How to waste money and fund the diminishing responsibility of the public sector

In 2009 I worked for an organisation that I will name Inglorious and use the pseudonym DirectWorking or DW when discussing them, I hope this short experience gives a picture of why I decided to share my views.

DW provided health related benefit contracts (Pathways to Work) for the Government and supplied support for the hardest to help. I joined DW as I had experienced a fragmented level of service support while working at a residential mental health organisation and felt hugely enthused by an organisation whose motto was

‘Helping the Hardest to Help’

So I set about to do exactly that; having had good experience in a range of services including mental health I was particularly happy to take on any difficult and outstanding clients with mental health barriers.

In my first full week I was assigned a catatonic client who at first refused to divulge any information apart from letting me know I was making her health worse; unfortunately for her I revelled in the opportunity and set about ways to build trust.  

In all honesty our first session was not a rousing 'employment advice' success but I did manage to discuss her family life and throw her off guard by offering her a bus pass and imploring (because I felt I could help her) that she came and see me again.

From this moment I knew I could have an impact on her life, hopefully positive, and was damn sure I would do everything possible to help her overcome her recent problems; she was of course one of the ‘Hardest to Help’.

That day I concluded my numerous other consultations at around 3pm new staff were given time to reflect on the day and catch up with administration; I had been quite keen to have mine finished before 3pm so set about understanding referral schemes and our true responsibility to our clientele.

I spent two hours discussing clients, sitting in on consultations, looking at paperwork and studying all of the services available. I must say I was very impressed!

This is a short list of the sort of services provided in-house :

I.T. facilities

Job Search and Application Workshops

Psychologist and Physiotherapist

Coping with Depression Workshop

Anger Management Workshop

Coping with Pain Workshop

Travel expenses

Benefit advice

During my research time I had my catatonic client in mind and had formed an idea of how I would move her toward feeling ‘job ready’, I felt I needed a month to build her trust and a few more to get her ready for work.

As it was my first full week I used the last 30 minutes of that day to gain advice from my manager, a man who spent more time exploring the low cut fashion of female attire than he did managing the contract that he had won tender on.

I explained my catatonic client to my manager while I watched his eyes track every passing female and finished asking whether he thought I had chosen the right course of action.

He looked up at me and questioned “Yeah, refer her, best thing to do; how quickly is she going to be job ready?”

I remarked, “I think a month to grow the trust, a few more to get her into work”

At this moment I believed the huge smile plastering across his face was because we shared a common goal, ‘Helping the Hardest to Help’; he was of course the man who wrote the bid for this contract!

His responses, and smile turning to a sarcastic grin is why I have chosen to continue helping the hardest to help,

"Well you have a 6month probationary period so refer her on and see what the courses can do, pick her up later as she will just waste your time"

Not one to be put off I continued 

"She really isn’t ready for courses, she had enough problems getting out of the house and into the office"

He replied “That is the thing, she isn’t job ready and we need you to work with the job ready or the close to job ready; best thing for your time is to refer her on. At the end of the day you have over 100 clients and need to hit your target outputs every month.”

Seething, perplexed and with a inwardly distressed smile on my face I politely thanked my manager for his advice and for the next hour sat on the edge of a fountain with a pen, a pad and my thoughts.

This is one story of many; so very many, so for the next 6 months I spent my time understanding the company and trying to ascertain exactly why they had such a wide range of contracts and how they could work to actually offer a worthwhile service.

Below I have listed some background, experiences and some conclusions;

Background

The DW (DirectWorking) contract I worked on assisted those with physical or mental health barriers back into work. Although deemed the hardest to help DWs motivation was to satisfy job outputs and not support clients.

This would mean that a typical caseload of 120 clients would perhaps hold 50 with mental health barriers and 70 with physical health barriers.

In physical health terms many of these candidates were mentally ready for work and with condition management and advisor support could find themselves good employment opportunities. 

Physiotherapists were available to provide on-site workshops and individual appointments.

Perhaps out of these 70 you could say that in a month 50 had a good chance at achieving ‘job ready status’ leaving 20 with complicated barriers; such as a severe disability.

Out of those 50 with physical health barriers there were also those showing signs of mental health problems, especially depression; their primary diagnosis would be shown as a physical barrier and we could only initiate correct diagnosis if the client asked to see their own doctor.

We would refer to our workshops and professionals but this would extend our working period with the client forcing them down the pecking order.

In mental health terms a caseload of 50 would hold a mixture of clients all with separate needs and support structure, ultimately we were encouraged to root out the depressed and work with them (or discouraged from working with the hardest to help); but as a complete service we also had psychologists who provided workshops and individual appointments.

In this whole caseload of 120 you would probably find 30 clients that could be definitely deemed ‘job ready’ in a month’s time; ‘job readies’ are those who you can have a CV and covering letter for and have them ready for applications and interview training.

Good averages if you consider targets were 6 outputs monthly, especially as clients were moved on and replaced.

In principal everything was set up to assist clients but in practice clients found themselves on a benefit system merry-go-round especially if they were the hardest to help and did actually need support to work.

