Family champions - the coverage

We have idle media populated by journalists who don't bother to do any research. That is confirmed by the scant coverage of the news today of Emma Harrison's new role.

The BBC carried the interview with her very early in the morning. The interviewer could have asked, "Why do you think you'll be successful with this when A4e's record is so bad?" But no. The BBC's news website has only two sentences on the subject as part of its report of David Cameron's speech.

The Express does only slightly better. Describing Harrison as an entrepreneur, it reports Cameron as saying, "What works is focused, personalised support - someone the family trusts coming into their home to help them improve their lives step-by-step, month-by-month."

The Telegraph's take is that "Mr Cameron announced that he had appointed a new families “tsar” in a drive to help households in crisis escape unemployment and poverty. Emma Harrison, the entrepreneur and chairman of A4e (Action for Employment), will support hundreds of families in a pilot scheme to help them find work."

The best coverage so far is on the Children & Young People Now website. They report that the government intends the scheme to be piloted in 6 to 10 local authority areas, still to be announced, which will get extra cash to run it. The site expands the quote from Cameron: "Harrison understands how to help families improve their lives "step-by-step, month-by-month". She refuses to believe some people are lost causes and has a proven track record of turning lives around," he said. "Her approach is the complete opposite of the impersonal, one-size-fits-all approach that has failed so many families – which is why I have asked her to come on board to help us." (This is the obvious point at which to say, "Really? Are you sure?", but of course no one does.) They report Harrison as saying, "I have more than twenty years experience helping the long-term unemployed get back into the workplace and all the evidence shows that by providing focused, one-to-one support we will start to help troubled families." (What evidence, Emma? A4e's results?) They then say that the Department of Education emphasised that Harrison's involvement in the trials is "on a purely personal basis. No payment or benefit of any type will accrue to her or to any organisations she is involved with."

Hmm, "no benefit of any type" except oodles of publicity and first crack at the eventual contracts, perhaps.

When will journalists start to do their homework?

Family Champion

Emma Harrison of A4e is today being appointed "family champion" by the government. She was interviewed on the Radio 4 Today programme this morning (very early - I missed it) but you can hear it here. She said that she wanted to turn all families with long-term unemployment into "working families" and to do it she will "cut across all this stuff" such as drugs. Someone will be appointed to work with each family; they are being referred to as "Emmas" by the government, apparently. The interviewer pressed her on what would be done differently, but we didn't really get an answer. Harrison herself will have six families to work with, and she cited one of her families where no one had ever worked, but within an hour and a half she'd got them doing voluntary work, giving them back their pride and turning them into a "working family".

Harrison says she is not being paid for this. But of course she wouldn't need to be; the publicity is priceless. This has been a goal of A4e for some time, to get whole families into their orbit. Look out for more media coverage today.

Think Tanks and Opportunities

A recent edition of Private Eye carried a piece about the "think tank" Demos, where former Work & Pensions secretary James Purnell now works. Demos, says the Eye, is funded by companies like A4e and PWC, which stand to benefit from the Work Programme. (The Demos website doesn't list its funders.) Another former minister with a new job is Jacqui Smith, who now advises Sarina Russo Job Access, an Australian company also bidding for Work Programme contracts. Now Ed West of the Telegraph points out that another influential think tank, the IPPR, is funded by a long list of taxpayer- funded bodies headed (alphabetically, at least) by A4e.

This week Ken Clarke, the Justice Secretary, announced new opportunities for the private sector, in "offender management". As usual, A4e is ahead of the game. They work with offenders in various parts of the country, including providing "employability focused qualifications to offenders carrying out their Community Payback orders in their local communities" in the North East.

And then there's Work Clubs. These are to be part of the Work programme, provided by the Jobcentres, for those who haven't been out of work very long. But A4e have already launched their own Work Clubs in the North East and Derbyshire. Is this a pre-emptive move to take the work away from the Jobcentres?

If anyone wants a handy guide to what A4e does, there's one here. Spot the mistake in, ironically, the "Education & Enterprise" section.

That press release

Patrick Butler in the Guardian has returned to the question of the press release in which Emma Harrison was supposed to have said that the government's welfare cuts were "fantastic". What happened, asks Butler. He spoke to Emma herself, who stuck to her comments on his his original article. She hadn't said it. He checked with Hillgrove, the source of the press release, again. They cited a TV interview in which she does indeed use the word "fantastic" but it's about news of the welfare reforms and the Work programme, not the cuts. Hillgrove say that an employee who "manipulated" quotes has been "disciplined". Butler ends his piece by pointing to the comments which his original article attracted, seeing them "as a reflection of the anger and unease many people feel not just about the cuts, and unemployment, but the welfare to work industry, and its practices."

She didn't say that!

Emma Harrison of A4e is furious at the Guardian's story yesterday which quoted a press release that has her saying, "The coalition government's cuts are, in fact, fantastic!" She used the comment function on the article's web page to say, "I did not have any knowledge of this press release. I did not ask for it, write it or approve it. My views are wholly and utterly misrepresented and from what I can determine were written by someone from Hillgrove that I have never met with, or spoken to. The blog writer by his own admission was suspicious that these were not my sentiments but he did not bother to check with me. Ummmmmm." A second comment from her reads: "My PR company? I rang them. They have apologised. Junior that i do not know, trying to get the attention of editors with dramatic, distorted and what I consider to be offensive views. Not my views. Shame the blog writer did not check with me or other Guardian articles they have written about me and my views - the ones when they have actually spoken to me....... Ummmmmm. PS I am not a baddy."

I believe Emma (although I'm not sure what the "Ummmmmm" means). Someone added a sentence to the standard stuff which was way over the top, and good for her for responding to it. But there's a lesson there. To go all out for publicity is dangerous.

ESF contracts - secret performance data

There's an article in today's Financial Times by Cunthia O'Murchu which points out that A4e has had €60 million of public money since 2007 for programmes in the UK and Poland, as well as £700m for its welfare to work programmes funded by the UK, but we can't know how well it's doing on its EU structural fund contracts because the UK government won't release data on individual companies. However, the article cites projects in London where data is available and which show A4e to be performing very badly. One £2m contract was supposed to help 400 people into work, but after a year only 14 people had found a job. Another £820,000 contract for learning and skills was also reported to be underperforming. A4e rejected the criticism and gave different figures. The FT tried using FoI requests to get the data for the EU-funded programmes, but was refused, despite the fact that 2 million people have been enrolled on them in the UK. The article goes on to highlight the poor performance of A4e, along with Reed, on the Pathways programme. But then it cites an Ofsted review which says that A4e is not alone; all the providers were failing to achieve job outcome targets.

This sits rather oddly with the blythe optimism of Emma Harrison.

Cuts: in fact, fantastic!

That's the title of a Guardian piece in which Patrick Butler takes a swipe at a press release by A4e's Emma Harrison. He quotes the press release in full. It's the usual stuff but with a paragraph we haven't seen before:

'Perhaps the only person who is positive about spending cuts is the head of Britain's biggest employment agency A4e. "The coalition government's cuts are, in fact, fantastic!" says Emma Harrison. "Cutting benefits will put a stop to people making a profession out of being unemployed. The Government is looking to put more effort into helping people get back to work which is the most important thing." A4e controls 25% of the long-term unemployment budget for the Department of Work and Pensions. "There are about 450,000 jobs currently being advertised with the JobCentre so there are jobs out there," insists Mrs Harrison.'

Butler contacted A4e's PR advisers, Hillgrove PR, and asked if the release wasn't a bit insensitive, but they said that they couldn't speak for her.

I think she's gone a bit too far this time.