Welfare to Work Cuts

Here's an article in the Guardian that confirms yet more bad news for the criminal justice sector and the chances for many probation clients gaining employment:-  

Thousands of jobs to go in government shakeout of welfare to work sector

Thousands of experienced employment coaches are expected to lose their jobs over the next few weeks as ministers trigger the first stage of a massive shakeout of the government-funded welfare to work sector that will see it shrink by 75%. The employment services industry is preparing for what one insider called “a bloodbath” as the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) moves to replace the work programme with the much smaller work and health programme.

Documents seen by the Guardian reveal that seven of the 15 work programme prime contractors, including big private sector names such as Serco and Maximus, have not made it on to the initial shortlist for the new scheme. The work and health programme shortlist, which is to be officially announced next week, begins a process in which the remaining eight work programme firms will compete with three new entrants for just six new regional contracts.

The final outcome, expected when contracts are awarded in late spring, could result in some firms being forced to abandon the market, or diversify into other contracted out public service areas, such as criminal justice or apprenticeships.

“This decimates the welfare to work industry. It represents the unravelling of nearly 20 years of unemployment support experience,” one industry insider told the Guardian. Work coaches provide long-term unemployed clients with help to acquire a range of employment and life skills designed to increase their chances of finding work, such as CV writing, IT skills and literacy, as well as liaising with potential employers.

Thousands of work coach jobs are expected to be lost. “This means large job losses among really experienced frontline advisers, the majority of which are in charities,” said Kirsty McHugh, the chief executive of the Employment Related Services Association.

The work and health programme is expected to start in the autumn and aims to provide specialist support for long-term unemployed people, especially those with health conditions or a disability. Funding will be about £100m a year over four years. This is about a quarter of the current annual spending on the work programme, which closes at the end of March, and work choice, which will continue for a few months longer.

Ministers have been warned that the cuts will undermine the government’s ambitious commitment to halve the disability employment gap by 2020, which requires it to find jobs for about 1.2 million people with disabilities or long-term illnesses able to work.

Ministers are understood to believe that rising employment levels, coupled with the provision of extra disability employment advisers in Jobcentre Plus, means that recent high levels of investment in employment support are no longer needed. But the Commons work and pensions committee warned in November that the scale of the cuts to the work and health programme meant that many disabled and ill claimants would be unable to access support.

Tony Wilson, the director of policy and research at the Learning and Work Institute thinktank, said: “The work and health scheme will support far fewer people and it would not be able to deliver services to the extent that could be done previously. Our assessment is that this scheme will make a vanishingly small contribution to the halving of the disability employment gap.”

Of current work programme contractors, Serco, Maximus, Seetec, Interserve, Learndirect, NCG and Rehab Jobfit are not on the work and health programme provider shortlist. The following firms have made it on to the shortlist, known as the framework: PeoplePlus (shortlisted in all six contract regions), Shaw Trust (5), G4s (5), Ingeus (3), Reed (3), Working Links (3), Pluss (2), Prospects (1), APM (1), Remploy (1) and Economic Solutions (1).

The regions covered by the framework are: central, north-east, north-west, southern, home counties and Wales. London and Greater Manchester will run their own devolved work and health scheme.

The work programme – which was launched in 2011 by the then secretary of state for work and pensions, Iain Duncan Smith – achieved mixed results and was fiercely criticised for the low numbers of disabled and chronically ill people it succeeded in supporting into work.

It was also dogged by controversy over alleged misconduct by work coaches, and the high salaries earned by top executives. Emma Harrison, the founder of A4E, was criticised for paying herself dividends of £8.6m in 2011, on top of a £365,000 annual salary.

Harrison, who had a brief spell as former prime minister David Cameron’s “families tsar” sold her personal stake in A4E to Staffline group in 2015 for a reported £20m. The relaunched company, PeoplePlus, is shortlisted in all six work and health programme areas.

Industry insiders expressed surprise that Maximus – which has gained notorietyas the provider of the DWP’s controversial “fit for work” tests – failed to make the shortlist as it had been seen as one of the best performing work programme providers in terms of getting long-term jobless people into sustainable jobs.

