Examination of Witnesses (Questions 360-379)
MR GARETH
PARRY, MR
DAVID KNIGHT,
MR DUNCAN
SHRUBSOLE AND
MR RICHARD
PACE
28 MARCH 2007
Q360 Chairman: The Personal Community
Development Programme. Who funds that?
Mr Shrubsole: It is DfES funding
for adult education colleges.[31]
Mr Parry: I think it is the Learning
and Skills Council that finances that. I think it has got a budget
of about £210 million.
Q361 Mr Chaytor: I want to ask finally
about the concept of demand-led learning, and this phrase comes
through a lot in Leitch. Is that relevant to the people you are
working with? If they were offered a learning account, would they
be able to use that funding productively, would they be able to
accurately identify what they are going to do and know where to
go for it? Is there a relevant concept to homeless people?
Mr Knight: I think there are two
separate things there. I guess it comes down to what we mean by
"demand-led". Is it demand-led by the individual or
demand-led by the economy, if you like? We very much focus on
what employers want and then back that into the system, if you
like, as opposed to someone coming to us and saying, "Hey,
I want to become an astronaut, how do I become an astronaut?"
We look at the demand in the local community economy, work closely
with employers and then work with the individuals to help them
find the available opportunities rather than something that is
fairly generic, and then make sure that they have got the right
training and development that equips them to get that task. If
that is what demand-led means, that is absolutely critical, and
we cannot divorce what any of us do from the real world. One of
the key issues is, yes, Leitch talks about demand-led, but what
does it really mean in reality. The individual learning account—
Mr Parry: The individual learning
account gives the individual choice, which is a very important
dimension. I think there is a very simple issue with individual
learning accounts, which is what is the value of the individual
learning account and what will it actually buy you? If it is £150
you might be able to buy the occasional Learndirect programme,
but there is not going to be an awful lot outside of college short
courses and vocational voluntary sector short courses. As soon
as you get into things like NVQs, particularly if you are somebody
who has had a Level 2 qualification in the past and acquired a
disability, you are an adult learner or you are trying to get
back into work, the mainstream funding regime does not support
you. If you have got an individual learning account voucher for
£200, realistically that is not going to buy you very much.
It can contribute to something and help with direction, but I
think there has got to be a pragmatism here as to what value an
individual learning account would get you. If an individual learning
account, if we were to dream a little, could get us five, six,
seven hundred pounds, then I think there is some real value-added
learning that an individual could buy with that that could fundamentally
change their lives.
Mr Knight: What is key with that
is to make sure that person gets the right advice and guidance
to make sure they use it effectively.
Mr Shrubsole: I agree, demand
comes from both sides, and too often we have programmes which
look either just to the employer, or just to the individual and
do not link the two up. There is potential within Train to Gain,
it has had teething problems but there is potential that that
might be a way along the process. We have been talking to DfES
about whether an adapted Train to Gain model could be used to
work not just with employers, as it is now, but to work with homeless
people themselves in order to get that brokering about looking
at what are the employment opportunities in the local area and
working with the individual, what sort of skills they have, and
link them up. We think there is a potential role there. People
do want to do courses and learning where they can see that there
is a job that they can get to at the end of it, but, equally,
that has to relate to where they are. To use an example, Crisis
runs a social enterprise cafe to help people move into work. We
set it up with Pret a" Manger. We needed people who knew
what they were doing about catering, and the manager was a Pret
a" Manger manager and we always say she knew what standards
you have to be to serve customers and serve food and then work
back to where the individual was to help them reach it. A lot
of programmes just try and work up and make allowances. You have
got to train people up so they can work in the workforce to the
standard you need to meet that employer demand and product demand
and then relate that to where the individual is and help them
fill the gap.
Chairman: That leads us neatly into the
next section.
Q362 Fiona Mactaggart: I want to
take something that Gareth was referring to and which is in the
Crisis evidence, which is about people who previously had Level
2 qualifications because I think this is a problem with prisons.
In your evidence, Crisis,[32]
you referred to skills not applying to periods of worklessness
and homelessness can be lost and need to be replaced. One of the
things that I am interested in, all of the things you are saying,
is actually how do we get a fair fix on these things? I understand
that someone who before they became disabled might have had a
Level 2 qualification might then not count in Leitch type targets;
I can understand that someone who before they became an alcoholic
and homeless, for example, might have had a Level 2 qualification
and might lose it. How can one have a system which is fair but
which meets those needs? I think it is a difficult thing for policy-makers
and I want you to answer the policy problem that both of you have
raised, imagining that you were responsible for doing it in a
way which is a fair and reasonable investment.
