Joint Memorandum submitted by DfEE, DSS,
ES and BA Officials (SG 6)
INTRODUCTION
The Prime Minister announced the introduction
of the Single Work-focused Gateway at the Labour Party Conference
in September 1998. Subsequently, a DSS/DfEE command document entitled
A new contract for welfare: The Gateway to Work was published
in October 1998. This set out the proposals in more detail.
The Gateway to Work explained what was
meant by a Single Work-focused Gateway: a bringing together of
the Employment Service, Benefits Agency, local authorities and
other welfare providers to give benefit claimants of working age
a more seamless and coherent service. The document also outlined
the Government's priority to forge an entirely new culture which
puts work first. This means a fundamental shift in the way we
support clients of working age: work for those who can, security
for those who cannot.
A series of pilots will test cut the Single
Work-focused Gateway approach. Four of these will be operational
from June 1999, with a further eight, testing two variants on
the basic model, beginning in November 1999. In these pilot areas,
all new claimants of working age who are out of work will be given
a personal adviser, who will be able to provide information and
support in a number of areas, including work, benefits, tax credits,
housing and training. The aim will be for the personal adviser
to help the claimant plan a route back to independance, whilst
also ensuring that other welfare needs are identified and they
receive the benefits to which they are entitled.
From April 2000, subject to the successful passage
of the Welfare Reform and Pensions Bill, work-focused interviews
with the personal adviser will become a condition of receiving
benefit. The personal adviser may defer or waive an interview,
where the requirement is inappropriate to the individual's circumstances.
However, we believe that for most clients, participation in interviews
is a modest and reasonable requirement. We also believe that most
clients will welcome the opportunity to talk their situation through
with an adviser.
A cross-Departmental Ministerial group, chaired
by Andrew Smith (Minister of Employment, Welfare to Work and Equal
Opportunities), leads work on the Single Work-focused Gateway.
Implementation is being led by a project based in Sheffield. The
total amount being invested in the pilots is £112 million.
£79.5 million of this has been allocated from the Treasury's
Invest to Save budget.
This memorandum is intended to put the Single
Work-focused Gateway into its context, to describe its aims and
principles and how it is intended to work, and to provide information
in some further areas in which the joint committees have already
expressed an interest.
WELFARE REFORM
CONTEXT
The Green Paper New Ambitions for our country:
A New Contract for Welfare, was published in March 1998. It
identified key problems with the existing system and put the case
for reform. In particular, it gave five elements to the Government's
approach to help those not in work:
— Introducing a direct programme of
help to key groups through the New Deal, rebuilding welfare around
the work ethic backed up by Employment Zones. Young people, lone
parents, the long-term unemployed and people who are disabled
or have a long-term illness will be the beneficiaries.
— Developing an individualised, flexible
service for those out of work with personal advisers providing
tailor-made packages of help.
— Tackling the barriers to work faced
by workless households, including low skills, fears about the
time lag between benefits and wages, the perverse incentives which
discourage people from moving from benefits to work and the lack
of access to affordable childcare.
— Ensuring that work pays. The [then
proposed] Working Families Tax Credit offers more generous support
to working families; lower taxes for lower-paid workers will provide
incentives; the [then proposed] national minimum wage will ensure
fair pay; and a modernised National Insurance scheme will promote
work and cut red tape.
— Changing the nature of the relationship
between government and claimant. It is the responsibility of government
to provide positive help, it is the responsibility of claimants
to take it up.
Since the publication of the Green Paper, the
Government has made a start on moving towards this approach in
a number of areas and will be building on this in the coming months:
— The New Deal for Young People, which
became a national initiative in April 1998, and by the end of
January 1999 had already helped over 55,000 18-24 year olds to
find work.
— The New Deal for the Long-Term Unemployed
which had helped about 7,000 people find work by the end of January
this year.
— The New Deal for Lone Parents, which
was implemented nationally from October 1998 and in which 32,000
lone parents have already participated.
— The New Deal for Disabled People,
which is being piloted in 12 areas of the country.
— The New Deal for Partners of the
Unemployed, the voluntary element of which was introduced in pathfinder
areas earlier this year, and will become a national initiative
later this month.
— As announced in the Chancellor's
budget in March, there is also to be a New Deal for people over
the age of 50, which will begin with pathfinders this autumn.
— The introduction of the National
Minimum Wage from April this year.
— The introduction of the Working Families
Tax Credit, the Childcare Tax Credit and the Disabled Person's
Tax Credit.
