APPENDIX 33
Letter to the Chairman from the Papworth
Trust (EDP 43A)
Dear Sir Archy Kirkwood,
NEW DEAL
FOR DISABLED
PEOPLE
The inquiry "Employment for all: assisting
people with health problems and disabilities into work" has
been set up to review the success of government programmes supporting
people into work. I understand that you are Chairman of the Committee
carrying out the inquiry.
The Papworth Trust has made a formal submission
to the inquiry, but I felt it was important to write to you directly
to highlight, in particular, the impact of current contracting
arrangements for New Deal for Disabled People (NDDP) on voluntary
sector providers like ourselves. I would hope that other organisations
might also be able to learn from our experiences.
In short, Papworth was successful in winning
a contract to deliver NDDP across the Eastern region from July
2001 in partnership with five other charities. Papworth established
four new regional offices and recruited 25 employment advisers
with the aim of helping 3,400 disabled people into work over a
three year period.
Over the first 18 months, Papworth has had to
subsidise this government programme by £700,000—charitable
funding which would have provided additional and much needed services
for disabled people. We are now faced with major restructuring
of the programme with the likelihood of redundancy for at least
15 staff for the programme to become viable. This restructuring
is based on research we have carried out on our own behalf with
little support from government. It will almost certainly require
us to support, through New Deal, only those people who are ready
for work and to exclude people with more substantial training
or support needs.
Although small on a national scale (annual turnover
of £8 million), Papworth is a professional and well managed
organisation and we have successfully delivered the WORKSTEP programme
over many years. While some operational lessons have been learnt
by us during this process of setting up New Deal, I believe the
main factors which have contributed to this situation have been:
1. Information was available from the initial
pilots for New Deal but the analysis was inadequate and it was
communicated too late to inform the bidding process. It is now
clear that the pool of eligible and work-ready candidates is substantially
smaller than originally estimated.
2. The bidding process was carried out by
inexperienced staff in the Employment Service. Papworth was persuaded
to expand the scale of its bid significantly to provide regional
coverage, based on the unrealistic assumptions of the size of
the candidate pool and the likely success rate of getting people
into work.
3. The payment structure has placed a huge
financial burden on providers like Papworth. Only a small amount
of funding is received up-front when clients are registered (£100),
compared to the two larger payments (of £1,800 each) when
people start work and have remained in work for six months. In
practice, we have to invest significant time in training and work
preparation before people are able to enter employment.
4. There is a reduced payment (50%) where
people enter part-time work, despite requiring as much support
and also being a more viable option for many disabled people when
moving into work.
5. Central marketing for NDDP was promised
but not delivered. This had a significant impact on the initial
uptake and self-referrals to the programme. The awareness of the
programme amongst the target group continues to be a problem.
6. There has been a lack of co-ordination,
sharing of information and best practice between Jobcentre Plus
and providers. Little has been done to date to improve the poor
results across large parts of the country, despite some success
stories from which providers—and more importantly disabled
people—could have benefited before now.
Papworth remains committed to helping disabled
people live independent lives and supporting people into work.
However, we believe that we have had to bear the cost of the failure
by Jobcentre Plus to work effectively in partnership with providers
or to address the fundamental flaws in the way NDDP was set up.
If there is an opportunity to address the enquiry,
we would be happy to contribute, as we believe there are important
lessons to be learnt by government from our painful experience.
Yours sincerely,
Gordon Lister
Chief Executive
3 February 2003
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