Mr Parry: Ultimately there are
choices to be made. Everybody understands that there is a finite
pot of resource available and there are choices to be made, but
I think all too often we fall into the trap of making blanket
policy decisions which do not allow for flexibility, recognising,
on the one hand, we are talking about upskilling the workforce
for the national economy needs and, on the other hand, we are
talking about 2.6 million incapacity benefit claimants who we
need to get back into work, and the policies do not always go
hand in hand of how one helps the other. Our view would be that
the policy framework should be targeting those in most need of
support to get into sustained work, accepting that there are some
independent recreational learning arguments in there as well,
but, fundamentally, those people most in need of support should
be doing that. The way that standard national government programmes
are organised at the moment, a lot of money is invested into people
who perhaps do not need as much as others do in that they are
already in employment, they are on the route, employers would
otherwise be supporting their developments, because employers
do support a lot of workplace developments, and yet they are getting
subsidised training from the Government because the one-size-fits-all
approach says they can. If we can target the investment for those
in most need, then that would actually be a more intelligent way
to spend the money, but what that requires is much greater flexibility
in the funding regime, and, to be honest with you, it also requires
the funders to trust the provider base a bit more than it does
in terms of making the judgments on how that money is spent. I
think if that flexibility could be introduced, I am sure that
the provider base could deliver a lot more value for money in
terms of outcomes and people in other departments.
Mr Shrubsole: I think there are
three main points. The first would be that homelessness costs
the taxpayer money anyway. The extent to which people are cycling
round the system, some estimates have said that a homeless person
can cost up to £50,000 a year and, crucially, how do we help
people break that cycle. One in four people who move into tenancy,
the tenancy then fails because of debt and isolation. Getting
people involved in learning and improving their skills is crucial
to tackling that. One argument is the taxpayer is paying anyway;
we need to be investing to help break that cycle. The second point
would be the Government's own strategy, its own targets. If it
wants to get 80% of people into employment, 90% up to Level 2,
it is looking at improving health, looking at tackling worklessness
and housing together. For its own purposes, too much of what DfES
does is often done in a silo and that education role needs to
support what is going on in those other agendas across government.
You were throwing the challenge out to us as policy-makers. There
will always be some things that someone else might see as unfair.
There is a lot of dead weight loss in the education system.
Q363 Fiona Mactaggart: There will
be a lot of people who think that providing Tai Chi to ex cons
is unfair?
Mr Shrubsole: There would. We
fund it through our own voluntary income. It is people who give
us £5 a month who fund the Tai Chi. The Learning and Skills
Council is helping us on the IT side, but equally lots of other
people cannot get that voluntary income to fund the Tai Chi.
Q364 Chairman: IT and Tai Chi. It
sounds a very good combination!
Mr Shrubsole: But if you look
at the deadweight loss in the system, the employers who always
benefit key from skills programmes, they are those who believe
in skills and education, and then some chance to fund it comes
along and so they take it. You will not get it perfect. You will
always get some people who see it as unfair or a deadweight loss,
but, as Gareth said, you focus on those most in need and you have
frameworks for quality inspection monitoring so that people know
that provision that people said was going to be delivered is being
delivered. But crucially, if you look from the ground up—what
do learners need, what is working for them—too often we
look from the top down—what should be the framework for
this policy or this funding area for the Learning and Skills Council—rather
than rewarding success and looking at what is happening on the
ground.
Mr Parry: I think that is a good
example of what I was trying to say in terms of trusting the provider
base. If we understand what the strategic goals are, the strategic
goals are getting people into employment and then to the right
skill level within employment, and the journey for some people
to get there might only be six to nine months, but for other people
it could be five years, and the very start of that process can
be a very soft engagement process which at that time does not
feel like it has got anything to do with employment. I think if
the providers were given the flexibility to interpret how they
spend their money, but the accountability for that money has to
demonstrate back to the funder that we are delivering outcomes
on a journey towards that end point, and providing they are held
to account on that, I think we would strongly argue that providers
like ourselves or Crisis should be given as much flexibility as
possible as to how to use that money, because you do need to look
for bespoke solutions for individuals, and the savings potentially,
we believe, are considerable. If we take the issue around young
people with disabilities for a moment and the whole process of
statementing and moving young people into further education, our
observation is the majority of young people with disabilities
who transition into further education do not go there because
they are on a journey towards, a route to, employment, they are
there because somebody needs to occupy them, somebody has got
to find a solution for them: "I know, let us put them in
further education college." The costs are huge. The per capita
cost is £22,000 a year, whereas if we can progress some of
those learners out into a workplace learning environment and find
a more employment-related one, there are much more cost-effective
solutions that can be found which will return to the funders significant
savings.
Q365 Chairman: You say "bespoke
service". When do you break in? I thought Connexions were
supposed to do that for disabled people.