— The new 10p starting rate of income
tax.
— There will be a housing green paper
forthcoming this autumn.
Piloting the Single Work-focused Gateway will
be a key element in shaping the future direction of welfare reform.
AIMS AND
PRINCIPLES OF
THE SINGLE
WORK-FOCUSED
GATEWAY
The Single Gateway is intended to contribute
to the achievement of the following success measures from the
Welfare Reform Green Paper:
— A reduction in the proportion of
working age people living in workless households; and an increase
in the number of working age people in work;
— An increase in the proportion of
lone parents, people with long term illnesses and disabled people
of working age in touch with the labour market;
— An increase in the proportion of
customers who regard the service as personalised and tailored
to their individual needs;
— An increase in collaboration between
the Employement Service and the Benefits Agency to promote jobs
not benefit dependency.
Within this context, the Single Work-focused
Gateway aims to:
— help deliver the Government's principle
"work for those who can—security for those who cannot";
— change the culture of the benefits
system towards independence and work, where appropriate, rather
than payments and dependence;
— increase the level of sustainable
employment by helping more people into work;
— put more benefit recipients in touch
with the labour market (through the intervention of their Personal
Adviser);
— improve the assessment and delivery
of benefits to ensure clients receive an individual service that
is efficient and tailored to their needs.
At a local level objectives for the Single Work-focused
Gateway (SWFG) pilots will be to:
— increase access to the labour market
for benefit recipients;
— improve the service to people of
working age entering the benefit system;
— develop a culture based on supporting
independence and work;
— maintain the security and integrity
of the benefit system; and
— provide value for money for the taxpayer.
These objectives encapsulate the principles
which lie behind the Single Work-focused Gateway. These principles
fall into two broad categories: those related to the labour market
and those related to customer service.
Aside from claimants of Jobseekers Allowance,
benefit claimants are not currently obliged to undertake any work-related
activity. Benefits put people into boxes according to the circumstances
which are causing them to claim disability, lone parenthood, caring
responsibilities, and only those who are "unemployed"
are provided with encouragement or advice to find a way off benefits
and back into the labour market. This can have the effect of marginalising
people from the labour market and encouraging an attitude of dependency.
The new approach of SWFG will change this by
building on the success of Personal Advisers in the New Deal initiatives.
These have shown that those attending interviews and making contact
with the system respond positively and often find employment.
By making a work focused interview a condition of benefit at the
start of the claim, the Single Gateway aims to nip dependency
in the bud. It will introduce an environment where the system
works with all clients, without categorising them, to help them
towards independence and work where possible—while recognising
that work will not be an achievable goal for all. It will then
periodically remind people of the help on offer by further interviews
triggered by changes in circumstances.
As part of this new approach, customers will
receive a much improved service. Currently, clients may have to
give the same information many times over to different people
to establish their claims for benefit. By offering a single, integrated
route into the benefit system, the Single Gateway aims to offer
streamlined, efficient client service.
HOW THE
SWFG WILL OPERATE
The Single Work-focused Gateway is focused on
people of working age who are not currently working or who are
working fewer than 16 hours a week on average and who are seeking
to claim any of the following benefits: Jobseekers Allowance,
Income Support, Incapacity Benefit, Housing Benefit and Council
Tax Benefit, Severe Disablement Allowance, Invalid Care Allowance
and Widows and Bereavement benefits. The Single Gateway process
will happen in two stages.
THE INITIAL
STAGE: REGISTRATION
AND ORIENTATION
When someone claims one of the benefits listed
above they will be helped by a member of staff who will establish
their personal details and decide which support is likely to be
appropriate in their particular circumstances.
At this initial stage the member of staff will:
— collect basic information, including
verifiable personal details, reasons for claiming benefit and
other details necessary for the processing of the benefit claim;
— where it is appropriate, explore
whether there are any suitable job vacancies available, which
the client could pursue immediately;
— allocate clients to a Personal Adviser
and arrange the initial work-focused interview;
— organise any special needs necessary
for the Personal Adviser interview, such as communication support,
interpreter or home visit;
— establish which benefits the client
is potentially entitled to; and
— issue the appropriate benefit claim
forms and advise the client of what additional evidence/information
they may need to provide to support their claim.
SECOND STAGE: THE
WORK-FOCUSED
INTERVIEWS
The primary objective of the work-focused interviews
will be to help as many people as possible to find work, take
up training or undertake activity designed to help them move towards
independence. The work-focused interviews will be carried out
by a personal adviser.
