The Work Programme: What is the role of skills?

a NIACE publication

Overview and recommendations

The Work Programme was launched across Great Britain in June 2011. The Programme provides intensive, personalised support for people who are long-term unemployed or who are at most risk of becoming so. The Programme provides this support for up to two years for each unemployed participant plus further in-work support once participants have found work. Work Programme Prime Providers have been given full control over the approaches they take to support their participants into sustained employment in the hope that this encourages creativity and innovation.

This publication is aimed at encouraging and helping more Work Programme providers to give their participants access to skills provision.

• Chapter 1 explains the importance of skills in enabling people to secure and sustain employment.
• Chapter 2 assesses the degree to which Work Programme participants currently have access to skills provision.
• Chapter 3 describes the range of skills provision available for unemployed adults and includes case studies illustrating how Work Programme participants have gained skills and found sustained employment as a result.
• Chapter 4 identifies when Work Programme participants are eligible to be funded through the Skills Funding Agency to participate in skills provision.
• Chapter 5 describes helpful approaches that can be adopted by Work Programme providers when working in partnership with learning providers, including an explanation of key issues such as the need for learning providers to undertake initial assessments and the benefits to learning providers of certainty about the volume and timing of referrals.

Work Programme providers that are giving their participants access to skills provision have not published details on the approach they are taking or on the numbers of their participants involved. We acknowledge that Work Programme providers may have concerns about revealing details that might benefit their competitors. However, as skills provision for Work Programme participants is often supplied by third parties and/or funded through non-Work Programme funds, we feel it is not unreasonable to expect that in return for access to externally funded skills provision, Work Programme providers should share details of its use and impact.

Consequently, NIACE recommends that the DWP:

• commissions a survey of the skills needs of Jobcentre Plus customers just prior to their referral to the Work Programme;
• regularly publishes details of the skills provision accessed by Work Programme participants, with the support of Work Programme providers; and
• commissions research to ascertain the impact of skills interventions towards enabling Work Programme participants to secure and sustain employment.

Further recommendations from NIACE, given the necessity of acquiring skills to get and sustain jobs, are that:

• the Skills Funding Agency, Local Enterprise Partnerships and Provider Representative Organisations organise events through which Work Programme providers and learning providers can meet and initiate partnership working;
• on entry to the Work Programme, every individual is given an English/ ESOL (English for speakers of Other Languages) and maths skills assessment and, where individuals are found to have English/ESOL and maths needs below Level 1, they are supported in-house or referred to a learning provider to address these needs;
• Work Programme providers encourage and make it possible for other participants, through partnership working with local learning providers, to develop their English/ESOL, maths, ICT, employability and vocational skills to higher levels to equip them to secure the jobs available within their local labour market that are more likely to be sustained; and
• Work Programme providers facilitate the continuation of any skills provision begun by participants prior to their referral onto the Work Programme.

Full text (PDF 44pp)

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