Examination of Witnesses (Questions 420-439)
MR GARETH
PARRY, MR
DAVID KNIGHT,
MR DUNCAN
SHRUBSOLE AND
MR RICHARD
PACE
28 MARCH 2007
Q420 Mr Chaytor: In your experience,
Richard, in terms of employers, what is most needed to encourage
more employers to be sympathetic to the idea of recruiting people?
Mr Pace: Success—people
going in and being successful.
Q421 Mr Chaytor: So previous track
record?
Mr Pace: Yes.
Q422 Mr Chaytor: Are there other
specific practices or specific prejudices or systems that employers
have that get in your way that you think could more probably be
done to eradicate?
Mr Pace: It is a difficult area
really, because people do have their own prejudices. Providing
you can get over those, our client group are as able as anybody
else to do specific jobs. There is no problem there.
Mr Shrubsole: You need some realism
in how the relationship is constructed, and actually it needs
to be done through the employment route, not the CSR route. It
cannot be a CSR manager saying, "You are going to have joining
your team today someone who is homeless or disabled", or
whatever, because it sets everybody up for failure and you have
to think it through. People who have done it ... We were talking
to DHL the other week and they have been working with ex-offenders
and they have had some real nervousness around it, but it has
worked. She says, "But how do we help the other bits of the
workforce know about it?" I said, "Do not you tell them.
Get those guys who were working with them and get the guys who
you have taken on to and go tell others about it" and, in
the end, they might say, "I happen to be homeless",
but up to that point they were someone in the DHL workforce. So
there is needed success around there. It takes some commitment
from the employer. It tends to be either an employer who wants
a commitment to their local area, so they are a local employer,
or a larger employer who can absorb people coming in and out.
There needs to be success, it needs to be worked through and crucially
it needs the employer to work with an agency who understands the
client group to work out what is realistic and to work out a programme
of working through things for six months and the people going
on formally. The voluntary sector cannot just put some people
into jobs when it does not understand the job. Equally, there
have been times in the past where people have said, "We will
take on some people", and everybody has gone, "Wow,
that is great", without thinking it through. That is as bad,
because every time you knock someone back, that is them back down
the process of their confidence and their self-esteem again.
Q423 Chairman: Here you are, you
have got 70 employees, you are operating under a restricted canvas,
doing a very good job, I am absolutely convinced, but are you
not frustrated that you cannot roll your programme out to help
a much larger number of people?
Mr Shrubsole: We run a number
of different programmes. The Skylight Activity Centre Programme,
we are about to open another one in Newcastle in the next month.
We have had capital help from Communities and Local Government
to do that, but you need the funding to help you open somewhere
else. The Smart Skills Programme we run, which is around working
with people we give a rent deposit to get into the private and
rented sector, now has our skills and training programme alongside
to do not just the tenancy support, and we have had people going
into work through that, and the Changing Lives Programme where
we give direct grants to people. You talk about the individual
learning accounts: we actually give up to £2,000 directly
to homeless people across the UK who apply with a support worker
to help them pay for either a course or some equipment. We would
love to do more, and we are talking to DfES about what more we
could do, but I think we should be judged like others. If you
are successful and have a successful model, then people should
come behind it and fund it, whether from government or the voluntary
or business sector.
Q424 Chairman: Or your success should
inform government policy?
Mr Shrubsole: Exactly, at which
stage I would encourage you all. If any of you would like to come
for a visit, please do so.
Q425 Chairman: I was going to suggest
that perhaps you should apply for a job in the Civil Service and
apply some of the lessons you have learned, but you have been
there and done that.
Mr Shrubsole: I have been there
and done that, yes. I wanted to do the reverse.
Q426 Chairman: Why did you move?
Mr Shrubsole: To find out what
it is like in the real world.
Q427 Chairman: Which secretary of
state did you work with?
Mr Shrubsole: Alistair Darling.
Q428 Chairman: Was that enough to
send you off?
Mr Shrubsole: I had an amazing
two years working for him, but once you have done that long on
the railways, you certainly need a respite.
Chairman: Thank you. Let us go on to
the final section.
Fiona Mactaggart: I think we have got
from you a pretty powerful picture of the potential contribution
of the third sector to particular groups with high levels of needs
in this field, but what I am quite interested in is Joe Citizen
who may be homeless, does not think of himself as a homeless person
but actually is homeless or has a disability and, again, might
not label themselves as a disabled person. Can they navigate this
system? Is it clear? We produced a set of maps of the skills system
which Alan Wells, the former Director of the Basic Skills Agency
said, "I do not know how anyone could see their way through
that", and he is right. How do people find you? How do they
find something that can help them, and are the people they end
up being forced to find, Jobcentre Plus or whatever, helpful?
Q429 Chairman: David, you are doing
that praying thing again.
Mr Knight: It is terribly complicated.