All clients entering the Single Work-focused
Gateway will be allocated a Personal Adviser. An appointment will
normally be arranged for an initial work-focused interview to
take place within three working days. In some cases, an immediate
work-focused interview with a Personal Adviser may be inappropriate
or insensitive (for example in the case of someone in the early
stages of recovery from a major operation or distressed due to
recent bereavement). In these situations, the interview may be
deferred until a later date.
Personal Advisers will have a continuing relationship
with their clients. They will continue to monitor the client's
progress and offer support. This will include a series of interviews,
triggered by changes in the claimant's circumstances in which
the claimaint will be required to take part. However, claimants
can have more regular interviews if they wish, and we anticipate
that they will want to take up the help which is offered to them.
In the case of those claiming Jobseekers Allowance (JSA), this
will supplement their normal contacts with the Employment Service.
Clients will be able to contact their Personal Adviser about work
related issues and any enquiries they may have about their benefits.
They will be able to report any changes of circumstances affecting
their ability to work or their benefits to their Personal Adviser
who will co-ordinate action to ensure that changes and queries
are dealt with promptly.
In interviews with their clients, Personal Advisers
will undertake an in-depth investigation and analysis of the individual's
personal circumstances and explore ways of overcoming any barriers
to work. Personal Advisers will also ensure that the client gets
the support they need, including specialist help or advice, and
help with any benefit.
The exact content of Personal Adviser interviews
will depend on the client's personal circumstances. The Personal
Adviser will undertake all or any of the following, depending
on the needs of the client:
— take the client's details and confirm
their identity for access to benefit systems;
— discuss the client's circumstances
and barriers to work and work with the client to plan how to overcome
these barriers;
— explain the advantages of working,
including providing a personalised calculation of potential in-work
income;
— discuss appropriate job vacancies;
— arrange job or training interviews;
— arrange specific training or help
for eg CV writing;
— give advice about in-work benefits
and tax credits;
— provide informatin on support or
specialist services that may be available and where appropriate
arrange meetings or give details of how they can be contacted;
— provide information about benefits
the client may be entitled to and advise client of their rights
and responsibilities when claiming benefits;
— take beneft claims for SWFG benefits
and ensure claims and supporting evidence are passed to the relevant
organisation for procesing and decision making;
— identify the need for any other interventions
and arrange them as necessary (eg New Deal, home visits required
for benefit reasons etc);
— encourage completion of child maintenance
application forms;
— agree the Jobseekers Agreement with
JSA clients and explain the usual arrangements for fortnightly
review and ongoing support from the Employment Service;
— help non-JSA clients develop a personalised
action plan which will say what they will do to improve their
employability or their independence;
— agree dates for next interview as
appropriate; and
— review what has happened since the
last interview and whether the action plan needs to be revised.
The Personal Adviser interviews will be face
to face. They should take place in a welcoming and unscreened
environment, conducive to building the relationship between Personal
Adviser and client. The Personal Adviser role requires particular
skills and attributes in dealing with people sensitively. They
will need to earn the trust of the client and to help them open
up and share relevant information so that the Personal Adviser
can provide the appropriate help or advice. Consideration will
be given to meeting special needs, for example due to disability
or domestic needs, to any security requirements or the need to
protect claimant confidentiality, when determining where the interviews
will take place.
Single Work-focused Gateway clients who have
queries relating to other benefits and services will be directed
to the relevant specialist support. The Personal Adviser may undertake
to find out information or progress the query on the client's
behalf but this will depend on local arrangements. The key principle
will be that clients are not passed from "pillar to post"
when they make an enquiry or need help.
Personal Advisers may also continue to provide
early in-work advice and support to clients who get jobs. Many
people (especially those who have never worked) find the initial
transition from benefit to employment and independence difficult.
The Personal Adviser will help them through this stage until the
client is firmly established in employment.
SWFG AND THE
NEW DEAL
The New Deal initiatives operating in the pilots
are the following: the New Deal for Young People, the New Deal
for the Long Term Unemployed, the New Deal for Lone Parents and
the New Deal for Partners of the Unemployed. The New Deal for
Disabled People is being piloted in separate areas.
Ministers want to provide the best and most
integrated service possible to claimants in the SWFG pilot areas.
This means that those eligible for New Deal help will have access
to it at the same point in their claim as those in non-SWFG areas,
but will of course already have benefited from the initial work-focused
interview.
Our aim is progressively to integrate the Single
Gateway with subsequent New Deal provision, for example working
towards continuity of Personal Adviser support where appropriate.
