The minimal help given to jobseekers by measures such as the Flexible New Deal benefits the providers, not the unemployed
It's over. I have finished my four-week period of mandatory work-related activity, a requirement of the Flexible New Deal, and I am sitting in the reception area waiting for my A4e appointment. My caseworker appears. "Hello John," he says. I can't remember when he first started calling me John, it isn't the first time he has but I let it slide; I did after all change his name to "Fred" when I first wrote of my jobseeking experience for Comment is free back in November. Fred's first language isn't English, and the corporatist sloganeering that employees are trained to use hasn't perfectly masked that fact that he isn't fluent either.
For someone like me, diagnosed on the autistic spectrum (a condition defined by complex communication issues), this is an amazing oversight on the part of A4e, the private contractor that owns most of the contracts in England for providing welfare-to-work services like the Flexible New Deal. I don't understand half of what Fred says to me, and I'm pretty sure he doesn't understand half of what I say to him.
As the "action plan" that I am expected to sign at every appointment is a legal agreement, this puts me in a serious bind ? enough that I've had to start looking for help elsewhere. I am now getting help, paid for by the Social Fund, which is intended for emergencies. Prior to my experience at A4e, I have never burdened the public purse beyond my benefit claims for jobseeker's allowance and disability living allowance (DLA). Politicians might have hoped to save money with the Flexible New Deal, but they've instead set it up to fail by not scrutinising the arguments made for it.
A4e doesn't even have a single disability specialist like jobcentres do. As autism wasn't a well-known term until about 20 years ago, there was never much hope that A4e could help if it tried. If it tried.
Emma Harrison is the owner of A4e. She seeks publicity like a burning plane seeks the ground. She uses the platforms she's given to state that she knows how to get people into work; that she has a way and that is what A4e does. But does it really work? There's a lot of talk of "personalised help" but little detail about what it actually entails. Maybe it's a commercial secret, but my experience sounds a lot like of others who live in other parts of the country.
Having looked at the Department for Work and Pensions' guidelines issued to Flexible New Deal providers, my experience suggests its work programmes consist of doing only what the guidelines say; just the minimum that its contracts legally oblige it to do; basically just the mandatory work-related activity. This is a culture that focuses on the needs of the providers, not the clients.
There is no channel for clients to give feedback, but the DWP was more receptive to complaints from sub-contractors. In response, a contract was tendered and a bid won by Carley Consult (Jim Carley used to be head of business development for A4e, if you hear my axe grinding) to regulate the welfare-to-work contract supply chain. Complaints were made about a conflict of interest: Carley sells a service writing bids for contractors; Carley Consult as new contract regulator also wrote many of the successful bids in the first place. The DWP has brushed this off (scroll down to ITT014) and says no more of it.
Very little of the "chatter" on welfare to work concerns the jobless clients' rights and views: it has to this point been all about serving these often very large companies. Unless this changes, the unemployed will not be helped because no one is really interested in them; the supply chain transfers a culture along with the contracts.
Welfare to work? Try welfare for the wealthy.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jan/28/welfare-to-work-flexible-new-deal
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