Youth Unemployment and the Future Jobs Fund

Written evidence submitted by Warwickshire County Council

1. Introduction

This report presents an information from the Warwickshire Future Jobs Fund (FJF) programme.

2. Established network enabled quick start for FJF

The Future Jobs Fund programme in Warwickshire was able to get off the ground relatively quickly due to the history of partnership working. As soon as guidance came out from the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP), Warwickshire County Council’s Manager for the Economic Development Group invited potential partners to a preliminary meeting to consider how FJF might operate in Warwickshire, where FJF jobs might come from and to offer for Warwickshire County Council to act as the Lead Accountable Body.

Key organisations such as the Chamber of Commerce and Warwickshire Community And Voluntary Action, Warwickshire Children & Voluntary Youth Service and all of the local and districts Councils were among the early partners with a plan of creating opportunities within the public, voluntary and private sectors.

Key Strength: In calling upon local authorities to bid for FJF DWP were able to access existing and established partnerships and get FJF operational quickly.

3. Targets

The Warwickshire Future Jobs Fund application was originally approved by the DWP for a six month period to March 2010. The ‘employees into jobs’ target for the Warwickshire was initially 73 within that period.

Subsequently, the programme was extended to 18 months, to March 2011 Phase Two, April 2010 to March 2011, with a Warwickshire target of 107, making 180 employees across the programme.

Warwickshire, like many LAB’s was late to get started and in our area this was largely due to the FJF Manager not starting in post until December 2009. As a result of this DWP offered a Time Only Variation to the first contract to allow Phase One to continue until June 2010. This Time Only Variation was only offered to LAB’s that had shown that they would, if given longer achieve their original profile.

4. Engagement of Community and Voluntary Sector employers

The community and voluntary sector has responded both positively and proactively to FJF, this was led primarily but not exclusively by Warwickshire Community and Voluntary Action (WCAVA). WCC used WCAVA as a managing agent meaning that a greater number of small organisations could engage with FJF but that WCC as LAB had one point of contact.

Overall, third sector employers are supportive of FJF and found that FJF employees bring a range of benefits including:

§ Fulfilling roles that organisations had found it difficult to attract funding for, or enabling organisations to achieve things they have wanted to do but were unable to afford.

§ Building organisational capacity.

§ Extending organisational reach.

§ Freeing up other staff to take on more strategic level work.

Key Strength: Being involved in FJF enables organisations in the community and voluntary sector to deliver against charitable objectives and organisational mission statements by enabling them to support people into employment.

5. Engagement of Private Sector

Warwickshire has encountered the same issues widely reported by other LAB’s in finding employers willing to offer FJF opportunities that can then meet both the additional and community benefit rules. However one private sector employer was identified and with advice from DWP they were able to meet the rules and create some opportunities.

At an early partnership meeting the local Chamber of Commerce had pledged to create 15 opportunities from it’s members, but nervousness by WCC as lead accountable body over uncertainty and lack of clear advice over what was eligible as ‘jobs’ from the private sector, meant that the partnership did not actively pursue private sector employment as a core priority.

Key Weakness: Difficulty with private sector engagement

6. Engagement of public sector

Despite enthusiasm for the FJF initiative, it came at a difficult time for public sector employers due to general recruitment freezes, organisational restructuring and cutbacks. Most public sector employers have invested time in negotiating with senior management teams, Trade Unions and members exploring why and how FJF jobs could be incorporated into the workforce without contravening policies relating to staff redeployment while at the same time ensuring they are offering ‘new’ but temporary jobs and the result of this was that each of the borough and district councils within Warwickshire went on to create some FJF opportunities.

7. FJF Recruitment process

The Warwickshire partnership decided that they wanted a robust recruitment process. The main reasoning behind this was to protect employers from possible difficulties with the FJF employees once they were in post but also this meant that FJF employees would feel an increase in confidence from being selected and have some experience of such processes which they would need to apply for other jobs either during their period of FJF employment or when they came to the end of it.

When creating the FJF opportunity limitations where set on how many people could apply (submissions) to try to ensure that recruitment process happened quickly and without too many applications for the recruiting manager to look through.

Warwickshire integrated Nextstep Coventry and Warwickshire into it's delivery of FJF. All applicants submitted were booked to see a Nextstep adviser for support with their application form so that they can identify their personal strengths and ensure that these are highlighted to the potential employer. If there are other FJF opportunities that suit the applicant better then Nextstep will point this out. In cases where the applicant really does not match the opportunity then Nextstep offer advice on training provision. Utilising Nextstep’s provision in this way maximised the young persons’ chances of reaching interview and meant that the employers did not have to short list. Employers reported that this process made the recruitment much easier to manage and kept the burden on the recruiting manager’s time to a minimum. With the one opportunity where Nextstep was not involved, due to the geography of the applicants it was reported that only two of the seven people submitted applied for the post, feedback on those two applications were that one was very poor and the other was incomplete.

