The Claimant Commitment. A Prime Contractor’s Viewpoint George Selmer, Contract Director (North...
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Transcript of The Claimant Commitment. A Prime Contractor’s Viewpoint George Selmer, Contract Director (North...
The Claimant Commitment. A Prime Contractor’s Viewpoint George Selmer,
Contract Director (North West)
G4S Welfare to Work
Committed partners?
Universal Credit IS the way forward: Genuinely exciting opportunity to radically change the incentives within the benefit system to
properly reward work A simpler, better understood system will remove the disincentives to taking up employment
The Claimant Commitment is central to this It should change the relationship between the ‘claimant’ and the state
BUT
Change to the ‘employment support’ environment must go hand in hand with change to benefit environment
Claimant Commitment represents an opportunity to properly embed a culture of rights and responsibilities
It is important to drive changes on both sides of the ‘R and R’ coin If the benefit system is going to treat people more and more as individuals, the employment
support environment must do that
If we get the Claimant Commitment right… We will have a benefit and employment support
environment which:
Is a genuine contract between citizen and state Is a fair balance of the right to support and the responsibility
to seek work and contribute Is able to treat each individual differently, tailoring the level of
support (financial and otherwise) and the level of expectation according to their need, circumstance and ability to work
Can enable UK Public Employment Service providers to support more people into sustained work
What we know works
Identification of jobseekers needs from the outset
Robust and reliable front-end assessment
A ‘Black Box’: Tailored, personalised interventions rather than a rigid, tick-box set of activities, some of
which might be inappropriate All activity should be: practical and essential AND based on what we know works
A clear focus on outcomes rather than inputs
This means putting the right incentives in place both for jobseekers and the people tasked with supporting them
We need to ensure that the Claimant Commitment reinforces these fundamentals
The risks of the Claimant Commitment
Too much focus on responsibilities and not enough on supporting individuals– more ‘I’ than ‘we’
Too much focus on INPUTS rather than OUTCOMES Focus on quantity of activity rather than quality or appropriateness of intervention Focus on monitoring compliance with instructions (‘are the boxes ticked’?) rather than
delivering positive interventions
A bureaucracy that feeds on itself?
Lack of resource in the UK PES system to either: Deliver more and better tailored support to claimants Adequately monitor compliance
What happens when claimants move onto the Work Programme? Danger of claimant running on two separate tracks – inefficient for taxpayer, bad for claimant Can’t allow providers to become another ‘compliance monitoring’ service – of an agreement
they do not own
Recommendations for success…
Trust Work Programme providers and delegate authority
Providers MUST be allowed to deliver the support they judge is best for the claimant – and be judged on their results
Claimant Commitment should be ‘to participate in the Work Programme as required by my provider’
OR Claimant Commitment is to be agreed with Work Programme provider – not separately with JCP Advisor
Recommendations for success…
Make use of the resource available
Earlier access to Work Programme for those at risk of long term unemployment
If additional resource is required to deliver increasingly tailored
support then the DEL-AME financial model ensures value for money for the taxpayer – providers shoulder the risk of failure
Early diagnostics and intervention are key to preventing long term worklessness – and reducing the long term cost of Universal Credit
Recommendations for success…
Incentivise Work Programme to become even more flexible
Reforming the differential payments model
Payment groups become redundant under UC Alternatives:
Time spent claiming (cumulatively over period rather than concurrently) Use of assessment tool to identify needs/resource need to support from the outset – ‘Jobseeker
Classification Instrument’
Be bolder with the DEL-AME model - more resource to help those jobseekers with the most significant barriers to work, in exchange for less for those with the least
Recommendations for success…
Don’t confuse the landscape
Work Programme must remain the only post-JCP employment programme run by the government
Don’t go back to the confusion of New Deal for X, Y and Z We want to treat individuals as individuals – that means a Black Box, not a different
programme for everyone
Work Programme
Recommendations for success…
Encourage better integration between services
Learn from ESF Family Support Programme and incentivise ‘progress’ as well as Job Outcome?
Far fewer prime contractors to increase cohesion in the supply chain network?
Work Programme primes to administer ESF and SFA funds to join-up services according to need in each area?
Joined-up incentives – Jobcentre Plus and Work Programme providers to share Job Outcome measure?