Work Programme now yielding better results than doing nothing (just!)

The DWP published its latest statistics for the Work Programme just before Christmas, and the good news is, it’s now better than doing nothing – but only just.

Click the image to enlarge. The dotted lines show the minimum expected levels. These are based on what would be expected if the long term unemployed were just left to their own devices. The second graph shows the proportion of people who stayed on the Work Programme for 2 years, but who had a spell of employment during that time lasting for 6 months or more (or 3 months for certain groups). Of the almost 1 million people who spent 2 years on the Work Programme, just 28% fall into this category, while almost 70% were sent back to the Job Centre having been failed to be helped into sustainable work. This 28% is a mere smidgeon above the figure DWP thought the long term unemployed would achieve on their own devices. Better than nothing then!

This is a programme that has cost billions, but achieved astonishingly little. When the Work Programme started, the job market was in the toilet, so job outcomes were incredibly low. As the economy started to recover, it became easier to find unemployment people poor quality temporary and/or part time work, so the job outcome figures have picked up (while still remaining poor). In effect all it has done has transferred public resources into the hands of private outsourcing companies like Serco and A4E, who do little more than cherry pick the easy cases, while ignoring the rest. The job outcome figures for those who have come to the Work Programme via sickness/disability type benefits has been particularly poor, achieving barely half the job outcome rate deemed achievable without any intervention at all. A lot of these people are probably not well enough to be actively seeking work, but the Work Programme is failing badly for those who may be ready to return to the workplace.

Instead of wasting resources on pretending people can be got back into employment through improving their ‘soft skills’ or CV writing abilities, why not actually create some jobs?

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Farmers, floods, and fraud

A good mixture of links this week in this, my 100th blog post. We start with the floods, and a reminder from George Monbiot that ‘cutting red tape’ can have unintended consequences:

How we ended up paying farmers to flood our homes

The Scottish Independence Referendum has been in the news this week and the debate is hotting up. Alex Salmond wants to keep the pound, but the three main UK parties have all (rightly) said no. Salmond has accused them of trying to scare people into voting no, but here’s why, for an independent Scotland, keeping the pound would be a very bad idea:

Scotland under Sterling is not truly independent

News now of the conviction of 4 A4e staff who claimed money fraudulently on one of A4e’s welfare to work contracts. This is what happens when ‘performance by results’ comes up against the reality of not enough jobs – cheating:

Guilty: The four A4e staff who fiddled the books helping lone parents get back to work

Another story on the bedroom tax now, and news that landlords are beginning to actually help tenants to appeal:

Bedroom tax is appealing: cc all social landlords

This is a nice post looking at what it’s actually like to be out of work and being required to sign on at the job centre. Not nice:

More #JSA stories from jobcentres: “It’s impossible. You’re trapped.”

Related to this, it’s becoming increasingly clear that Jobcentre Plus is no longer concerned with finding people jobs, focusing much of it’s attention instead on simply finding grounds to kick people off JSA. There are stories of staff there being disciplined for not sanctioning enough claimants, and over 800,000 people were sanctioned last year. The number of appeals is high though and over half of these are successful. Now it looks like DWP want to address this not by making better decisions, but by limiting the ability of people to appeal. Are they losing their grip?:

People stripped of benefits could be charged for challenging decision

Bankster news now and another reminder that the increasing power of the banks is incompatible with either democracy or the public good:

Predator Banks Enter Brave New World of Epic Scams and Public Hasn’t Got a Clue

Finally, we end with more ‘disappointing Labour news’, as it’s revealed their flagship policy to help the long term unemployed will only be funded for one year. I have a number of issues with this policy idea, but at least it would put back on the map the idea that governments can (and should) get involved in job creation. It seems though this is another big policy that’s in the end just more PR:

Labour ‘jobs guarantee’ promise limited to a year

The Work Programme Part 2 – Having a laugh at the public’s expense

In part 1, I discussed the DWP’s recent release of performance data for the Work Programme. Despite quite modest targets for year 1, across the board, Work Programme providers are failing. In this second part, I want to  give a few examples of why I feel the already dire performance figures to date create a misleading picture of how much added-value is actually being generated by the firms contracted to help individuals on the Work Programme. I think the reality is actually much worse than is generally thought.

Before I start, I just want to make clear that I am not picking on a particular provider here. Although firms like A4E have been singled out in the media for a large amount of criticism, the performance of providers across the board is poor, and what follows seems to be taking place within a number of providers.