The simpler we can make it the better because it gets people a
solution faster, which is the most important thing. How do they
find us? Either directly. We are opening a network of High Street
branches which are very professional, work focused, training,
recruitment, development centres, if you like, but very much literally
on the High Street, but most people will come to us via Jobcentre
Plus. Are they doing a good job? It is very mixed. In some areas
they are doing an exceptional job, in some areas it is very difficult
for them?
Mr Shrubsole: I think one specific
is how you might find us and then the bigger issue is how the
hell you find your way round the system? On the first, I was interested
in the point about labels. One of the things we did when we first
set up Skylight is we said it should be for homeless and non-homeless
people to have some integration, because you do not want to label
people. In reality it only happens to some of the physical stuff,
but people in the city do a bit of Tai Chi alongside some homeless
people, and the karate tutor is a black belt and he is from the
city as well, so we get volunteer tutors, which is quite unique,
and we call people members rather than clients to try and break
out some of the barriers there. How do people find us? We do quite
a lot of outreach work across homeless projects, day centres,
soup runs, hostels, but we need to do more. In general, you do
get people who say, "If only I had found you earlier."
How do people find their way to us as specialists but more generally
round the system? More generally round the system is a nightmare.
The route for funding or for accountability or direction is complicated,
but for the individual it is very complicated. The Mayor is supposed
have powers, but then the budget announced that there is another
Employment and Skills Board and then there are different arrangements
coming out of Leitch and different arrangements coming out of
Freud. It is complicated. It is not just in the education area.
We expect our most vulnerable to navigate a system which you and
I would find hard, and yet we are asking them to do it. There
needs to be getting learning and education about learning out
of the learning sphere. If people are going to Citizens' Advice
about housing advice, or benefit advice, they might get help for
that, but somebody might also give them a leaflet which says,
"Have you thought that you are eligible for a qualification?
You can do basic skills here." It might be in your college
or it might be in a voluntary or community centre. We need to
get information about learning into employers and to the workforce
and in ways that learners can learn about. Some of the things
that Learndirect have done have been quite good, but whether it
is how we structure the system as a whole or how we get information
to people, we need to think about what it is like for the guy
at the bottom and steer the system round that, because it is too
complicated. Those that know about it get more of it
Q430 Chairman: This is where my life
coach comes?
Mr Shrubsole: Exactly, a life
coach, a broker, a service navigator, whatever it might be, you
need that point of contact where you go and where people who might
come to you about learning issue but might come to you about something
else and you are able to suggest a learning solution.
Q431 Chairman: This is what an MP
does in his advice surgeries. I sit there, most of my people come
in and they need something that they do not actually present.
It is only when you have the discussion with them about the problem
that you realise that it is a very much more complex problem.
Mr Shrubsole: That would be your
experience, Richard, every day. You talk to them and you find
out more.
Mr Pace: Yes.
Q432 Fiona Mactaggart: What that
issue about complexity highlights is that, as well as the difficulties
for the individual citizen to find their way round the system,
there are bits of the system which bump into each other. I like
your take on how the bits of the system work together. Do government
departments work in a way which is joined up and which helps,
or do they not, and what would you change if you felt that it
could be improved?
Mr Parry: I think it has to start
with policy and integration of policy. An observation of where
I do not think policy is as integrated as it could be: we have
spoken a lot about Leitch and Leitch talking about the need to
improve skills and skill levels for the economy. Duncan has mentioned
the Freud Report, which talks about getting workless people back
into work. It is interesting that in the Freud Report, a substantive
piece of work, it does not talk about skills, and yet we have
had a significant report coming out by Leitch. You have got one
talking about getting people back into work, which does not really
address the skills issue, and then you have got the Leitch Report
saying low-skilled jobs are disappearing and it is all about skills.
There you have two major policy documents, or discussion documents,
which do not seem to be as connected as perhaps they could be
in terms of working through a solution from two different departments.
But let me give you a very simple example.
Q433 Chairman: When did the Freud
Report come out?
Mr Knight: A couple of weeks ago.
Q434 Chairman: Which department?
Mr Knight: DWP.
Q435 Chairman: Is it DWP? I have
not seen that.
Mr Parry: Again, this is probably
a manifestation of the complexities of the silos that we have
got, but the DfES report that came out this week, Raising Expectations,
only has two paragraphs in the whole document that refers to issues
around learners with disabilities, but one paragraph that does
talk substantially about it talks about the LSC consulting on
the draft documents for that policy issue. The LSC published its
strategy, following consultation, last October, so even within
one government department you have got niches of expertise that
are not joined up.
Q436 Chairman: Raising Expectations
is a Green Paper.
Mr Parry: Sorry, yes.
Q437 Chairman: So it is consultative.
You can improve it. We can improve it?
Mr Parry: Yes, all I am indicating
is the detailed level, but it is the detail that often drives
the practicalities of policy; so I think it starts with the policy,
and if we can get policy alive through common objectives, which
Leitch says we should work towards, then I think the system will
start to change and behave differently, but I think there is something
missing in that integrated policy level, it seems to me.