Our initial attention must be concentrated on getting core delivery
right, with good handover arrangements to the New Deals. We shall
adapt a by step approach to integration, starting with New Deal
for Lone Parents.
VARIANTS ON
THE BASIC
MODEL
From November 1999, we will be piloting two
variants to the basic model, each in four areas of the country.
These will test the use of call centre technology as a means of
making initial contact with the system, and the involvement of
the private and voluntary sector in leading the delivery of the
SWFG.
The variants will not test different models
for the Single Work-focused Gateway. Instead they will test different
ways of delivering this model. These different ways were selected
with the SWFG aims of improving customer service and "joining
up" provision in mind. This is within the context of the
Modernising Government White paper, which stresses that
provision of services to the public should reflect the way that
people live their lives with different public services working
toegether, not in isolation.
CALL CENTRE
VARIANT
The call centre will follow the Basic Model,
but in preference to face to face or postal contact will test
the impact of providing a wide range of services by telephone,
including data gathering. The call centre pilots will make use
of current technology, such as textphones, to support delivery
and will operate a call back facility. Clients will be sent a
copy of appropriate benefit claim forms pre-printed with the details
that they have provided, together with advice about what to do
next. The Personal Adviser interviews will then be carried out
face-to-face, as in the basic model.
This variant will build on existing and planned
initiatives in local authorities, the Employment Service and the
Benefits Agency which already make greater use of telephones to
deliver an improved service.
The call centre will operate as a virtual organisation
rather than a centralised unit. This will involve one office in
each of the four pilot areas being set up as a Call Centre site,
but being linked through harmonised IT and telephony into a single
Call Centre across the four sites, which will be seamless to the
claimants by phone. This will allow the best use of existing staff
and accommodation. The service will operate using a local call
rate (not freefone) for incoming calls and will be available from
8.30am to 4.00pm Monday to Friday.
The supply route for support and advice for
the Call Centre will be ADAPT who will be required to provide
a managed service. This will include joint management of the Call
Centre and the provision of technical solutions. The procurement
will not result in any outsourcing and there will be no transfer
of staff. The ADAPT partner will not be involved in line managing
Call Centre staff. The competition for the Call Centre service
is taking place between February and June 1999.
The Call Centre will be staffed with existing
or newly recruited ES/BA/CSA/LA staff who will continue to belong
to their "home" organisation. Postings will be either
on detached duty, loan or secondment terms.
The Call Centre will primarily be used to deliver
the initial stage: Registration and Orientation (R&O) by telephone,
which will include gathering information to support benefit claims
and Child Support applications.
In delivering R&O, the Call Centre will
split the phone call in two (a short incoming call, followed by
a full R&O in an arranged call back). This will enable the
demand of incoming calls to be managed and will allow the lengthy
interview to be conducted at our expense, not the claimant's.
A residual R&O service will be offered face
to face to all those claimants who cannot or will not use the
phone. For claimants without phones, private phones will be available
in SWFG outlets; for people with hearing difficulties a minicom
service will be available in the Call Centre; and for those whose
language is not English a translation service will be available
in the Call Centre. The Call Centre will also have the ability
to comply with the Welsh Language Act.
At a later stage, it is envisaged that the Call
Centre will offer further services. These may include:
— Reporting changes of circumstances;
and/or
— Becoming a contact centre managing
incoming post from claimants which will allow better use of staff
resources within the peaks and troughs of call demands.
PRIVATE AND
VOLUNTARY SECTOR
PARTNERSHIP VARIANT
Ministers wish to harness the enghusiasm, expertise
and knowledge of the private and voluntary sector in leading the
delivery of the SWFG in four of the 12 pilot areas. The specific
objective of this variant is for the private and voluntary sector
organisations to work in partnership with each other in developing
innovative and flexible ways of delivering SWFG. The successful
consortia will also need to work in close partnership with the
public sector, ie the "client side" of ES, BA and the
local authorities, to ensure seamless delivery. However, it is
up to bidders to form their own partnerships and to decide how
they want to involve the many different interests in the actual
delivery of the Single Work-focused Gateway.
