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ITEM No
/ 4iTITLE OF REPORT
/ Tackling Worklessness Review – Interim FindingsMeeting of / Salford Strategic Partnership Executive
Meeting Date / 14th January 2009
Contact Officer / Chris Marsh, Director of Community Regeneration
Contact Details / 0161 793 2692,
1. Recommendations
1.1 That the Executive note the report and offer any views or comments on the Tackling Worklessness review and the response submitted to the interim review.
2. Purpose of this Report
2.1 To inform the LSP Executive of the Tackling Worklessness Review interim findings and ensure engagement in the next stages of the review and implementation process.
3. Tackling Worklessness Review
3.1 The interim report of the Houghton Review “Tackling Worklessness - A review of the contribution and role of Local Authorities and Partnerships”
3.2 This review was commissioned by DCLG in the summer of 2008 and has been chaired by Cllr Stephen Houghton, leader of Barnsley Council. The interim report of the review has set out initial findings on what more Local Authorities and their partners can do to tackle worklessness. These have focused on:-
· The need to integrate mainstream employment and skills services with wider Local Authority support to help those with complex needs – a ‘wrap around’ approach, and the need for co commissioning arrangements to drive this;
· A need to ensure Working Neighbourhood Fund is being used innovatively and to best effect and that the transition from Neighbourhood Renewal Fund commitments to Worklessness, skills and enterprise focus is being managed effectively, such as to give Government confidence that 2009/10 will be a delivery year. (this has been a clear objective of our Area Based Grant review work);
· A need for more radical measures to areas which have suffered from wider economic decline, including the suggestion of more resources from Government via a new ‘Challenge Fund’ (reminiscent of the City Challenge concept);
· The need for greater continuity of funding and more sustained periods of programme operation;
· The need for a greater focus on particularly excluded groups, and Black and Minority Ethnic Groups in particular;
3.3 The thrust of the review and the basis of the recommendations are generally very consistent with the direction we have taken in Salford as a result of the ‘Connecting People’ agenda. We can therefore be confident that we are ‘ahead of the game’ in this area of work. We have emphasised this in our response by setting out a ‘good practice case study’ feature on the Working Neighbourhoods Team model as an example of how practically some of the reviews recommendations can be taken forward and also a triangle of intervention’ diagram.
3.4 A response to the interim review was developed and submitted with the support of the Chair of the LSP Executive, Cllr Merry, who is also the lead Member for Salford City Council for issues relating to worklessness. This response is attached as appendix 1 to this report. It is hoped that this will enable our work in Salford to influence the national agenda as the Tackling Worklessness Review reaches its closing stages.
3.5 The Executive’s views on the framework and the response to the interim review would be appreciated to support the ongoing dialogue we anticipate with CLG and to support a response to the final of the review, which is expected to be published in March 2009.
4. Background Documents
4.1 Tackling Worklessness Review Interim Report – A review of the contribution and role of Local Authorities and Partnerships
Response to the interim report on behalf of Partners IN Salford
5. Implications for delivering the 7 Community Plan themes
5.1 The work of the review will have significant implications across themes, as worklessness is recognised as the key driver of deprivation and the review will signal developments in policy and delivery arrangements.
Appendix 1
DRAFT
TACKLING WORKLESSNESS REVIEW
Key points of response to consultation from Salford City Council/Partners IN Salford
1. General points
1.1. We welcome the interim review report and support its focus on the important role of Local Authorities and the underlying principles that run through the interim report of integration, co – commissioning and continuity of support for workless people. Our view is that integration within the employment and skills commissioning and delivery system, and between it and wider public service systems is critical to success so we were pleased to see this feature strongly. We would emphasise that the wider public service system needs stronger incentives to engage on worklessness, and that this is fundamental to their potential to achieve their own objectives and targets (for example on health inequality, crime reduction, teenage pregnancy, educational attainment..).
1.2. We support the assertion that more radical measures are required to deal with areas which have suffered from wider economic decline. We welcome the potential for further resources targeted on the most disadvantaged areas.
We would support the principle of further funding being allocated to areas where there is a combination of clear need, clarity of vision and plausible delivery plans. We would hope that any ‘Challenge Fund’ arrangements could avoid the pitfalls of previous ‘beauty contests’ between the country’s most deprived areas and instead encourage collaboration across areas on similar challenges – particularly in a city regional context where we are trying to collaborate rather than compete on resources and ideas. It will also be important that any Challenge Fund arrangements allow for local flexibility, reflecting the fact that even between one deprived area and another, drivers and circumstances may be different. Our own work to interrogate this in Salford, through a service reform model called Spotlight, has illustrated this for us very clearly. We are happy to discuss this evidence base further.
1.3. We support the focus of the review on tackling rising unemployment but we believe that the final report could make clearer the relationship (and distinction) between this and the highly intensive efforts required to deal with deep seated concentrations of worklessness. Critically we believe that the final report should make clear that our mission should be to take these challenges forward together, rather than trading these issues off against each other.
Whilst nationally the concern is that we may return to levels of unemployment in the region of 1 in every 10 people, we are extremely challenged in Salford by the fact that for a persistent period we have had areas with as much as 1 in 2 people of working age on out of work benefits. Section 2.1.of this response provides more detail on this point which we hope is useful to you.
1.4. We welcome the proposed steps to drive forward rapid progress and the focus on collective action and co - commissioning as a central feature. However we believe that there is a need for more emphasis on developing mechanisms for incentivising collective accountability across commissioners and providers and across a wider range of public services (not just DWP/JCP, LSC and Local Authorities), rather than just the focus on scrutinising provider performance suggested at step 1 (page 13) and the ‘narrow’ perspective of co commissioning suggested at step 2 (DWP, LSC. WNF).