A DWP spokesperson said: “Our new work and health programme – which our providers will help us deliver – will allow us to give more tailored support for jobseekers and there will be an overall increase in funding for people with health conditions and disabilities. Work coaches play a crucial role in supporting people into work and these changes will allow us to do more through our Jobcentre Plus network.”

Unemployment Rebranded

Until I saw this comment yesterday, I was blissfully unaware of a rather worrying new twist in the governments plan to get people off benefit:-

Apparently the government plans to place 350 psychologists in job centres by the end of the summer to help benefit claimants beat depression and get back into the jobs market. Claimants will also be offered online cognitive behavioural therapy to boost their "employability".

It's rather ironic that psychologists are going to be used in this way because many of us have long-argued that such expertise should have been provided within probation in order to assist with difficult cases. Anyway, it seems it was in the Chancellor's last budget:- 

The Chancellor has announced additional IAPT support for people with mental health needs in his Budget statement. The £25m package includes early access to supported Online Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and the co-location of IAPT (Increased Access to Psychological Therapy) staff in Jobcentres. It is expected that 40,000 JSA, ESA and Fit for Work clients will benefit over the next 3 years.

DWP will purchase these services from providers and it is additional to existing IAPT provision. 2 advisors will be based within each job centre and it will be trialled in 10 job centres in 2015-16, starting in Streatham. There will also be additional training around mental health support for Jobcentre Plus staff.

But understandably the psychologists are not happy:-

Unemployment is being "rebranded" by the government as a psychological disorder, a new study claims. Those that do not exhibit a "positive" outlook must undergo "reprogramming" or face having their benefits cut, says the Wellcome Trust-backed report.

This can be "humiliating" for job seekers and does not help them find suitable work, the researchers say. But the Department for Work and Pensions said there was no evidence to back up the "highly misleading" claims. The paper, published in the Medical Humanities journal, says benefit claimants are being forced to take part in positive thinking courses in an effort to change their personalities. They are bombarded with motivational text messages - such as "success is the only option", "we're getting there" and "smile at life" - and have to take part in "pointless" team-building exercises such as building towers out of paper clips, it adds.

New benefit claimants are interviewed to find out whether they have a "psychological resistance" to work, with those deemed "less mentally fit" given more intensive coaching. And unpaid work placements are increasingly judged on psychological results, such as improved motivation and confidence, rather than whether they have led to a job. The report's co-author, social scientist Lynne Friedli, described such programmes as "Orwellian". "Claimants' 'attitude to work' is becoming a basis for deciding who is entitled to social security - it is no longer what you must do to get a job, but how you have to think and feel."

Positive affect as coercive strategy: conditionality, activation and the role of psychology in UK government workfare programmes

Abstract

Eligibility for social security benefits in many advanced economies is dependent on unemployed and underemployed people carrying out an expanding range of job search, training and work preparation activities, as well as mandatory unpaid labour (workfare). Increasingly, these activities include interventions intended to modify attitudes, beliefs and personality, notably through the imposition of positive affect. Labour on the self in order to achieve characteristics said to increase employability is now widely promoted. This work and the discourse on it are central to the experience of many claimants and contribute to the view that unemployment is evidence of both personal failure and psychological deficit. The use of psychology in the delivery of workfare functions to erase the experience and effects of social and economic inequalities, to construct a psychological ideal that links unemployment to psychological deficit, and so to authorise the extension of state—and state-contracted—surveillance to psychological characteristics. This paper describes the coercive and punitive nature of many psycho-policy interventions and considers the implications of psycho-policy for the disadvantaged and excluded populations who are its primary targets. We draw on personal testimonies of people experiencing workfare, policy analysis and social media records of campaigns opposed to workfare in order to explore the extent of psycho-compulsion in workfare. This is an area that has received little attention in the academic literature but that raises issues of ethics and professional accountability and challenges the field of medical humanities to reflect more critically on its relationship to psychology.

Introduction

Negativity enacts the dissent without which politics disappears. Negativity, in this sense, is inseparable from the struggles of subordinated persons to resist the social conditions of their devaluation (p.xii).