Innovative proposals are being invited (as a
minimum) for the delivery of the Registration and Orientation
stage of SWFG and the initial work focused interview by personal
advisers. Proposals are also being encouraged in the following
main areas:
— additional help and support in areas
such as childcare, specialist help for disadvantaged groups, enhancing
New Deal for Lone Parents, coaching for job applications and interviews;
— work focused help for non-Jobseekers
Allowance claimants who request it voluntarily after the initial
interview, including and in addition to the compulsory repeat
interviews from April 2000 (subject to legislation); and
— opportunities to add value to core
Employment Service and Benefits Agency functions, for example
handling front of office customer enquiries about benefits, in
partnership with ES and BA, but without taking over the management
or control of these core functions. Proposals in this area will
be developed in consultation with the Agencies.
Successful bidders must be able to meet the
specific needs of all of the client group and are expected
to provide a SWFG service to the same standard as the other pilots.
In these pilot areas, it will be the successful private and voluntary
sector bidders rather than the Employment Service, Benefits Agency
and local authorities who will be in the lead developing partnerships
which will bring a full range of specialist advice guidance and
expertise to SWFG delivery. Strong encouragement is being given
to shortlisted bidders to embody partnership principles in their
approach to the operation of SWFG through:
— a statement of requirement that emphasises
the need for partnership working at all levels to ensure a quality
service for all clients;
— final bid assessment areas that clearly
point to partnership as being a key element being sought when
assessing bids;
— a negotiation stage, of the competition
process that is centrally co-ordinated but conducted locally,
and which encourages the development of partnerships in the local
context.
The purpose of the negotiations with bidders
is to enable them to develop proposals that are innovative in
design, take account of local issues and are acceptable in terms
of being feasible for implementation by November 1999. We therefore
anticipate that all the final proposals we receive will be broadly
acceptable.
It is proposed that the focus for final assessment
should be on the following three areas:
— innovative ideas and the potential
for added value within SWFG;
— breadth of partnerships including
proposals for working inclusively with other private/voluntary
organisations and the public sector; and
— value for money—ie the balance
of quality, cost and risk and the potential to bring additional
sources of funding to add value.
The following key high level assessment areas
have also been communicated to all shortlisted bidders:
(a) the extent to which the strategic policy
underpinning SWFG is carried through into the proposals and their
credibility;
(b) the extent to which proposals show an
understanding of the client groups and local economy—meeting
the needs of the entire client group and with the capacity for
individual tailoring/claimant motivation;
(c) proposals/additional potential for innovation
and added value;
(d) proposed approach for working with local
private/voluntary and public sector partners at strategic, advisory
and delivery level—including proposals for working with
ES, BA and LA client side;
(e) proposed management and organisational
arrangements/structure;
(f) how the quality of provision will be
assured;
(g) proposed costs—including proposals
for funding and payment mechanisms; response to any agreed incentives;
plans to secure additional funding in order to support enhanced
delivery;
(h) proposals to meet the defined critical
success measures;
(i) evidence of performance in previous relevant
contracts with the agencies, local authorities or other organisations
(through access to management information, taking up references
etc).
Detailed criteria to underpin these areas will
be developed and agreed with the SWFG Project Board over the next
few months as the specification is refined.
LEGISLATION
TO UNDERPIN
THE POLICY
A clause in the Welfare Reform and Pensions
Bill will enable us to require claimants of income support, housing
benefit, council tax benefit, widow's and bereavement benefits,
incapacity benefit, severe disablement allowance and invalid care
allowance to participate in Personal Adviser interviews as a condition
of receiving benefit. Claimants will be required to take part
in an interview at the point of claim and further interviews at
certain trigger points during the claim, such as when the youngest
child of a lone parent reaches school age. The exact trigger points
will be specified in secondary legislation. Claimants will be
considered to have taken part in an interview if they provide
information in areas which affect their employability (for example,
previous work history and current barriers to work). There will
be no requirement on claimants (other than those claiming Jobseekers
Allowance) to undertake any further action. They will not be required
to seek work or to take any job.
The legislation does not cover claimants of
Jobseekers Allowance, who will be subject to the same requirements
as they are now: in other words, being available for and actively
seeking work.
Subject to the successful passage of the Bill,
we intend to introduce this requirement into all the pilot areas
from April 2000.
DELIVERING
THE POLICY
Criteria for selection of pilot areas
The selection of pilot areas was based on a
set of criteria which included the following:
— sufficient numbers and range of clients
(for example: jobseekers, lone parents) to allow meaningful evaluation;
— no "competing" pilots which
would influence the local labour flows;
— a range of labour market types (for
example: urban and rural, high and low unemployment);
— the ability to match pilot locations
to control locations;
— whilst recognising that no local
authority, Benefits Agency or Employment Service area would be
completely without new commitments, selection sought to avoid
conflicting pilots which could distort evaluation results and
influence local labour flows; and
— areas were sought where there were
already good joint working arrangements between local authorities,
the Benefits Agency and the Employment Service.
