The Budget: What does it actually mean for the Employability Sector?
The Budget reaffirmed the Government’s commitment to joining up health, employment and skills. It provided a snapshot of some key themes we can expect to see in the Get Britain Working Whitepaper, including:
Supporting economically inactive people with a health condition back into work
Developing at least 3 Integrated Care Systems, NHS England Health and Growth Accelerators to evidence the impact on conditions driving economic inactivity
Creating 8 Youth Guarantee Trailblazer Areas to test new ways of supporting young people into employment/training
Connect to Work (CTW)
CtW is a £115million investment in CTW (replacement for Universal Support) a new supported employment programme to help 100,000 participants by 2026.
Flexibility for Combined/Local Authorities to tailor CTW to reflect local need
Deeper devolution for respective Greater Manchester and West Midlands Combined Authority to integrate budgets into communal funding pots
Market Implications: Déjà vu?
The focus on multi-year funding, service integration and the Invest to Save model signals a return to familiar Labour policy territory. In the early 2000’s DWP piloted the ONE project as part of its wider Invest to Save strategy (which broadly reflects the core objectives of Get Britain Working) and was evaluated by the NAO in 2002. National Audit Office Report (HC 50 2002-2003): The Invest to Save Budget. A quick summary follows!
Positive Learnings
One Point of Contact: Coordinating and delivering multiple interventions under one roof (employment, health, housing, skills)
Proactive Engagement: Moving conversations away from benefits to employment progression and reaching a wider caseload of claimants with a health condition
Areas for Improvement
Staff Training: An over focus on benefits and lacked wider knowledge of labour market opportunities and training
Service Coordination: A lack of agree communal performance objectives with services managed against different KPIs
Evaluation: Limited evidence to substantiate project impact through a cost-benefit analysis, which made it difficult to demonstrate value for money!
Applying post learning from Invest to Save Budgets
As we move to the next phase of implementing Government policy, we believe that there is a need for:
Joint Commissioning: Pooling money to support a wider range of interventions and outcomes through a performance framework agreed through Integrated Care Boards
Robust Evaluation Framework: Measure success and demonstrate proof of concept; there is an evidence vacuum around “what works”
Transparent Commissioning: Develop local business cases that outline the methodology for outsourcing or delivering in-house
Employment & Skills Coordination: Merging some DWP and DfE functions into one Dept. to drive accountability and performance