Three people start today on this ‘work experience’. They are to help us for up to 30 hours a week for eight weeks over the Christmas period. I am terrified by the idea that head office think they don’t need to pay their staff. I myself am on part time minimum wage and if they can have workers for free now, what is to stop them making my position redundant and using job centre people to run the store at no cost to themselves. (Shoezone employee, November 2012) 

The cajoling of individuals into a positive affect and ‘motivated’ stance with regard to their own subordination.

This paper considers the role of psychology in formulating, gaining consent for and delivering neoliberal welfare reform, and the ethical and political issues this raises. It focuses on the coercive uses of psychology in UK government workfare programmes: as an explanation for unemployment (people are unemployed because they have the wrong attitude or outlook) and as a means to achieve employability or ‘job readiness’ (possessing work-appropriate attitudes and beliefs). The discourse of psychological deficit has become an established feature of the UK policy literature on unemployment and social security and informs the growth of ‘psychological conditionality’—the requirement to demonstrate certain attitudes or attributes in order to receive benefits or other support, notably food.i In addition, positive affect is routinely imposed in workfare programmes via the content of mandatory training courses and through job centre or contractor ‘messaging’, for example, motivational tweets or daily positive emails to claimants.

The role of workfare in regulating labour through enforcing low-paid, insecure work—‘creating workers for jobs that nobody wants’—has been widely debated, frequently in connection with increased welfare conditionality. This literature notes that eligibility for various benefits is now dependent on unemployed and underemployed people carrying out an expanding range of job search, training and work preparation activities, as well as mandatory unpaid labour. Our focus on workfare schemes and interventions targeting unemployed people’s attitudes is also indebted to the body of feminist and Marxist critical work on emotional and affective labour. However, the concerns of this literature—the management and suppression of feeling in service work and the hire of subjectivity in cognitive and affective labours; the constitutive, personality-forming effects of both—differ from ours. The personality set to work is not the same as the personality seeking employment. What the Jobcentre requires is a good but not particular attitude to work in the abstract and a capacity for adaptability that has no object. As a jobseeker you are required to accept that what differentiates you, the failed and undeserving jobseeker, from other more deserving and successful jobseekers is a set of attitudes and emotional orientations. The aim is not a job, but the generic skill, attribute or disposition of employability. Focusing on this aspect of governance, there has also been extensive critical attention paid to ‘the psyche as a site of power and object of knowledge’ (p.iii), and, under the rubric of the government of the self, to the role of strengths-based discourse in the formation of systems of discipline and control and the formulation of active welfare subjectivities.

However, there has been a marked silence about the use and misuse of psychology in public policy on many fronts: especially, the role of psychological institutions and professions in workfare and in the emerging employment services industry; and the coercive and punitive nature of many psycho-policy interventions. The voices of claimants and the disadvantaged and excluded populations who are the primary targets of these enforced programmes are little heard. So, this paper is also an effort to challenge that silence: we aim to stimulate more critical reflection on the relationship of medical humanities to psychology and the wider ‘well-being’ field, and to generate greater debate about professional accountability for these developments. We draw on personal testimonies of people experiencing workfare, UK policy and document analysis, and social media records of the activity of campaigns opposed to workfare.

Hope Springs Eternal

On Tuesday this week the government announced the figures for their flagship work programme designed to reward contractors if they find jobs for the long-term unemployed. You may recall that this topic was discussed at some length a couple of weeks ago when former A4E boss Emma Harrison continually told Channel 4 news that the figures they had "were wrong." 

Well of course it turns out that they were spot on with no contractor achieving the government's minimum of 5.5% of those referred obtaining employment. In fact the average achieved of 3.5% is actually less than if people hadn't been referred to the programme at all. So much for the huge success of Payment by Results then, particularly as it's being hailed as the government's answer to tackling high reconviction rates within the criminal justice sector. 

So far the scheme has cost £485 million with little obvious benefit. Contractors such as Ingeus achieved only a 3.3% success rate and A4E only 2.8%. Funnily enough Emma Harrison has appeared loathe to comment on these official figures. 

