Youth Unemployment and the Future Jobs Fund

Written evidence submitted by Lewisham Strategic Partnership

3. The Future Jobs Fund Programme in Lewisham

3.1 Lewisham has been successful in getting funding to create a total of 403 new jobs from two bids to the Future Jobs Fund in July 2009 and February 2010.The majority of these jobs, (72%), have been created by partner organisations in the voluntary and community sector.

3.2 One of the core aims of our FJF programme was to support young people to gain skills that they need to get paid work not just in Lewisham, but across London and beyond. We therefore set out to create jobs that will give young people the experience and skills to gain employment in the London labour market. The range of roles in our work programme reflect the types of occupations 18-24 year old JSA claimants in Lewisham are most interested in and also reflect the vacancies that existed in London1, ie Sales and Customer Service, Administration and Secretarial, Associate Professional and Technical and Personal Services occupations.

3.3 The FJF programme has been successful in matching new work experience opportunities to young unemployed people in Lewisham. Data from exit interviews show that young people used the FJF scheme as a route to gaining or refreshing skills, updating their CVs and getting references that will enable them to secure more sustained employment.

3.4 There were a total of 68 leavers at the end of July 2010. Of these;

· 29 have got jobs or gone back to education, (23 into paid work, 6 to College),

· 15 have gone back to benefits

· Data from 24 leavers being confirmed

3.5 The FJF programme has many strengths but the key ones include

· Government providing funding to create "real" jobs which has meant that young people have learnt skills and gained experience doing jobs that exist in the Labour market

· Capturing young people at the six month stage which is before they begin to lose touch with the labour market

· The option of giving employers an element of funding in advance of the job starting to help cover start up costs

3.6 The weakness in the scheme from our perspective has been the delays that we experienced getting the results of Criminal Record Bureau (CRB) checks. This was particularly unhelpful given the six month "job start" period for filling vacancies. The results of some CRB checks took over two months to come back and in many cases, the young people concerned had accepted other FJF opportunities which didn’t require CRB. There should have been a way of flagging CRB checks for FJF opportunities as urgent from the very start so that they could be processed quickly.

3.7 Lewisham will be severely impacted by the public sector retrenchment as 31% of our working population are employed in the public sector locally and across London. The changes to the welfare system is expected to result in an increase in the number of people on the JSA register as people are reclassified from benefits such as IB/ESA. The public sector retrenchment is also expected to lead to an increase in JSA claimants.

3.8 Young people leaving school and college over the next two years will face stiff competition for jobs especially as most will not have previous work experience or job specific skills to offer employers. The decision to end the FJF scheme in March 2011 rather than March 2012 means that there will be less opportunities for young people to gain skills and "real" work experience that gives them a better chance of competing successfully for jobs.

10 September 2010