Mr Parry: We thought that as well,
but the reality of it is Connexions struggle to do it because
their remit is largely to support the transition of a young person
with a disability into adulthood, and "adult" is a broad-ranging
definition.
Q366 Chairman: Why is it? A child
is a child in our country still to 18. Why is this transition
difficult?
Mr Parry: Why is it difficult?
Q367 Chairman: Yes, from where you
are coming from?
Mr Parry: I am not sure I know
the answer to that question. Obviously there is a community of
people there with complex needs and there is a whole range of
services. I guess it becomes difficult because of the system,
because you have got the Department of Health involved, you have
got the Department for Education and Skills involved, you have
got the Department for Work and Pensions involved and you have
got lots of professionals who are all trying to do a good job
but actually the whole process does not join up.
Q368 Fiona Mactaggart: Your evidence
is suggesting another one, a broker?
Mr Parry: To facilitate all of
that provision and to put that end-point. Our evidence was around
if the end-point is a work-based learning solution in employment
on the lifelong learning agenda, then take that end-point and
drill it back into the system. We have got experiences where young
people with disabilities were attending transition meetings, and
they have all and sundry there, but the focus on employment is
not there. It should be there from the age of 14 onwards. There
should be a discussion around ultimate employment aspirations
for the individual, but, more often than not, employment is not
on the agenda because the people round the table do not understand
the employment agenda, do not understand the employment market.
What we are saying is we think there should be a much stronger
focus on employment, because we believe we can get younger people
with disabilities into an employment-based solution at a much
earlier stage than they currently do, which in the medium to long-term
will deliver substantial savings.
Q369 Chairman: I am still waiting
for any of our witness to say something nice about Connexions,
but is not Connexions supposed to be your bespoke evaluation of
a young person, whatever their background, disabled or whatever,
and say, "Given your background, what you did at school or
what you did not do at school, your achievements, this now is
the best direction for you as a human being to develop yourself."
That may be work, it may be training with work, it may be FE.
Why is not Connexions doing that? The criticism we have is it
only does it for people in the NEET category who are disabled
but it does not apply to the average and other students. So all
this resource is going into the area that you are describing but
you are saying it does not happen there either.
Mr Knight: I think we might see
it the other way round, to be honest, that the focus is not in
our area.
Q370 Chairman: What do you mean?
Mr Knight: There is not the focus
on disabled people with Connexions.
Mr Parry: I think there is a focus
on disabled young people, but it is the focus on employment that
is missing. Connexions do not have the routes to the employment
market in the same way that organisations like Remploy do. We
work with thousands of employers across the UK, many thousands
of individuals. Connexions simply do not do that. The Connexions
advisers, when they are giving employment advice to that individual
or to their parents, the reality of the labour market needs just
is not there. What we are saying is we think there should be an
input from practitioners who are out there working with employers,
putting people into jobs, dealing with skills issues every day
as part of that process.
Q371 Chairman: Who is this person?
Mr Parry: We believe that Remploy
could do that process.
Mr Knight: It is about expertise,
focus and consistency, expertise in dealing with disabled people
and particularly the more complex needs within disabled people.
Q372 Chairman: Duncan and Richard
must be in this business. What is your dream scenario? When somebody
comes into you, do they get this full package of an assessor,
a broker, a NEET person who understands? Is Connexions the answer
if it worked well? What is the answer?
Mr Shrubsole: Our client group
is generally an older client group, so they are too old for Connexions.
Q373 Chairman: But do your people
need a life coach, mentor?
Mr Pace: Yes.
Mr Shrubsole: Yes, crucially the
value of one-on-one support is proven by research evidence and
what we see with our own eyes. Our progression worker working
with somebody one-on-one is crucial in helping them articulate
themselves, what they want, sign-posting them to opportunities,
whether we provide them or others provide them, and that is crucial
as well. We have to be looking out to the whole range of opportunities
out there, and that is why we have been talking to DfES about
whether there is the possibility for adapting the Train to Gain
model, to have a skills broker who can do that link between the
individual and the employer but with them having an understanding
of homelessness and the employment world. The value of one-on-one
progression support is key.
Q374 Chairman: Because people who
have everything have this, do they not? They have life coaches
and personal trainers. We all need those, do we not?
Mr Shrubsole: Yes, people pay
a fortune for it.
Q375 Chairman: For the people you
deal with, that is what you want, is it not?
Mr Pace: Yes. We have a life coach
coming in to run a class for our members, our client group, on
this very basis. We treat people individually, and it is very
important because they have such complex needs.
Q376 Chairman: How do you do it systematically,
Richard? How do you get it into the system that people get this
individual treatment?