Although a huge embarrassment for government, and you can bet these figures were the subject of many recounts, why on earth should it come as any great surprise? Here we are still in the middle of a worldwide recession, with high levels of unemployment, and these work programme providers are expected to somehow magic jobs out of thin air for some of the most challenging clients imaginable.

It is of course 'mission impossible' at the best of times and certainly requires a great deal of coaching, support, perseverance and dogged determination on the part of staff in order to achieve a change of mindset in many cases. Huge numbers of those referred have been 'languishing' as Ian Duncan Smith put it, on Disability or ESA for years and have now failed the dodgy eligibility tests administered by Atos. Significant numbers would be regarded as unemployable by many without some intensive and expensive interventions which are simply not regarded as economically worthwhile by contractors paid on the present results only basis. 

The most obvious point to make in all this is that in most cases work programme contractors are not doing anything more than that formerly undertaken by Job Centre Plus staff, but at considerable additional cost to the public purse. There will surely come a time when the penny finally drops that the 'work' could be brought back in-house in view of the very poor outcomes, and save all the money being paid over to the likes of A4E. Now there's an idea..... 

             

An Apology

As children I suspect most of us are taught to tell the truth. I can well remember getting a good hiding when a pathetic attempt to plant blame on someone else failed and I was reminded of the virtue of honesty. But as we grow older the issue begins to get a little blurred when the mixed messages start. When asked if we like auntie's new outfit, we're suddenly told that telling the truth about its awfulness is not acceptable. 

As we get older, hopefully we begin to learn the concept of 'good' and 'bad' lies and the general nuances of life that make things so difficult for those people who suffer from a learning disability for instance. Most of us would agree that at some point in our life we will be faced with a 'cost benefit analysis' dilemma when we have to balance the chances of getting caught against some possible reward or advantage. In other words, a moral dilemma.

One of the most challenging aspects of being a Probation Officer is highlighted in this post by Tony on Prisoners Families Voices. He frankly admits to having reached the age of 39, never having had a job. He's been in and out of prison most of his adult life and bemoans how little help his Probation Officer had been following his release in 2011. I suspect he hoped that his PO could help him find a job, and that would be a realistic and normal expectation in my view. But the issue is always what to put on the bloody CV? Just how can you cover 20-odd years constructively and in the absense of any work record?

Tony quite quickly identified the inherent problem in following the no doubt sound advice from his PO to tell the truth and hope that a sympathetic employer will still call him for interview. I've given this advice myself many times with a heavy heart, both of us knowing deep down that, especially in a worsening economic climate, the chances of it bearing fruit are close to zero.

No wonder then that many clients like Tony decide to ignore advice from probation and instead concoct fairytale CV's. There're not alone in doing that though are they? The middle classes have always indulged in a bit of 'creative accounting' where employment histories are concerned, so is it really that terrible? Of course there is always the risk of being found out, but there is also an inherent and huge incentive on the part of the client to become a model hard-working employee and establish a work record. We call that rehabilitation of course.

There are potential problems, such as in relation to Schedule 1 offenders where there is a clear duty to inform employers if there is likely to be any contact with children or vulnerable adults. But this is a pretty unlikely scenario nowadays with the advent of CRB checks. I really hope it works out well for Tony in his minimum wage job and that he's able to progress to greater and better things. I'm just so sorry we weren't much help.

To Lie : Or Not to Lie?

A couple of recent contributions to the Prisoners Families Views blogsite about having to lie on CV's in order to get a job got me thinking. Of course this issue about whether to tell a potential employer the truth or not has been around for as long as I can remember. When I say truth, I don't just mean being a bit 'economical' by inflation, exaggeration or omission, I mean direct lies about criminal convictions or fictitious information to cover periods of imprisonment. I'm pretty sure I'm right in saying it is an offence in itself and certainly leaves the individual open to instant dismissal should the truth come out.