The following examples appear to be evidence (although anecdotal), that Work Programme providers are adopting a number of techniques to maximise their revenue without actually investing time and effort into individual jobseekers themselves. To me this constitutes a misappropriation of funds, but I don’t expect DWP to investigate any time soon. In one case as you will see, the transfer of funds from public to private without any value being added by the company is officially sanctioned.

Tricks of the Trade

One of the benefits of living in the age of the internet is that people who before found it almost impossible to get their voices heard can now do so. Through blogs and social media, stories are being told about the Work Programme from the people actually referred onto it. The same stories seem to come up again and again. Here are three of the most common ones.

1. Already found a job? Just sign these forms

This technique is actually officially sanctioned in certain instances by the DWP, and is written into the Work Programme guidance (chapter 4) which can be downloaded here. When someone is referred to the Work Programme, there may be a gap of a couple of weeks before that person is officially ‘attached’ to the Work Programme.

If you look at paragraphs 71 to 76 of the guidance it explains how if a claimant finds work between referral and attachment, the provider can try to attach the individual before they start the job. In practice, this means meeting with the individual and completing some paperwork. If they are able to do so (and perhaps provide them with some token help like a bus pass or vouchers for work clothing), then they are eligible to receive the outcome payments should that person remain in work. This could earn the provider several thousand pounds on top of their £400 or £600 attachment fee.* Kerching!

This ruse also applies to people who actually are on the Work Programme. The claimant may have found work themselves after finding the Work Programme support poor. Here’s and example of what I’m talking about from this blog:

“They rang me up today to check how I was doing,” he wrote, “and when I told him I had a job he seemed to perk up a bit. He said he’d give me £100 “petrol money” if I signed some paperwork to let him contact the DWP.”

To me, this sounds like a bribe, but DWP seems absolutely fine with it. I suppose they term it “in-work support”.

Now in cases like this, the provider may argue that it was the help and support they provider that helped the person find work, but how sure are we that this is the case? A lot of people’s experience of the Work Programme seems to be a monthly 20 minute face-to-face meeting with the provider, and maybe the odd phone call. Not the individually tailored, bespoke support we were promised. Which brings us onto the related trick 2.

2. Creaming and Parking

Creaming and parking is the phenomenon whereby providers identify job ready claimants (they may be graduates or other high skilled people), and focus all their attention on them, while ignoring, or providing very little support to those who are harder to help. They still receive their attachment payment for those they ‘park’, and if any of these people get jobs anyway (and the law of averages suggests some will), then all the better, they can apply trick number 1 and claim the outcome payment. Research commissioned by the DWP highlights that creaming and parking may be an issue (see here), saying:

“Some of the reported  experiences of participants and providers suggest, at face value, a degree of creaming and parking; for example, many providers openly reported seeing their most job-ready participants more frequently than those with more severe barriers to work.”

So it seems to be a case of help the ones who would probably find work easily anyway and ignore the rest until they (hopefully) find work on their own.

3. Working Tax Credits are a provider’s best friend

Hat tip to the Johnny Void blog for alerting me to this, but it seems that Work Programme providers seem to be encouraging claimants to declare themselves self-employed in order to trigger a job outcome payment. Apparently, if a person works self-employed for over 30 hours a week (although in reality much less), but earn under a certain threshold, they can claim working tax credits of up to £50 per week. This is only about £20 less than Jobseeker’s Allowance. A person doesn’t need to earn anything to receive WTC, but would only need to work a few hours a week to earn as much as JSA. I don’t know how prevalent this is, but it seems that one provider in particular may be making the most of this apparent loophole.

So these are a few of the wheezes Work Programme providers seem to be using to inflate their job outcome figures (which in part 1 we saw are still woeful). These practices and others like them seem to be widespread and not just used by one provider. Added together, they sum to a large amount of (admittedly anecdotal) evidence that Work Programme providers are delivering even worse value for money than people think. The whole programme seems to amount to nothing more than a giant rip-off, a transfer of huge sums of public money into a relatively small number of private companies and individuals, in return for very little of value. Some people it seems, are having a laugh at the public’s expense.

This was originally intended to be the 2nd of a two part post on the Work Programme, but I’ve now realised I need a 3rd part to explore why we persist with the payment by results model despite its seemingly obvious failings.

*H/T again to this blog post for drawing my attention to this practice

For more information on problems with the Work Programme, and the Government’s welfare policies in general, I recommend following @boycottworkfare and @johnnyvoid on Twitter.