All pilot areas are based on Benefits Agency
boundaries. The Benefits Agency, Employment Service, local authority,
Child Support Agency and Inland Revenue areas involved are listed
at Annex B.
Ministers from both Departments have undertaken
a programme of visits to the pilot areas. These visits have included
meetings with staff and managers who will be responsible for delivering
the policy, local authorities, trade unions and groups representing
client's interests.
Single Work-focused Gateway delivery sites
The Single Work-focused Gateway basic model
will be delivered in a variety of premises belonging to the Employment
Service, the Benefits Agency and Local Authorities. Not every
available ES, BA or LA site will be used. The delivery sites were
selected on the basis of a number of criteria and on the advice
of local Benefits Agency, Employment Service and local authority
managers. These included providing high quality environments by
June and every centre (ie town) with an ES, BA or LA site having
at least one SWFG delivery site. The sites were chosen on this
basis so as to avoid inconvenience as far as possible. In other
words, it was sought to make them accessible by public transport.
For people who are unable to attend an office alternatives will
be available, although home visits would be an exception rather
than the norm.
The choice of delivery sites for the private
and voluntary sector pilots is a decision for bidders. We will
not know for certain which sites are selected until the announcement
of the successful bidders in September.
All four call centre variant pilot areas have
identified a preferred location for the call centre and work is
ongoing with Estates Strand to finalise the selection. In each
area the call centre will be in open plan accommodation with comfort
heating and cooling with space set aside for rest areas for staff.
Up to date telephony and new IT together with new furniture will
provide R&O staff with the tools to test the Welfare Reform
principle of "a way for people to make initial contact with
the system . . . carrying out parts of the process with greater
use of the telephone".
In the call centre pilot areas local implementation
teams have been provided with guidance to choose the most appropriate
sites for Personal Advisers in their area. Further work to firm
up initial views is ongoing to ensure the sites fully meet the
selecton criteria for delivering PA activity.
RECRUITMENT OF
SINGLE WORK-FOCUSED
GATEWAY PERSONAL
ADVISERS
Post Filling Guidance
Guidance has been issued on how to fill Registration
and Orientation and Personal Adviser posts for the basic model
variants; this covers:
— detailed job specificatons and descriptions
for both the Registration and Orientation and Personal Adviser
posts outlining the relevant competencies required and draft job
adverts;
— a set of guiding principles outlining
how staff from different partners will work alongside each other
covering issues such as Terms and Conditions of Employment (staff
will remain on their current employers terms and conditions),
arrangements for appraisal, eligibility for promotion exercises
etc;
— joint selection procedures for selecting
staff with the right skills and knowledge for the Single Gateway
posts regardless of which partner currently employs them;
— the selection process itself and
how this should be handled jointly at a local level;
— monitoring arrangements for the post
filling exercise.
The post filling process has now begun (the
first adverts went out on 5 March), staff from the Employment
Service, Benefits Agency, Child Support Agency and local authorities
have been invited to apply. Sifting and interviewing are to take
place during April with the aim of identifying successful candidates
by end April/early May.
The selection process will involve sifting and
interviewing against an agreed competency framework and will be
a joint process. Information has been given to all staff on how
to provide evidence of their suitability against combined competence
frameworks. Implementation teams have provided, where necessary,
workshops on how to submit evidence of competence to help LA candidates
who may not be used to this method of selection.
Local authority candidates will be able to apply
for Single Gateway posts, even wher LAs are not yet opening their
own SWFG outlets. Successful candidates from local authorities
will work under a secondment arrangement to cover both funding
and management.
Grading
Both Registration and Orientation (R&O)
and Personal Adviser posts have been graded by both Agencies.
Registration and Orientation posts have been graded at Executive
Officer/B3 in BA and at Management Pay Band 7 in ES (which is
one of the ES Management Pay bands that falls within the overall
Executive Officer grade). Personal Adviser posts have been graded
at Executive Officer/B3 in BA and at MPB6 in ES (which is also
ES Management pay band that falls within the overall Executive
Officer grade).
Pay
People from differnent Agencies who fill SWFG
adviser posts will be paid at different rates for doing the same
job because they will remain on their own "home agency"
terms and conditions during the pilots. We will be reviewing this
situation during the course of the pilots.