The argument seems to be that a person is left no choice because in an age of high unemployment, what employer is going to take the risk of taking on a person with a criminal record and possibly history of imprisonment? I have a degree of sympathy with this argument and would be the first to acknowledge that the whole employment landscape has changed beyond recognition over my lifetime. For instance, I can recall the halcyon days of full employment and seemingly endless opportunities for unskilled labour, apprenticeships, supernumerary posts and even dare I say, jobs paying 'cash-in-hand' only. A criminal record was certainly no bar to many of these positions and I well remember my father employing people straight from prison just on a phone call from the local probation officer.

But this was an age before managerialism and everything became bureaucratised. We didn't have CV's back then, just a simple application form that didn't even mention criminal convictions. Now we live in an environment of health and safety, CRB checks, litigation, employers liability insurance etc. The question will come up and therefore the issue cannot be avoided - to lie, or not to lie? It will be no great surprise to anyone that a Probation Officer's advice is almost certainly to tell the truth. Fortunately, as CV's have evolved, they have become much more about experiences, qualifications and expertise than just a list of dates and employment. The aim of a CV is to get to interview stage and have a strategy prepared in advance in order to discuss any offending history.

Now I can almost hear the cries of 'get real.' But before either giving up reading any further, or reaching for the comment box, bear a number of things in mind from a potential employers point of view. Firstly, there are many, many people out there in society who have criminal records and are now in settled employment. The person interviewing you may well have been in trouble with the law years before and minded to give someone a break, indeed just like the break they got. Secondly, there are many responsible and enlightened employers who realise that a person with a criminal history, but one who is well-motivated towards change, could well be just that loyal and hard-working employee they are looking for. Thirdly, potential employers will always be interested in candidates who give of themselves and demonstrate honesty. In the end an employer not only wants staff who do a good job, but also that are honest.

Over the years I've known many clients successfully gain employment, even including former prisoners subject to Life Licence. In my experience barriers to employment are much more likely to be because of issues such as illiteracy, attitude or presentation than criminal history. Serving long term prisoners gain employment all the time as part of resettlement plans through Open Prisons on day release. The scheme works because there is honesty between the individual and the local employer. Employers don't agree to take such people on out of a sense of civic responsibility or paternalism, although there may be elements of both. They do it because they know they are getting good, well motivated employees. 

It may surprise some people to know that there are companies that positively discriminate in favour of people with criminal histories and there are some that only employ ex-offenders. An example of the former is Timpson's, a well known high street chain of shoe repairers and photoshops and a new company Blue Sky is an example of the latter. Basically there are signs of a return to a much more enlightened attitude towards ex-offenders generally amongst employers. The fact is that they often make excellent employees. So, for all these reasons, I would say think very carefully before submitting that dodgy CV.  



   

The Fairy Jobmother

I've previously said that in my experience very few clients ever set out with the positive intention of wanting to live a life without work. However they often find themselves in a self-fulfilling cycle of despair at ever being able to gain sustainable employment by virtue of a whole host of factors ranging from illiteracy to drug addiction. Having a criminal record and virtually no employment history just makes matters worse and at a time of rising unemployment and personal low self-esteem in the jargon means that they remain 'difficult to place.'

This is not a new phenomena and successive governments have tried to address the issue in various ways, the most useful in my view being the old job creation schemes introduced in the 70's and 80's. Indeed I benefited from one called STEP, the Short Term Employment Programme which by a convoluted route eventually resulted in my gaining a place at University as a mature student. Virtually no one is 'unemployable' in my view but again in the words of the new terminology, getting some people 'job ready' may take quite a bit of special effort.

The coalition government has decided to use rather more stick than carrot in an attempt to get as many people off state benefits and into employment as possible. Contracts have recently been awarded to a range of organisations who will deliver the new Work Programme and the Channel 4 tv series 'The Fairy Jobmother' follows Hayley Taylor a so-called job expert as she attempts to get small groups of long-term unemployed 'job ready' through a two week Job Club. 

I'd like to think that I'm a fairly easy-going sort of person, but I would find Hayley's particular approach to her work insufferable. I know many clients who would be tempted to smack her in the mouth in response to her particular style of patronisation. As if that wasn't bad enough, I can't help feeling that her particular brand of home-spun philosophy and 'mind games' could potentially be extremely damaging.

