What outsourcing did to charities

We learned on Monday that another charity, Sue Ryder, has pulled out of the Mandatory Work Activity scheme.  See the article on the Civil Society website.  They've done so after a sustained attack by the Boycott Workfare campaign.  The PDSA has also withdrawn from the scheme.  The first comment under the article, by Linda Bush of Inspirit, is an excellent summary of what's wrong with the notion of compulsory volunteering.
Sue Ryder and the PDSA are both charities in the old sense of the word.  But many charities morphed into "the voluntary sector", which then became "the third sector".  The transformation happened as the Blair government began to outsource everything in sight, and many organisations which had been formed as groups of volunteers working on particular areas of need changed into professionally run outfits dependent on contracts from local or national government.  They were not, at first, competing with the private or public sectors, but that began to change.  The voluntary sector was involved with New Deal from the outset.  As that evolved into a wholly outsourced business and then became Flexible New Deal, there was nothing to distinguish these organisations from the private sector other than the fact that didn't have shareholders.
Meanwhile, other specialist organisations, dependent on funding from government or from councils, found that the money was being diverted to the Work Programme, and to keep going they had to sign up as sub-contractors of the primes, the private sector.  It has worked for some, but been disastrous for others.
And what of the remaining charities?  They still had to raise funds for their work from the general public, and that meant using volunteers.  But increasingly they have been used as a convenient place to put people who are being made to work.  They've taken people sentenced to community service.  They've taken people on "work placements" under welfare-to-work schemes.  And now they are taking people who are being compelled to work for their benefits.
Many charities and voluntary sector organisations need to take a long, hard look at what they are doing and why.  The whole outsourcing agenda has changed them.  Has it been a change for the better?

A difficult time for IDS

It can't be easy for Iain Duncan Smith at the moment.
His party spent 13 years in opposition, planning what they would do when they finally got their hands on power again.  Several of them decided to become experts (in their own eyes, at least) on particular subjects, and developed grandiose ideas about how to "reform" that area; Lansley with the NHS (he didn't last long); Gove with education (still there but making a colossal mess); and of course IDS with work and pensions.  It was particularly important for IDS.  Having failed as party leader, he was determined that his political legacy was going to be the "reform" of the entire welfare system.  But it's not going well.  One after another, his plans have hit the rocks.

• The Work Programme - intended to be the panacea for unemployment, it's been a dismal failure.  £400 million was spent by taxpayers in the first 14 months to achieve nothing. Unless there's been an amazing improvement in recent months, it will have to be changed, but the pressure will increase to scrap it altogether.  All the warning signs were there from the outset, but IDS refused to listen.
• Work Capability Assessments - causing huge misery.  And now we learn that the number of successful appeals is rising, to 42% in the last quarter.  Yet Atos got part of the contract to do the same job with people on disability benefits.
• Universal Credit - still on track, apparently, but a new man has been brought in to manage the project.  When the risks were pointed out - that a very large number of people wouldn't be able to cope with it, and there would be a dangerous shambles - IDS refused to listen, claiming that those people would just have to learn.  Now he has had to produce a "framework" to handle the problems, pushing the onus onto local councils.
• Universal Jobmatch - the super-duper website was going to kill two birds with one stone.  It would collect all the job vacancies into one site, and it would enable JCP and WP advisers to snoop on their clients' activities.  But the website itself is far from perfect, and despite announcing a few months ago that registration and conceding access was going to be compulsory, IDS has had to accept that it isn't possible without a struggle to change the law.
• Work for your benefit schemes - judged by the appeal court to have been put in place illegally, necessitating a hasty drafting of new regulations whilst IDS insists that no compensation will be paid to people who were punished for not attending these schemes while they were unlawful.  Wrong advice.
• The Bedroom Tax, or whatever its official name is - warned that it would be Cameron's poll tax, IDS insists that it's fair.  But faced with growing evidence of its unacceptable impact on the disabled, he has directed his people to look at ways of changing the rules.

We were told that Cameron tried to reshuffle IDS away from Work and Pensions, but he refused to go.  He hates to be thwarted or disagreed with over his policies.  His department has made more than 20 formal complaints to the BBC in the last year over "bias" and "inaccuracies".  According to the Telegraph, "Aides say coverage of welfare reforms often feature only the plight of people who will suffer most from the changes, while measures to soften the blow often go unreported."  It goes on, "Over the past few months, Mr Duncan Smith has been particularly angered by the reporting of the housing benefit reforms referred to as 'the bedroom tax' by Labour and the BBC."  Then, "A source said, 'You could look at the BBC’s TV news coverage [of this policy] and think this was a change that would apply only to disabled people.  We have allocated £155 million for local authorities to help soften the blow of the measure, but this never features in the BBC’s news coverage. How is it possible not to think that is biased?'"
Long may the BBC and the rest of the media continue to highlight the failing policies of this man.

