Welfare-to-work and regeneration in the city-region: innovative approaches to tackling social inequality

Alison Fuller, Lorna Unwin, David Guile and Sadaf Rizvi LLAKES International Conference July 2010

State’s Management and Scope of Social Policy

• Challenge for the State of unemployment and disadvantaged groups • Welfare or Workfare approach – tension between social and economic imperatives -

Work First or Training First? Or Supporting Complex Needs?

• Contracting out of public services – Jessop’s ‘competition’ state • Ball’s analysis of way compulsory schooling is increasingly provided and managed through privatisation • Meso Level – city-region studies

Welfare State in UK: History of Localised Provision • ‘Relief’ for the poor and destitute administered locally from Middle Ages – parishes, magistrates, ‘friendly societies’ etc • Different motives – law and order, political change, philanthropy (‘do-gooders’), charity • 19 th century – concern that ‘relief’ interfered with natural order of the labour market “…it is not possible to make the distinction between the vagrant and the loafer on the one hand and the bona fide workman on the other, except in conjunction with some elaborate and effective system of testing willingness to work such as is afforded by the system of Labour Exchanges.” (Winston Churchill, 1909)

Training as an Instrument of Policy

• Consolidation of Welfare State post 1945 – relief contingent on paying insurance – focus on education system to deliver people with skills for work – VET business of employers • Economic crisis of late 1970s, industrial change and Thatcher Government trigger argument that individuals are not ‘work ready’ – deficit model • Training ‘discovered’ as the State’s solution for managing youth and adult unemployment • Market–led approach to provision of pre employment training programmes – but how far did this tap into historic localism?

We will also demand that Jobseekers take personal responsibility for accepting work when it is there, so there is conditionality and sanctions on the benefits side as well. This is a complete reappraisal of how we help people back into work and involves a major change in the way providers deliver support.

And I want to see the voluntary sector and other groups get involved too.

Ian Duncan Smith, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, June 30 th 2010

Planning Law, Economic Competitiveness and Social Cohesion/Inclusion

• City Council key partner in State’s goal of reducing and managing Welfare-to-Work • Uses Planning Law to require companies who want to develop land to contribute to local agenda • Agreement made with foreign-owned retail company to designate part of recruitment process for disadvantaged groups in city

Who was involved?

• Learning and Skills Council and Jobcentre Plus – funders and mediators of State policy (European Social Fund) • Providers – religious and non-religious charities, social enterprise, ‘for profit’, community activist, city council and company, and Sure Start (childcare) • Individuals – 380 applied (16-60, two thirds male, unemployed and not in paid employment) – 140 offered training place, 24 offered jobs • Company Co-designed pre-employment training course, adapt benchmark to increase chance of unemployed, guaranteed interview

Work First or Training First? Or Supporting Complex Needs?

“ Policy measures encouraging employment which are restricted to the individual may well be undermined by family or communal pressures, suggesting that they should be clustered in ways that affect both individuals and their social network…longer-term investment may be necessary if the unemployment-unsatisfactory employment unemployment cycle is to be broken.” (Ritchie et al 2005)

(Invisible) Providers of Training or Social Care?

• Diversity of client group from ‘easy gains’ to ‘hard to reach’ “…so probably our specialism now is we’re very much at the caring end rather than the commercial end of the voluntary sector as the sort of voluntary sector splits a bit into those two areas.” (Manager of religious charity)

Actors in an evolving (not new) sub-system Challenging the ‘newness discourse’ (e.g. Considine, 2001)

• White Provider – social enterprise division of long-standing charity developing countries – collect and refurbish used computers to distribute to client group and “…they just want to be here, they just want to engage, and that’s been a really good thing to see. But when you try and get them to move onto the next, that becomes a whole different thing…they have a real problem breaking back in (to mainstream society).”

Green Provider – charity with original aim of getting young people into training and employment – moving more toward adults (25+) – following the government funding: “We really do work on the theory that as long as people are engaging with us, even if they go into work and come back, that’s the success story of Green – it’s not that we just get them into a job and leave them, it’s that we’re there for as long as they need us.”

Purple Provider – public/private/voluntary partnership – international private sector Training provider, international (non-UK) charity, international IT and services company, and government also owns a stake – ‘for profit’, but rhetoric of social purpose “It was set up to help unemployed people return to work. But (Purple) is a very forward thinking company, so they do everything differently, they try to look at it a bit entrepreneurial rather than looking at the restraints…we’ve helped over 100,000 people back to work”

Re-thinking the Public-Private Divide

• City case study reveals range of actors still working to manage age-old problem • Actors have evolved into organisations with own workforces and expertise • Planning Law = powerful new ‘tool’ to bind employers into social goals • Need for funding pushes providers to chase the money, choose between clients, and create a niche market for some (e.g. Purple) they have ‘product’ to sell – government favours them: a)‘easy gains’ = measurable targets; and b) model within ‘training and employability’ paradigm • Who are the actors in other countries? How is this ‘problem’ managed?