I've watched her in operation a few times during an earlier series and been shocked at the sheer ineptitude and insensitivity of her approach to often emotionally vulnerable people. She appears to delight in that old army training trick of first breaking people down and then when the tears flow, picking them all up. Despite most participants gaining employment, which is great, I think Hayley Taylor is dangerous and I take my hat off to the patience of the participants because I know I couldn't suffer her at any price. Oh, and she needs to lose those irritating neck scarves in my view.

Some Observations 6

Whilst all the right-wing press were celebrating the news that Ken Clarke had been forced to undertake a u-turn on sentencing discounts for guilty pleas, more considered commentators were left wondering how the planned savings of £130million could be delivered from the prisons budget. After all in Kens overall sentencing and rehabilitation reform plans, the lions share of savings were due to be as a result of this measure alone. It may still survive for offences other than rape or other violent acts, but apparently the Prime Minister is now keen on the idea being ditched altogether. 

But far from being all-washed up, Ken Clarke is a wily operator who sensed there might be problems way back last year in the fraught discussions with the Chancellor.  As a result of some clever negotiation he secured a special deal whereby the Treasury agreed to fund any shortfall, should he be unable to reduce the prison population for any reason. No doubt he reminded his boss of this when he went into no10 for a chat on Wednesday. 

Today is the day start of the governments flagship new Work Programme that's designed to get some of the most entrenched unemployed back to work. This group are featured fairly regularly on Inspector Gadjets blogsite and of course many are well known to the Probation Service. Depending on your point of view, it could be seen as an admirable attempt at tackling an enduring problem, pretty much created by an earlier Conservative government intent on massaging the unemployment figures by pushing people onto Sickness Benefit. Or it could be viewed as an opportunity for the private sector to rake in up to £3billion over the 7 year life of the contracts. 

Under the Payment by Results method of rewarding contractors, a considerable 'price' is now attached to this 'difficult to place' group and can amount to a staggering £14,000 if they remain in a job for between 6 months and 2 years. With potential rewards like that available to the likes of Serco or G4S, no wonder there was keen competition for the contracts. Whilst there might be a temptation to 'cherry pick' easy cases, no doubt some interesting thinking has been going on as to how the difficult group can be incentivised to keep any job. That's where the big money is. Wouldn't it be novel if the person got a big chunk of that sort of dosh on offer?

We wait to see, but meanwhile it should be a sobering thought for Probation Officers that the stick for non-compliance is considerable with Benefits withdrawn for 13 weeks on a first failure and 26 weeks on a second. Sanctions like that can't fail to have a potential knock-on effect for possible criminal activity, which of course will be self-defeating in terms of another government policy of reducing crime and custodial sentences. 

Finally, with all the depressing stuff about how some families and clients view probation, it's good to see at least one positive story  has surfaced on the Prisoners Families Views website.

(I'm off for a few days so there will be a break in transmission until early next week) 

   

Unemployed or Unemployable?

I can't help noticing that Inspector Gadget and Bystander of Magistrates Blog fame are somewhat unusually of one voice recently in highlighting the issue of structural unemployment on certain estates at a time when there appear to be lots of unskilled jobs available locally. The thesis is that the predominantly white indigenous population are lazy, workshy and quite happy to lounge around on benefit and typically allow the hard-working Eastern European population to take the jobs. Now I wouldn't particularly disagree with this analysis, but would suggest it is essentially because sadly many of these people are unemployable. 

This situation has arisen for a variety of reasons but will be all too recognisable to probation officers. We know that due to the restructuring of many heavy industries, there are simply no longer the large amount of unskilled jobs available. Many people in the category we are talking about are possibly second or third generation who have not known employment. Previous governments positively encouraged a 'disability culture' and as a consequence significant numbers have been used to classifying themselves as medically unfit to work. Many will have failed state education and have literacy and numeracy problems. Virtually all will have little or no motivation due to extremely low self esteem and absolutely no work record. Just ask yourself this question - would you employ someone like this? 