Agency pay scales already differ for staff doing
comparable jobs, and they also differ within Agencies for staff
doing the same job, depending on the length of time and performance.
Civil Service agencies and Local Authorities have devolved responsibility
for pay and grading and issues on pay comparability between agencies,
or between agencies and LAs, should be seen in the context of
those arrangements, rather than SWFG.
Recruitment for the Call Centre Variant
Intitial planning has begun on how to approach
post filling in the call centre variant and guidance for managers
is being drafted (due to be issued mid April). The vacancy filling
process will be similar to that used for the basic model. There
will be joint agency/LA sifting and interviewing, with posts advertised
across the partner agencies/LAs in the Call Centre variant Districts.
Recruitment for the Private/Voluntary Sector variant
Until such time as bids are received from the
private and voluntary sectors for delivery of SWFG services, it
is not possible to determine exactly implications for staff. However,
a commitment has been made that staff wil not have to transfer
out of their organisation if they do not wish to, and if they
choose to be seconded to another organisation, this will not harm
their opportunities for returning to their original one.
Consultation with unions
There has been extensive consultation with Trade
Unions throughout the development of these arrangements and this
will continue.
TRAINING FOR
THE SINGLE
WORK-FOCUSED
GATEWAY ADVISERS
The success of the Single Work-focused Gateway
will ride on the expertise of the people who are running it. Advisers
will be supporting a diverse client group, with diverse needs.
This calls for a wide variety of skills, which in turn requires
thorough training. The Personal Advisers involved in the Gateway
will be thoroughly trained in the relevant competencies, knowledge
and skills. The Employment Service, the Benefits Agency and the
Child Support Agency are working together to produce a programme
of learning for personal advisers. Through the pilot schemes,
we will be testing and refining it, to make sure that it works
in practice. We are also consulting outside organisations (such
as Gingerbread, Scope and Carer's National Association) and other
Departments (such as the Department of Health) to get their expert
input into the training process.
Advisers will bring a good deal of existing
expertise to their roles. Those who come from the Employment Service
will be well versed in identifying vacancies and matching claimants
to them. Those from the Benefits Agency will be more used to dealing
sensitively with disabled people, lone parents and widows. Those
from local authorities will know more about issues related to
housing. In addition we hope that a number of SWFG Personal Advisers
will be recruited from existing New Deals and so will already
have expertise in providing support to clients.
It will therefore be important for advisers
to identify the strengths they already have and to work on areas
about which they know less. To help them to do this, Personal
Advisers and their line managers will work through the SWFG Learning
Assessment Framework which will assist them to identify the appropriate
learning to achieve the level of competence required to become
a SWFG personal adviser. This learning will be arranged by managers
and delivered locally.
All Personal Advisers will attend a SWFG specific
training event. This event will last between 4 and 5 days, and
will cover, amongst other things, working in partnership, the
SWFG processes and the role of the adviser within the processes,
the purpose and content of the work-focused interview, what the
SWFG will mean for claimants, benefits, caseloading and contacts
and an overview of the technology to be used. SWFG specific training
commences in late April 1999.
Every Personal Adviser will be invited to attend
an event to give them information and advice to deal effectively
with the special needs of some SWFG clients including, eg: bereavement,
caring for sick relatives and children, drug and alcohol problems,
disability issues, mental health issues, HIV/AIDS issues etc.
In addition to these core events SWFG Personal
Advisers will undertake additional training in those areas necessary
to ensure that they have the appropriate balance of skills (for
example some ES staff will need additional training in BA administered
benefits, some BA and local authority staff in interviewing and
submitting clients for jobs).
Within the Single Gateway, advisers will also
have the scope to draw on the help of specialists, such as Disability
Employment Advisers in the Employment Service. Personal Advisers
will continue to undertake training once they are in post to build
on the skills they have. In addition, advisers will be working
towards NVQ Level 3 in "Guidance", gathering evidence
of competence from work-related activities.
EVALUATING
THE POLICY
There are two main aims of the evaluation of
Single Work-focused Gateway:
1. To test the feasibility of delivering
Single Work-focused Gateway in the different variations (the Basic
model and its two variants, the Call-centre and Private/Voluntary
sector models); and
2. To test the effectiveness of the different
models in improving both the quality and quantity of the labour
market participation of people of working age.
In line with the objectives of SWFG, the main
questions that the evaluation will seek to answer are:
A To what extent does Single Work-focused
Gateway put more benefit recipients in touch with the labour market
through the intervention of their personal adviser?
