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?