My Experiences

As I mentioned earlier we were encouraged to cut the ‘time wasters’ (the far from job ready) this was because each output (client getting a job) guaranteed a fee and each client spend saved was retained.

This was a boom time for the organisation with manager salaries in the £40k region and advisors earning well over £26k; the country however was gripped in recession and unemployment was very high.

Frustratingly for DW the Government realised that not enough clients were sustaining work and this needed to change, so new contracts would pay more if a client sustained for a longer period of time, 26 or 52 weeks. 
Whilst on the surface this seemed a good decision it was actually a panic reaction to statistics not policy analysis.

DW couldn’t have been happy, they altered their clients spend policy and encouraged advisers to lower the quoted available figure; they also changed targets and pushed for stronger use of the referral system.

The organisation had worked hard with local companies to provide short term contracts and now they needed to push 26week deals. Advisors although disgruntled at high staff turnover were never part of any decision making process and their cries mostly ignored by managers in favour of higher outputs.

This signalled a lot of discomfort in the organisation with many advisors seriously torn over the morality of their role.

What had always struck me was that those clients we were assisting could have had exactly the same sort of support at the JobCentre if they simply had a good adviser. (they do exist)

Our role was to push numbers through and to assist the company in making a lot of money, in turn the government saw improvement in short term statistics.

This may have been a success story for the incumbent Government but in reality they were wasting huge amounts of cash on altering short term statistics. It doesn't seem this has changed....

Clients were well aware of the process and were happy to entertain their set amount of mandatory interviews which also allowed the company to pick up extra finance. Client interview sabotage was regular and it was clear that we were simply a buffer zone for the JobCentres difficult and long term clients.

Many very ‘unjob ready’ clients did want to get back to work but needed support, many had long term barriers which needed an empathetic creative approach and some just needed someone to believe in them.  

I was astounded how many of my clients had been with the organisation for a period of years not months.

Even with all these workshops, support, information and services how could a contract helping the hardest to help keep skipping out the hardest to help?

As I continued working I realised these services simply acted to win a contract, physiotherapists were not allowed to work hands-on but offered condition management advice and occasional walks; psychologists worked with the depressed, but were encouraged to reduce appointment times and use their schedule for group work to deal with a collective of clients, not always with the same barriers.

Both professionals earned a starting salary of over £36,000 and almost all I engaged with felt that their time was used to simply alleviate clients’ fears and not improve their mental/physical health.

When psychologist support came to all branches staff were all very excited at extra and professional support but we were very quickly, three days as I remember, requested to only refer job ready clients with basic mental health issues as we were not the NHS and were not providing that type of service. 

Similarly back problems went to physiotherapists but someone with fibromyalgia was the advisors responsibility.

It was about this time I decided that I would leave DW and put all my efforts into helping the hardest to help for as long as DW would let me, I would also put myself beyond the call of duty and become involved in helping these isolated clients outside my working hours.

This included aiding a client with enduring mental health who had been passed over by my manager, a charming but ruthless target hunter; and our Advisor Coach who clearly had a heart but was finding it difficult to let it beat during work hours.

My new client who had not worked in 18years found himself stuck with me, a determined soul who wouldn’t let the fact go that he knew best.

It felt a lonely road, my manager regularly looked down with disapproving puppy dog eyes; asked me what I was hoping to achieve, told me I was wasting valuable target time and even called in the coaching advisor to sort out my attitude; ultimately I succeeded where they never bothered.

It may have taken me a month of strong support and creative convincing, a frank meeting with the employer, days of discussion with my client, numerous phone calls of support and a daily chat before and after work for his initial week but a man who had been claiming many benefits for over a decade was finally back at work with a routine to aid his mental health development.

Apart from one more meeting to make sure he would be able to cover his rent and a few initial work visits I never heard from the client again but I did return to his place of work a year later to find him sustaining and in control of his health problems.

Huge credit must go to the high street store who never showed any concern to my clients health issues, that is certainly not true of many. (The stores name is similar to B and H cigarettes) 

Unfortunately, or fortunately I like many others had our contracts ended on the eve of the financial year, a few weeks before our contract end date; we were not allowed to contact or finish any client interaction and asked to leave at that moment.

Even in the advisors final hours (they also let administrators go) we were denied the opportunity to help the hardest to help, or at the very least try and give them final words of encouragement and belief.

After this position I experienced the impact of privately run, publically funded organisations on the public sector but also the problems inherent to public sector organisations.

So what should be done differently?

Run a scheme to help the less hard to help! That was effectively what was occurring anyway, while it was not DW’s fault their actions certainly exploited the short-sightedness of government policy and free flowing contracts to tender for.

Running a Pathways to Work programme and helping the hardest to help needs exactly that, part of your organisation must be set up to work toward a long term goal and the contract must reflect that.

Flexible contracts need to run alongside supporting organisation so that for example, a psychology service can actually add to an individual’s progression and not promise false hope.