We strongly believe that the intervention of Nexsteps in the county (funded via their already contracted ESF programme – so no additional drain on the FJF budget) has helped reduce the admin and bureaucracy on employers interviewing people who were simply unsuitable, or who didn’t turn up for the interview in the first place. It has also helped ensure our retention rates are well above the norm – the ‘right’ sort of person being better matched to the ‘right’ job for them via an additional experienced adviser (over and above JCP).

Key strength s : Young people are supported and gain experience of recruitment processes .

Retention rates are high due to selection process

8. Issues with recruitment

There have been two main difficulties with recruitment. The first was some employers expectations were too high has been relatively easy to manage. The FJF Manager has experience of working with long term unemployed people and a clear understanding of the client group and was able to negotiate with employers to make their job descriptions more accessible to young people.

The second issue is with the Jobcentreplus offices and therefore much more difficult to overcome. DWP insists that young people must be referred to FJF via the jobcentre to ensure eligibility and where this didn’t happen then opportunities remained unfilled. Jobcentreplus District Office do what they can to keep the profile of FJF high with JCP advisers but with varying success.

9. Tables

9.1: Delivery against targets to June 2010

9.2 Employee profile

Key strength: opportunities created across the county

Key weakness: More opportunities created in Leamington & Warwick area due to this being where most organisations headquarters are based.

9.3 Number of opportunities filled by employer

9.4 Types of opportunities created

Key strength: Diverse range of opportunities created

10. Destinations

10.1 Completers i.e. People that left their FJF employment after 26 weeks

10.2 The following table presents the information destinations of early leavers

10.3 Destinations of all leavers to 13.7.10

It is our intention to contact all leavers again 3 months after their last day to identify those that moved into employment soon after their period of FJF employment.

11. Initial feedback from employees

The initial feedback in this section is based on informal meetings with individual FJF employees. While most participants had found out about Future Jobs Fund opportunities from Jobcentre Plus, others had heard about it from jobs fairs, Remploy and in some cases they were volunteering at the FJF employer.

One unsolicited comment from an early lever who had successful moved into employment

"Thanks for making the past three months so enjoyable it has helped me lots in getting back to work and I have learned new skills that I never had before"

Other FJF employees have made the following comments:

"working with young people is new to me and I’m really enjoying it. I like to pass on my skills on a friendly atmosphere".

"It feels great passing on my wisdom and I get a kick out of seeing young people engage and develop an interest in music"

"Everyone is so friendly and helpful, you don’t feel scared in saying I don’t know how to do that".

"I have enjoyed all of my experience here"

"I enjoyed meeting and working with all the staff and children. I have loved the satisfaction this job has gave me [sic], helping the children and would not change anything about my time spent at St Michael’s"

12. Summary

Getting young people into jobs has been effective. Warwickshire’s recruitment model was at first discouraged by JCP and DWP as it does make the process a little longer than the four week target that DWP prescribed, however as time progressed and it was found that Warwickshire’s retention was very high it was accepted that our model worked well. The FJF Manager developed a dynamic relationship with JCP. For example, where organisations were struggling to get referrals, JCP has helped to revise job adverts to make the posts more attractive and in many cases JCP District Office staff matched clients themselves.

FJF is building capacity in voluntary and community organisations, enabling some of them to do things they hadn’t been able to fund before.

Some employers are seeing FJF as a Win:Win

§ They help someone into work.

§ They get a job done.

§ The community is getting something out of it too.

Employers are impressed by the high quality of employees – their commitment & motivation and frequently report amazement that such people have remained unemployed long enough to be eligible.

FJF is offering a diverse basket of jobs, providing people with a choice. These include jobs in admin, arts technicians, ICT, administration, community project development, environmental improvement, youth worker, children’s centre assistants, teaching assistants, gardeners, maintenance workers, sports centre worker and sports coaches.

The success of the Warwickshire FJF partnership has been largely due to employers understanding of the effect of the economic downturn on youth unemployment and a genuine desire to do their bit to help tackle that. Some employers felt a moral duty to create opportunities.

Warwickshire County Council has not been involved in many programmes such as FJF before and has now forged strong relationships in creating it’s delivery partnership and learned many lessons along the way. The partnership strove collectively to develop and adapt to achieve a programme that works well for both employer and employee. We would urge the Committee to consider ways of building on this experience and expertise in designing future welfare programmes.

19 August 2010