Mr Pace: Everybody that comes
through our door, when they enter into any of our activities,
is formulated with an individual learning plan and we deal with
the person and we try to get them to articulate what it is that
they actually want to do as a result of coming to us, what are
their requirements, we try to help them through that. So, we will
offer them a range of different activities and we will try to
engage them with other people. In areas where we cannot directly
help them, we will refer them to other agencies. It is getting
people to appreciate that much of this is up to them. They have
to tell us what it is that they actually want. We can help them,
we can provide them with support and guidance, but it is trying
to get them to come out of themselves really.
Chairman: Fiona, it is very rude
of me, but I got taken away. It is Gareth's fault. He talked about
the individually designed bespoke service. I want everyone to
have a life coach and a personal trainer.
Q377 Fiona Mactaggart: I think what
is interesting about both of your evidence is that in a way you
have looked at the present system, the brokerage system or Train
to Gain, and you have said, "Okay, we will try and fit what
we think is needed into the shape of what is going on." I
want you to do something else. I want you to imagine that there
was not a kind of existing shape and to tell us what, if you had
a blank sheet, you would design for the client group that you
work for, and then I want you to tell me what proportion of the
clients you work with would succeed in achieving the ambition
of employment or Level 2 qualifications and what proportion would
fail? Those are the two questions that it seems to me are the
killer questions on this. I think you are adapting stuff that
you would like to make it look like what you think the DfES wants,
and so I would like to see what it would be like if you did not
adapt it in that way.
Mr Shrubsole: As part of our campaigning
work we have coined the slogan "Right People, Right Places,
Right Approach", which is that in the learning system the
right people we should focus on are those most in need of learning,
the right places we should crucially think about are where those
people want to learn, could learn and get support in learning,
and the right approach is ensuring that there is the right offer
and the variety and choice that really engages with them. To unpick
that a bit, on the right people, that is about having the focus
nationally and at local level and funding and supporting learning
for disadvantaged groups and having that explicit focus on it
so that funding follows. Right places, yes, we need to support
voluntary community facilities. There is a programme called the
Hostel Capital Improvement Programme, it is a CLG programme, which
is funding not just hostel spaces but day centre spaces, and that
has been crucial in creating new types of spaces which are high
quality. A high quality building leads to high quality expectations
of clients and leads to high quality outcomes; so continuing and
rolling that forward but bringing partnerships with FE, FE having
financial incentives or being compelled. Your local FE should
be reaching out to your local voluntary organisations, either
supporting them doing their own learning or delivering learning.
We have a partnership with Newham College which has been crucial.
They helped us to accredit in our early days, now we can accredit
ourselves. We have City Lit coming and delivering classes, we
have Learndirect coming in and that partnership between the statutory
and voluntary sector is key. Then, the right approach is what
we have said before about pre-Level 2 learning, but the key role
is the information, advice and guidance role. So, you have a wide
offer and you work with people individually and say, "This
is what is available. What works best for you?", and making
that happen, and that individual advice and guidance needs to
be within an institution and a project but crucially linked wider,
dual-facing, looking at the client and looking at the education
that is available and the employment that is available. Your second
question was how many would it work for? Seventy seven per cent
of homeless people want to work now and 97% have said they would
like to work at some point in the future. Six in ten want to get
involved in learning and three quarters of those who do get involved
in learning say, "We wish we had got involved in learning
earlier." Most people when you work with them want something
meaningful to do during the day, they want to be expanding their
brain and, ultimately, they want to work too and even some in
quite low-paid jobs.
Q378 Fiona Mactaggart: They also
want to give up the alcohol habit and they do not succeed. I am
not disagreeing with you, but I am saying where will the failures
be?
Mr Shrubsole: A lot of them cannot
give up the alcohol habits because they do not have anything to
do to fill their time. They hang around the—
Q379 Fiona Mactaggart: There are
other reasons why they cannot give it up.
Mr Shrubsole: There are, there
are clear reasons as well. One of the guys that we work with has
just won an adult learners award, is now doing some work for Bart's
Hospital training people. He was a heroin addict for 30 years
on the street and he came to us one Christmas and he realised
that he could not do this any more. He had done it for years.
He gave up, and he was taught to read and write. He now writes
a blog, which he does for the Hansard Society; he interviewed
Yvette Copper on You and Yours. It does not happen for
everybody, but he is crucial. Until he got involved in that learning
process, there was nothing out there for him. So, yes, we need
residential rehabilitation places, we need that drug support.
This is getting people involved in meaningful learning. You cannot
just have standard Micky Mouse courses that are put out.
31 Note by witness: Correction-Personal and
Community Development Learning (PCDL) is a Learning and Skills
Council fund that is distributed through Local Authorities. Back
32
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