The Get Britain Working White Paper set out a cross-government commitment to boost economic performance by raising the economic activity rate to 80%. It was followed by the Pathways to Work Green Paper, which focussed on the workings of the benefit system and how it might change to reduce the number of people who are economically inactive.
Whilst the proposed changes in the workings of the benefit system are consulted on, local areas are required to produce a local Get Britain Working Plan, focussing on ‘reducing economic inactivity and taking forward the Youth Guarantee within local areas’, but also covering good work and progression in work. The Plan is intended to deliver short term changes over the next year or two, with further iterations to follow, no doubt to accommodate changing economic circumstances and the restructuring that is planned around Jobcentre Plus, the National Careers Service and the benefits system.
In this blog we draw on a wide range of SQW experience to consider how local areas might meet the aspirations for local Get Britain Working Plans. In doing so they need to devise means to deliver a better system to engage and support economically inactive people in a positive way to support them back towards work.
The starting point, as so often, is to understand the local situation: where is inactivity highest; which population groups are most impacted; and what can be said about the reasons for inactivity? While these questions are quite straightforward, the quality and availability of data is mixed, including on-going issues with the Annual Population Survey (APS) and wider data limitations when wishing to drill down to local areas. Therefore, a range of sources needs to be used, including health and benefits data, and triangulated with local knowledge.
Much attention in the policy documents and beyond has been focussed on the link between ill health and employment; a full chapter is devoted to this in the White Paper. There have been successes in integrating health and employment support, such as through the use of Individual Placement and Support (IPS) and the work of employment advisers linked to Talking Therapies services. That said, we noted previously that integrating employment support with existing health provision is not without challenges, and we have seen these challenges play out in our work to evaluate IPS Primary Care.
Keep Britain Working notes that access to specialist health services can be slow, depending on local waiting lists. Yet, there is a strong rationale for intervening early. This includes acting while people are in work but struggling or off sick, as well as soon after people leave work. Importantly, there is a sharp increase in the risk of not returning when someone is off work sick for more than three months. It therefore focuses attention on how employers have a role to play in offering support and signposting people to appropriate support, as well as a need for a range of mechanisms to ‘catch’ people if they fall out of work operating across employers, Jobcentre Plus and the health system.
Therefore, while health referral routes are important (and will continue to be so for Connect to Work), other ways of identifying people who require support should also be explored.
Across a range of projects, we have identified some common messages about attracting people to engage with support and integrating support. These include:
- working with and through trusted intermediaries, often the voluntary and community sector, which has existing networks and relationships, and which may reach a different group of people than those accessing Jobcentre Plus support. It should also be remembered that different types of organisations will reach different types of people, e.g. young people may go to very different places from older people. Similarly, it is worth asking where an employer might hear about appropriate support services or turn to for help, which could include employer organisations as well as occupational health services
- appropriate messaging to attract people with different motivations, including through an attractive offer to encourage people in and recognise that their interest in employment may come later (in one evaluation we found that 66% of participants said their main initial motivation was to get help with their issues, against 34% who said it was to find a job)
- sequencing support through having a suitably networked group of local organisations which each recognise the value that they can offer to people and importantly know where to signpost and refer people to when they need different types of support. This need for joined up working mirrors the findings of our recent review of adult careers guidance.
The inherent complexity of networked delivery along with recognition of the different needs across the economically inactive population leads to two further considerations. Firstly, how to ensure that people find their way into the right parts of the system. In some cases this is being addressed via a triage approach based around a hub. In others it relies on a ‘no wrong door’ whereby each organisation will assess need and signpost people to other support if required. This need should be recognised when encouraging employers to offer support to their workforces.
Secondly, how best to enable the network to operate, and what information/systems are required to enable referral and signposting. This could include directories, networking events, data sharing and other approaches, with the appropriate mix dependent often on the local starting point and existing infrastructure. This helps to explain why local Get Britain Working Plans really do need to be local.