine Flexible New Deal Phase 1 proposals with partnership working with housing associations as a key focus across all." I can't find any suggestions of taking this further. Maybe Reed and others have been over-egging things slightly. But it does remind one of A4e's ambition to have super-contracts from local authorities which would encompass most of the public services accessed by the disadvantaged. While neither Labour nor the Conservatives have indicated any appetite for this, it could well be that some cash-strapped authorities (especially after the May election) could find it attractive.