Future Jobs Fun(d)

Future Jobs Fund

Future Jobs Fun or FJF was a great example of policy in theory and not in practice which once again looked at tackling short term statistics and not long term issues.

Basic FJF eligibility from the part of the employer and employee included:

• The job must be new and additional to current staffing
• Be expected to last at least 26 weeks, a minimum of 25hrs per week and pay at least the National Minimum Wage
• Be of a benefit to the Community
• Clients need to be 18-24 yrs of age, have been unemployed and claiming JSA for between 39-52 weeks or be long term claimants who are in areas selected for support due to high unemployment

Once again on the surface we can assume that this scheme gives young people, or those in areas of high unemployment, an opportunity to find a job however the drawback to the programme more or less undermines the reason for its creation.

When the scheme was first announced it worked with a particular slice of our unemployed and gave them a chance to progress to a position of real experience and career path. The scheme was exciting for those eligible but a little frustrating for those who were not quite within eligibility criteria.

This eligibility also included clients that progressed to stage 3 if their JobCentre adviser fast tracked them, especially those that resided in areas of high unemployment.

This could mean a 57 year old client who had claimed benefits for 45weeks and lived in an area such as Handsworth could find access to FJF.

Geographically this may work for some places but in Birmingham a collapse of the manufacturing industry has created a base of unemployed that stretches well over 52 weeks. These clients were unable to access the scheme and were relying on publically funded privately run providers such as DW, See-crap, and Brownstar (all pseudonyms) to provide their future employment needs.

Essentially this was fine, that is if the providers worked to change the perspective of an aging workforce who were either not used to looking past their perceived skills set (‘I can only work in manufacturing as I have only ever used my hands’) or didn’t quite understand how or why the application process needed such thorough attention. (‘In my day you wouldn’t apply for a job you couldn’t do!’)

In my experience and apart from my own schemes I have not seen a private provider looking at working with an older age group because it realises there is a problem, similarly in computing job applications are a huge barrier to many applicants and not just the computer illiterate so Future Jobs Fund (although many were written applications) immediately created another barrier for the many who wanted to achieve an interview.

At our organisation and others in the city we competed heavily for FJF employer contracts and our RDA (regional development agency) was publicly criticised by the new Government for stimulation of the public and not the private sector.

This was definitely true however from our organisations perspective we were trying to create Future Jobs past 26 weeks and with wide ranging experiences, many of the private industries accessing the scheme were simply looking to find themselves a cheap staff member for a certain period of time.

The evidence for this was fairly noticeable, apart from many clients losing their job after 26 weeks and gaining no wider experience in the role clients that had found access in our organisation, the NHS, had real experience, direction, in most cases a career path to move toward.

55 year olds from manufacturing gaining access to nursing, younger people being set career paths and many head of households finally finding their way back into employment can only be beneficial for our society but it takes organisations to bring these opportunities to people because the system is so confusing for clients.

In the case of FJF advisers too were confused, my role as an Employment Coach was to take clients from the JobCentre that they felt could access our scheme (not just FJF contracts) but I very much felt that my role extended to explaining the intricacies of this policy to managers, advisers and groups of misinformed referred clients.

This is another reason why the scheme did not become as successful as it may have been, it was rolled out triumphantly but there was always a rocky ground with client eligibility and provider overlap. As I worked in an area with poor providers I made sure I searched out every loophole available to make sure my clients did not have to end up at a provider’s mercy.

Explaining eligibility to every JobCentre in my local area was a real problem as many simply did not believe I understood the policy, I did resent wasting so much time battling against these partners as their role was to inform me of changes but mostly I resent the fact that two of my clients in one nameless JobCentre missed out on access to FJF because advisers and managers waited too long to phone head office and confirm the accuracy of my proposals.

Needless to say I saw these clients again a few months after the provider had etched away their confidence. I would like to also make the point that very few providers; I think I am being kind in attributing any success, knew the intricacies of the scheme and many clients simply never realised they were eligible.

In the case of publically funded private organisations it is almost impossible to get them to release a client/delay the initial interview before they actually start their programme (clients are given an interview date a few weeks before they actually start, that interview is the official start to the programme) and I spent a lot of time begging JobCentres to fast track clients and upset their relations with these organisations.

Each client of course earns extra cash to the provider so it is in the private organisations best interest to retain as many appointments as possible.

This in itself exemplifies the lack of real support structure and continues to give access to the pot of gold that benefit contracts provide.

Future Jobs Fund was a good initiative but it made no effort to provide any sort of long term responsibility and career progression; it was ended by this incumbent Government and I do wonder whether they have analysed in any way why the scheme failed and how best to learn from its pitfalls.

I wanted to list some of the employment opportunities listed and the type of work available during FJF.

Administrator positions were very popular and were simply that, basic administration; as were positions for roles such as assistant and support workers (usually project support) which offered mainly by private organisations. (The ones Cameron wants us support)

Our organisation was a public one and we looked at the broad spectrum of our employment to try and find a way to encourage experience in a role and not simply to give somebody a job.

A carer could find passage to various caring roles and even nursing, working in a mortuary gives a wealth of experience dealing with many departments while also giving specific skill sets, Assistant Radiotherapists would almost certainly find their experience enriching in various educational facets, administrators certainly experienced more than a filing role and even roles such as a driver would allow for a wide range of experience in transport logistics. Our organisation worked hard at selecting roles that would allow real progression for our clients not only because we cared for their success but we wanted to realise the potential of our hospital with excellent members of staff throughout.

Agency recruitment, his is another rant entirely.

If FJF had Future Jobs in mind it could have been a strong success in our society but the near sighted lack of understanding to not only benefit claimants but the job market itself showed a complete lack of both. There was no consultation to discover the potential jobs of the future, no process to work out where the private sector needed stimulation in terms of FJF apprenticeships, no regulation of the quality of the role and no consideration to the eligibility and psychology of the policy within struggling communities.

Many also remember WFT (Work Focussed Training) which suffered the same quality issues and lack of foresight.

To those who damned FJF I hope they realised its potential and learned from its mismanagement and short term ambition, as with so many of these schemes implementation is key and so is understanding the flexibility of your community;  policy in practice, not theory.