Targets are important and offer real time achievement measurements but when providing a complex service quality needs to be paramount. In current long term unemployment schemes quality is disregarded and targets are met; many organisations even offer short term contracts within their organisation to satisfy that criteria. Two in my city are particularly known for this and many clients come to me seeking a way out of the cycle of the fortnightly contract, or months work experience painting a providers walls.

This is where quality comes in; offer the right service. Many of these providers serve to push the easy to help out of their doors as soon as possible, or take every penny available to them in the way of contracted services such as IAG’s (information and Guidance) or WFI (Work Focussed Interviews) but none are regulated on the provision in practice.

For example an in-house physiotherapist and psychologist should be allowed to add to the development of a patient thus taking pressure of an NHS service, contracts should be judged on the outcome of a range of criteria and not simply to improve one statistic in the short term.

The right jobs need to be highlighted to the right people with advisors being taught how to explore transferable skills outside of the company handbook.

In my last role (in the public sector) I consistently had clients who felt they could never work in health due to their manufacturing experience but came to our scheme due to glowing references from the JobCentre. Many had come with tales of woe from private providers but were willing to take our assessment in case we could direct them in a different, respectful way.

Our organisation knew health was a broad industry and this simply served to give me extra direction to inspire them. My role also offered non-health related employment advice but we tried to inspire our clients to find their own motivation to employment.

I firmly believe my colleagues abilities, life experience and willingness to work to organisation targets and not personal ones drove our success.

Advice quality needs to be regulated properly, if a provider employs four clients as advisors are they actually providing high standards of quality for other service users or are they hitting their own contract targets?

On the case of advisors qualitative data is all important, if you run a hardest to help scheme you need to account for the harder to help; they are just that! The advisor needs time but this must be recognised by the service as well as contract providers. Giving someone support for that extra amount of time is a much better way to add to their potential but needlessly directing them before they are ready simply serves to place them back on the benefit merry-go-round.

Earlier on I mentioned the diminishing responsibility of the public sector, private providers are gaining a stranglehold on these contracts and providing more and more clients with advice, training and guidance; unfortunately the desire for more clients has caused the quality of service to also diminish. 

Clients are left frustrated, benefits claimed for longer and good quality people who are not considered long term unemployed must wait their turn.

The JobCentes are dotted with some extraordinary staff, I found many on temporary contacts but they rarely find their way into long term positions.

The public sector employment services sees low wages offered to new staff, short term contracts with no progressive option, senior staff unfamiliar with the current employment climate (having spent so many years in the same roles) and many younger employees with no real work experience.

In some cases JobCentre staff earn £8,000 less than their private sector (publically funded) counterparts with managers enjoying/enduring an even larger gap. 

Is it any wonder that many JobCentre staff lack the motivation to think outside the box especially as many of those responsibilities they once supplied have been passed to providers.

Effectively they themselves are a referral and stick operation which is frustrating because they do have the tools and reputation to act more positively.

We even drive down the quality of our job searching with a huge reliance on agencies and not on in-house recruitment, the JobCentre website is largely populated with agency jobs, as are the JobCentre staff screens, and employees are subjected to data collation and hopefully a few short term contracts.

There is no career path discussed, there is not even an attempt at looking at a path to employment satisfaction; there is just work.

This impact on jobseekers is huge and simply serves to frustrate them and edge away at their self belief, companies who actually seek to develop staff or are transparent in their contract responsibilities get better quality employees. Many of our publically run organisations rely on staff from agencies thus creating a rationale for other organisations to do the same; surely we have enough unemployed to pick our own candidates? I have been part of this change in recruitment policy while working in the public sector and it works incredibly well! You get the right staff and save a lot of money!

Does the JobCentre lack that sort of staffing referral ability? I would think many JobCentre staff would disagree and would revel in actually providing candidates for real positions.

Why do people make contact with JobCentres when they don’t actually act in any agency manner? Then why do you have to wait 6months to find yourself referred on to an organisation that does?

Where did all their computers, sessions and work rooms go to? Cold calling and speculative letter provision? They used to provide regular and informative services; why has this been passed on to organisations that literally treat people like numbers that begin with a £ sign?

I do not place blame directly on the JobCentres they have been marginalised by these outside contracts and their worth squeezed out in favour of private organisations; they are a point of referral, minimal advice and benefit contact.

Does this mean our JobCentres are worthless? 

Absolutely not, they have a huge part to play in the success of our unemployed but they need to work in conjunction with private organisations and have the authority to challenge their practices. JobCentres need to have stronger responsibilities on the type of services provided with charities, health authorities and service providers having a say on the sort of provision offered.

JobCentres also need to be the point of contact for businesses because the disenchantment suffered by the client is further stimulated by the 6 month wait to feel aided by the ‘progressive helpful’ private sector.

Private organisations need more stringent regulation with contracts to provide particular services in an encompassing supportive way, or tailored to a particular need like those deemed employment avoiders.

Our psychology of policy is misunderstood and currently we are providing contracts that serve to improve short term statistics; the only way we can improve peoples chances of success/employment is by treating them as people with futures especially in mental health, to mix those who want to succeed and those who do not has been our barrier and it is a mistake still being made by ill thought out policy in theory.