Of course this is not a new phenomenon and successive governments have tried to alleviate the problem by giving assistance towards the transition from long-term unemployment to work. Remember the old Youth Training Schemes and Job Creation Programmes? The last Labour government spent a small fortune on New Deal by paying third sector providers to prepare such people for the world of work and they had a degree of success, but it is not easy. The coalition government intends to do the same thing with the new Work Programme, but eligibility has increased to 9 months for the 18-24 year old age group and for those 24 and above, 12 months. I'm sure that all probation services are like mine in having direct links to agencies specifically tasked with assisting people into employment.

All this would not be necessary of course if our education system was doing it's job right and preparing young people for the world of work. I have said it before and I say it again. In my experience the vast majority of people that I come into contact with do not decide that a life of idleness is preferable - they want a job. Remember employment is the means by which most human beings define themselves and it's absence can be extremely damaging in terms of emotional well-being. There is a consequential high risk of destructive behaviours such as drug and alcohol addiction, self harm, violence and mental illness. 

Despite the image sometimes portrayed, a life on benefit is very, very depressing. Many feel they are utterly trapped and gave up all hope of looking for work ages ago. Unless and until we can sort out our education system, this group are always going to need a great deal of support and attention in order to get them productive. Yes it will require a degree of stick and carrot, but lets not just call them lazy and feckless without looking a bit further into the background.   

What's the Answer?

We know what the problem is. Communities up and down the country typically in de-industrialised areas that are suffering second and third generation structural unemployment as a result. Not surprisingly this has led to significant social problems such as drug and alcohol dependency, low academic achievement, anti-social behaviour and criminal activity.

Recent government reports confirm that a childs future is decided even before they set foot in a school, thus identifying that resources should be targetted at each child from a disadvantaged background as early as possible. However, in a period of financial constraint it remains to be seen if the coalition governments aspirations in this regard will be translated into effective delivery or not. I'm sure it's right, but not the whole answer and it will take time of course and will do nothing for the current 'lost' generation. It sort of reminds me of the idealism behind the introduction of the National Health Service and Welfare State post Second World War. We would now say it was naive to believe that 'free' medical care for everyone as part of the drive against the 'five great evils' would lead to a healthier nation and as a consequence lessening demands on the NHS. 

Funnily enough I think the answer might be connected to that much discussed, misunderstood and maligned Cameronian notion 'The Big Society.' Seeing as nobody seems to know what it means I might as well take a stab at an explanation. I think the answer we seek in doing something about our failing communities is as much about broadening peoples horizons as anything. Of course a degree of financial and physical security is important as indeed is basic numeracy and literacy, but I think what's really missing is exposure to a variety of positive experiences and opportunities that will stimulate a young person, broaden their horizons and help tease out their latent qualities. 

But hang on a minute, this is what schools are supposed to do isn't it? The trouble is they seem utterly fettered by the National Curriculum and other such bureaucratic nonsense that only serves to stifle innovation and flair. As a result the kids I'm talking about just give up at about age 13 and cause enough trouble to get permanently excluded. Of course there's no longer the escape route offered by scholarships to Grammar School for bright kids. What happened to the dynamic and innovative Detached Youth Service specifically designed to engage with disengaged kids? Went the same way as the buildings I suspect. In my town two centres built in the 1950's and 60's with donations from the public have been squandered by a disinterested Local Authority. There used to be boxing clubs, but of course they went as a result of political correctness as much as anything and good old fashioned church-based Scouting seems to have become the preserve of the middle classes only.

All these facilities and services and many more too numerous to mention used to provide avenues and opportunities for young people to learn and develop - to be inspired. Just two classic films spring to mind that serve to illustrate how positive experiences change lives, 'Kes' and 'Billy Elliot'. There are others like 'Brassed Off' or 'The Full Monty'' that demonstrate that in many ways it doesn't matter what the vehicle is, or for what age group - there just has to be something - an external stimulus that inspires and broadens horizons. But there has to be a structure and there has to be a catalyst, almost certainly a motivated individual or group. The trouble is for all sorts of reasons these people are few and far between and sadly getting less in my experience. Isn't the 'Big Society' about this sort of stuff? - (but due to bureaucratised as 'Community Champions' - yuck!)