The failing Work Programme - the PAC report

It's all over the papers this morning; the report of the Public Accounts Committee into the Work Programme.  We already knew its conclusions, but the various newspaper articles highlight different aspects of it (when they can be bothered to go beyond the press release).  The Telegraph, for instance, reports that some of the companies are in danger of being stripped of their contracts and even of going out of business.  The Guardian points out that all 18 organisations involved have been put on "performance improvement plans", with 7 of them being sent formal warning letters.  Margaret Hodge was also angry that the DWP had published unvalidated data from the ERSA.  We do learn that the next set of performance data is due to be published in March.
It would appear that Richard Johnson, formerly of Serco, is now the go-to person for an opinion on all this.  He was the man who was in charge of WP stuff for Serco, but now that he no longer works for them he's free to criticise.  He said, on the BBC Today Programme this morning, that the design of the contracts made "creaming and parking" inevitable.  I notice that the BBC is asking for experiences of the Work Programme, so perhaps they are planning a proper investigation of the subject.  Let's hope so.

Jonty's "tweets are protected"

Jonty Olliff-Cooper, A4e's Director of Policy and Strategy, seems to have learned his lesson about careless postings on Twitter.  You can't read his tweets now unless you're a "confirmed follower".  We can't know whether he got a rocket from his employer for that offensive exchange (see our post of 9 February), but it's disappointing that journalists, even on Private Eye, missed it, or didn't think it important.

I suppose I must comment on the latest employment figures, but it's wearisome.  We all know that the figures are, if not exactly rigged, at least hiding the truth.  12% of the increase in "jobs" is accounted for by people providing free labour on the various "workfare" schemes - the ONS insists that it has to include them.  We have no idea how many of the people reported to have come off JSA are being sanctioned by being kicked off benefits.  And it all seems at odds with the recent story about Costa Coffee advertising 8 jobs at its new shop in Nottingham and getting 1,701 applications.  (One of the saddest things about that story was that a spokeswoman said that some of the applicants were former managers who were "clearly overqualified for the positions".)  Iain Duncan Smith was heard to say today that the figures showed that the Work Programme was beginning to be effective.  No, they don't.

Shelf-stacking and IDS

Because people clearly want to talk about it, here's a link to the Guardian's account of Iain Duncan Smith's opinions on the Marr show this morning.  As always, the comments under the article say it all, and personally I've nothing to add - but go ahead.

Contracts by the back door?

With the advent of Universal Credit, the government is persuaded of the need to provide help to those who won't be able to deal with it on their own - doing everything online, housing benefit going to the claimant rather than the landlord, etc.  So they've planned a Local Support Services Framework.  The document is here.  It's based on the idea that Local Authorities will do it in partnership with such bodies as housing associations and voluntary bodies, and is full of buzzwords like "pathfinder".  Nowhere does it mention the private sector.  So it isn't excluded.  And I can see nothing to stop a local council deciding to contract out the job to the likes of A4e.  Cynic that I am, I suspect that lobbying is already going on.
Another concern was raised by a recent comment on another post.  A chap who is not on the Work Programme, having recently been in a job, went to his Jobcentre to sign on and found an A4e employee sitting with his JC adviser, reading his personal information.  That was alarming enough.  A conversation followed focussing on his jobsearch skills with the Universal Jobmatch site.  These can't be too bad, since he's recently applied for 50 jobs and secured two interviews.  However, he was told that he would have to attend a "course" with A4e to "sharpen up" his jobsearch skills.  He tried to ascertain whether this was mandatory, and couldn't get a straight answer, but the threat was there.  He gave in, under protest.  What disturbs me about this (aside from the data protection issue) is the possibility that this is another way of giving public money to A4e, since I can't imagine that they're running these "courses" for nothing.

Three more arrests

The BBC is reporting that three more people have been arrested by police in connection with the enquiry into alleged "fraud by misrepresentation" at A4e in Slough.  That brings the total arrested to eleven.  This investigation has been going on for nearly a year.