B To what extent does Single Work-focused
Gateway lead to an increase in the sustainable level of employment
by getting more benefit recipients into work?
C To what extent does Single Work-focused
Gateway ensure that more claimants experience an effective, efficient
service that is tailored to their personal needs?
D To what extent does Single Work-focused
Gateway change the culture of the benefits system and the general
public towards independence and work rather than payments and
financial dependence?
E How cost effective are the different Single
Work-focused Gateway models?
As the introduction of SWFG involves radical
changes to information gathering and review processes associated
with benefit delivery, an additional objective of the evaluation
will be to consider the impact of SWFG on the security and intergrity
of the benefit system and the extent to which this is maintained.
THE APPROACH
USED IN
THE EVALUATION
Of the three possible approaches to evaluating
the Single Work-focused Gateway pilots, the most appropriate is
to use comparison areas. This involves comparing the outcomes
of participants in the pilot areas with those for similar people
from other, comparable areas.
In addition, the evaluation will seek to compare
results from the non-compulsory and compulsory phases of Single
Work-focused Gateway (for the basic model in particular), to attempt
to identify the independent effect of introducing compulsion to
the pilots.
USE OF
EXISTING DATA
SOURCES
It will be possible to use existing data sources:
first, to help monitor SWFG; secondly, to look at its links with
other aspects of the Welfare Reform programme; and thirdly, to
answer some of the evaluation questions.
However, as the SWFG pilots are testing out
a new approach, no existing sources will be able to monitor fully
SWFG, or provide answers to all of the evaluation questions. Most
of the questions will need to be answered by collecting new data
as part of the SWFG evaluation.
DIFFERENT ELEMENTS
OF THE
EVALUATION
The evaluation will comprise four complementary
elements: a delivery evaluation; a policy evaluation; cost-benefit
analysis and a database.
The delivery evaluation will have two components:
social research and operational research. Social research will
be conducted with SWFG claimants and staff to assess people's
experience and views of the services and difficulties with delivering
the service. Operational research will examine the cost and operational
effectiveness of the different variants.
The policy evaluation will test the impact of
Single Work-focused Gateway in improving labour market participation
of people of working age. It will comprise a programe of quantitative
and qualitative research including a survey of SWFG claimants
(in pilot areas) and non-claimants (in control areas); in-depth
interviews with SWFG claimants, and research with employers.
Cost-benefit analysis will draw upon data on
labour markets, benefit receipt and other elements of the evaluation
to measure effectiveness and efficiency of Single Work-focused
Gateway.
The SWFG evaluation database will support the
formal evaluation of SWFG through the provision of specialist
analysis and a flexible sampling frame for evaluation surveys;
provide regular and ad hoc analyses to help monitor Single Work-focused
Gateway and answer questions on it prior to the results of formal
evaluation being made available; and provide a means to look at
the joint impact of Single Work-focused Gateway and the various
New Deal initiatives.
THE ROLE
OF MANAGEMENT
INFORMATION
Management information (MI) will provide timely
and regular information on the progress of SWFG in a fixed format,
covering a set reporting period. The database should be able to
provide similar information, but in a more flexible way: it will
complement MI information and be a cost-effective way of building
up a rich source of data that can support other aspects of the
evaluation.
We will need to build up a sufficient amount
of MI data to make a statistically reliable assessment of the
impact of SWFG on movements on and off benefits, which is likely
to take until early spring 2001.
TIMING OF
THE EVALUATION
It is essential to wait for the operation of
the pilots to stabilise before attempting to evaluate them. We
need to wait for a minimum of three months (preferably more) before
starting fieldwork in order to allow each pilot model to stabilise.
Where new data is being collected for the evaluation,
fieldwork will begin in November 1999, and will end in summer
2001. The busiest periods of fieldwork will be winter 1999-2000
(for the non-compulsory evaluation), and autumn 2000 (compulsory
evaluation).
Early, qualitative findings on the non-compulsory
pilots should be available at the end of 1999, for the Basic model,
and by summer 2000, for the two variants. Quantitative findings
on the non-compulsory pilots (for the Basic model only) should
start to emerge from autumn 2000.[1]
The first, qualitative findings on the compulsory
pilots should be available in winter 2000-01. Quantitative findings
on the compulsory pilots should start to emerge from summer 2001.
Final reports from all elements of the evaluation should be available
by mid-2002, with summary information available by the end of
2001.
1 The dates listed are when findings will be available
internally. The exact publication strategy is still to be decided
but results will be made available as soon as possible. Back
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