Anyone who has watched any of the 'Secret Millionaire' programmes on channel 4 will know what I'm talking about. I find this to be genuinely gripping, potentially risky documentary-style tv at its best. Despite the gloomy picture I've painted, I'm always uplifted by the gems of voluntary groups and inspirational people that get discovered in each episode, doing fantastic work in disadvantaged communities, typically on a shoe-string. Just imagine what a bit of secure funding could achieve if harnessed to the whole 'Big Society' idea. 

I've just realised I haven't mentioned the probation service once. We used to be part of everything I've mentioned above because we used to be part of communities and used to be innovative. But now we just try and prevent re-offending from edge of town mega factories. It's a shame the 'Big Society' got invented too late for us.   

 

Life Without Work

First there were the re-runs of 'Boys from the Blackstuff' on BBC4 and now a new series called 'Life without Work' on BBC1. Of course for many probation clients, this is exactly their reality. Typically they 'left' school at 13, have no qualifications, are barely able to read and write and are to all intents and purposes unemployable. In my youth and pre 'health and safety' days this didn't really matter much as Britains vibrant manufacturing industries had loads of unskilled jobs available to soak up virtually everyone available. I well remember my father being telephoned on a regular basis by the local probation officer wanting to send round yet another young lad, just out of Borstal, for a period of trial employment in the factory. It worked well for many years, but as we all know those old industries went through a period of 'restructuring' and whole communities found there were no jobs for anyone, let alone the young.

It was the conservative government in the 1980's that tried to address this problem with the introduction of the Manpower Services Commission and the Youth Training Scheme. Looking back it's quite fashionable to denigrate these job creation schemes, but as a probation officer I can say that without doubt they were absolutely ideal for many of the young unskilled people on our books at that time. If I remember correctly they were affectionately known as ET - a reference to the Extra Tenner you got above your benefit for taking part. The beauty was there was absolutely no bureaucracy, just a phone call to the provider and a start date was arranged. Of course it's been said that they were not proper jobs, had little or no training content, were humiliating and most significant of all, reduced the pool of cheap labour for local employers. But this group were basically unemployable and benefitted from the structured day that was provided. Some made the transition into mainstream work having gained from the experience.  

For all sorts of reasons, the YTS era came to an end, Training and Enterprise Councils simply did not prove as effective and the resulting increase in youth idleness helped provide the perfect conditions for the spread of heroin. By the time 'New Deal' was introduced by Tony Blair's government, a whole generation had been lost to drugs. I'm aware that more recently other schemes such as the 'Future Jobs Fund' have tried to address the problem still posed by unskilled youth unemployment, but this is to be phased out by the coalition government and I'm unclear of any suitable replacement as yet. This is a serious problem as even a job as an unskilled labourer on a building site now requires a CSCS card and some experience ffs!

 I ought to point out that throughout my career I've never really come across anyone that didn't want to work. I think the notion of the deliberate workshy malingerer, happy to be living on the dole, is mostly an invention of the tabloid press. Everyone has a basic need to feel valued, to feel that they are doing something worthwhile and employment most often provides this. Without work, a person often has difficulty knowing themself or their place in society and the desire to be productive is actually quite strong I think. Many of our clients may not have the skill, ability or motivation to find suitable employment unaided, but all would take it if offered and have realistic expectations in terms of wages, in my experience. 

Over the years I've supervised many clients who have been victims of industrial restructuring and witnessed the inevitable debilitating effect it can have. Coming to terms with long term unemployment is never easy, as Seebohm Rowntree discovered from his research in York over 100 years ago. There comes a time when, in the absence of some special help, a person either has to accept the situation and adapt, or go mad. In my practice I've tried to walk that fine line between encouraging aspirations and searches for work, with appropriate support for alternative activity that can help ward off depression, maintain psychological well being and that fills some of the endless idle hours constructively. I think there really is a limit to how long a human being can cope with rejection, before it's wise to accept that life is possibly going to be without work, and move on. In my view any forthcoming changes to the benefit system must take account of this and come up with a realistic, fair and socially acceptable way of dealing with such people, or risk causing them serious psychological damage.