Mr Shrubsole: The disjunct between
DfES and DWP is key. You will go and talk to their officials and
they will be quite clear, "This is for DWP, we are only concerned
with work outcomes." DfES will say, "We are only concerned
with education outcomes", and there is a clear divide, but
it is a moment of hope, as it were. Some of the things that have
happened around offender learning where the Home Office has got
together with DfES where it was very much Phil Hope and Baroness
Scotland getting together and helping to drive some of that through
the system, there are bumps that need ironing out and it needs
to link on to the job agenda, but at the top there is a real divide
between DWP and DfES which at the bottom is replicated by the
divide between Jobcentre Plus and the Learning and Skills Councils.
You then in the middle—I mentioned before about London—say,
"The Mayor should link it up but then separate", but
if the Learning and Skills Council have to operate to a set of
national targets which are Level 2 focused and other things, but
then you have a broker at the bottom which is supposed to be getting
the skills that the employer needs but within a menu which is
defined by national targets, you can see it starts getting quite
complicated. Yes, there needs to be a joining up at the policy
level, but that needs to follow through. It does not necessarily
mean they all join up around a single goal, because then everybody
is entirely immediately work focused. Some of Freud, even though
it does not mention skills, is hinting that you need to focus
on the sustainable work, so therefore you need to focus on skills,
but, as Gareth says, there was not any mention in the Freud Report
of Leitch and the budget, which came out a week after Freud, did
not mention Freud but mentioned Leitch because Leitch was seen
as a good thing because it came out of DfES and Freud was seen
as a bad thing because it came out of DWP; and that drives through
the system that people are facing on the ground, and that lack
of consistency of approach and the complexity and the extent to
which it is constantly evolving, with new responsibilities transferring,
means that the people within the system are not clear, never mind
those who are trying to use it.
Mr Knight: The City Strategy represents
an opportunity to do something about that at ground level, where
cities are given more freedom get the people on the ground working
together, particularly Jobcentre Plus and the LSC. It is early
days to see whether that is going to be successful or not, but
the potential is there.
Mr Parry: I think in the disability
area as well we are expecting some protocols to be published shortly
between DWP and about how at ministerial level departments can
work together.
Q438 Fiona Mactaggart: Do you think
that the emphasis on your clients is partly a product of high
level employment and do you think it would still be there if we
did not have high levels of employment?
Mr Shrubsole: In terms of?
Q439 Fiona Mactaggart: It seems to
me that one of the issues, one of the reasons why Estates is investing,
one of the reasons why Press is investing is that there are actually
job needs in the economy at the moment. What do you think would
look differently if that was not the case? What impact do you
think that would have on what you do? The reason I am asking you
this is because I think there would be a big impact and I think
we need to look at that impact to work out what is most valuable
at the moment?
Mr Shrubsole: I think that goes
back ... On the employment side, over half of working age adults
in 2020 are already over 25 now, so we need to have that focus
on adults and we need the focus on kids as well but keep the focus
on adults. So the future workforce does mean looking at those,
whether they are on incapacity benefit or whether they are on
long-term jobseeker's allowance or whether they are out of the
system altogether. So we do need that for future employment, but
other bit would be going back to some of those earlier points
about social justice alongside economic efficiency arguments.
But actually, yes, we want to help people into work, people want
to work, the key to getting them into work is the stepping stones
along the way. The reason why we are doing it, but also we need
to be articulating that, is the arguments that even if they do
not make it into a work outcome, that learning that they have
gained, that self-confidence, those qualifications have benefits
on reducing costs elsewhere in the system and the outcomes for
them as an individual, and that is that economic efficiency alongside
the social justice arguments together.
Mr Parry: I think it comes back
to the positioning of the whole proposition of the supply side
to the employers and, in terms of a demand-led approach for employers,
it needs to be dressed up as skills, recruitment and retention
issues because employers will always have skills, recruitment
and retention issues. They may not have them in the volumes that
they have today, but they always have those issues. If we promote
the benefits of our candidate group on the back of a corporate
social responsibility agenda, the very fact we are talking about
corporate social responsibility highlights the disadvantage the
individual has, the disability and the negative side of things
rather than concentrating on the business case, which is all about
the ability of the individual. I think the more we can embed that
in the way we position our services, the more we engage employers.
Our experience is that employers, once they are through that process,
are more than happy to take on people from that candidate group
because they see loyalty, they see retention, they see a willingness
to learn in the workplace, far more so than they do when recruiting
people from the mainstream client group. I think it is fundamental.
The supply side really has to understand what demand-led means
and work those solutions through, and then I think that the disadvantaged
groups are less vulnerable to economic change.
Mr Knight: There is no doubt that
a strong economy helps our call in terms of building up the skills,
getting more and more people into work, but at the same time society
has also moved on, has it not, and I think there is a much greater
recognition and awareness that we need to support people across
the spectrum rather than just the chosen few.
|