This would enable greater scope to recognise the critical role that RSL’s, PCT’s and Children’s Services etc.. can and should play in tackling worklessness and would need to be supported at Central Government level through support from DCSF, DIUS and DH in relation to LAA’s and mainstream performance management and regulation processes for these local public services.
1.5. We welcome the acknowledgement that the pace of change in tackling worklessness has been greater in areas undergoing regeneration and that some excellent practice has developed. However, we believe the review should acknowledge more clearly that progress through our regeneration and renewal efforts has not been great enough to deal with the concentrations affecting deprived areas[1] and that this area of neighbourhood renewal activity demands improved performance if cycles of deprivation are to be reversed.
This in itself presents a case for a different and more radical approach within public service and regeneration policy and programmes and in delivery arrangements on the ground. Clearly, proposals for Welfare Reform will introduce a more radical approach but this will need to be complemented by wider policy and delivery interventions. Section 2.2 of this response offers our ideas about how this issue could be addressed in the context of regeneration programmes and incentivising collective action across public services.
1.6. We recognise the importance of managing a transition from previous models of use of Neighbourhood Renewal Fund to a ‘Working Neighbourhoods’ agenda. We would suggest that the final review may support the view that many Authorities will take that, at least in part, this transition should be about bending investments in wider neighbourhood renewal activity (youth work, health inequalities etc..) toward an integrated effort on the ground.
1.7. We welcome any potential measures that could provide our partners with more flexibility to support local delivery arrangements where required and this would greatly support our Working Neighbourhoods Team model. We also welcome the potential for greater flexibility in the use of resources and in the more creative use of benefits expenditure as proposed on page 19 of the interim review.
1.8. We welcome the focus on public sector employment and we believe we have model in Salford that can be replicated nationally, particularly in relation to public sector Academies we have developed to enable access to the workforce for local unemployed people. For example we have developed horticulture and customer contact Academies that have been highly successful.
1.9. We would suggest that the final stages of the review could focus more on demand side measures and the role of local businesses and the relationships between public sector agencies and employers. Improving quality and reducing fragmentation in this work has to be a vital part of the agenda, in particular in relation to tackling rising unemployment, but also in dealing with negative perceptions of people from deprived areas.
1.10. We would suggest strongly that the publication of policy guidance or additional programme resources will not be enough to develop a transformational approach to worklessness. Our view is that significant attention needs to be dedicated to the task of translating policy into integrated delivery arrangements on the ground which enable a ‘common but flexible’ approach to the challenging issues of long term worklessness across the country.
We would suggest that this important space between policy and delivery is an area in which the initial efforts of the new National Task Force and Regional Improvement and Efficiency Partnerships could be focused.
2. Specific suggestions to add value to the review
2.1. Tackling rising unemployment v deep seated worklessness
A key policy and delivery challenge for Government, City Regions, Local Authorities and partners in the coming years will be to establish effective arrangements to support people who have fallen out of work, to minimise the impact of unemployment and to support their return to economic activity.
We believe it will be critical that this happens alongside a continued focus on challenge of tackling deep seated worklessness and joint work in areas where there is an apparent ‘culture of worklessness’ which limits life chances and places pressure on all public services.
In Salford’s case, not retaining this focus on those furthest away would be to abandon a key regeneration objective for the City Council and Partners. It would also fundamentally limit our potential to deal with critical social issues such as child poverty, teenage pregnancy, health inequalities and crime and disorder reduction.
Clearly these two tasks are inter – related and should be addressed through the ‘common spine’ of coordinated commissioning and delivery which is helpfully proposed in the interim report. However, whilst we acknowledge that dealing with unemployment will require a level of integration and coordination of supply and demand side interventions, to reflect the wider impacts of unemployment on households and individuals, we believe that the intensity and degree of integration is likely to be much greater and more geographically focused for people who experience very long term worklessness.
We believe that it would be helpful if the final report could provide clear policy direction on this crucial issue by:-
a) Making clear the need to take forward rising unemployment and deep seated worklessness together, as key national and local policy objectives;
b) Developing further the concept of ‘tiered approach’ which is outlined on pages 12/13 of the interim review, by identifying a desired continuum from ‘tier 1’ - universal support services, ‘tier 2’ – greater coordination of commissioning and delivery to deal with rising unemployment and ‘tier 3’ - very high levels of public service integration to deal with the concentrations of worklessness (see fig 1. and Working Neighbourhood Teams case study below).
This approach to scales of intervention is now common to commissioning of Health and Social Care and Children’s Services, through the ‘inverted triangle of care’ and adaptations of it. The strategic long term aim of working within this model of commissioning and delivery is to reduce the need for expensive and complex interventions at tier 3 by investing in preventative ‘upstream’ measures.
We have developed Fig 1. below, which illustrates how we could innovate with the ‘inverted triangle of care’ to reflect the points made above and the direction of the interim report, including the ‘common spine’ referred to at page 12. We would suggest this may be helpful in supporting translation of policy to delivery and to help build local capacity.
Fig 1: Continuum of employment and skills delivery
In terms of the tier 3, highly integrated support, Manchester’s Multi Area Agreement is supporting the development of Working Neighbourhood Teams, which are a ‘whole - system’ public service response with the role of local communities at its heart. The case study below refers and may be helpful in the final report of the review.
Case study: Working Neighbourhood Teams – a highly integrated mainstream response