Download The Claimant Commitment. A Prime Contractor*s Viewpoint

The Claimant Commitment. A Prime
Contractor’s Viewpoint
George Selmer,
Contract Director
(North West)
G4S Welfare to Work
Committed partners?
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Universal Credit IS the way forward:
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Genuinely exciting opportunity to radically change the incentives within the benefit
system to properly reward work
A simpler, better understood system will remove the disincentives to taking up
employment
The Claimant Commitment is central to this

It should change the relationship between the ‘claimant’ and the state
BUT
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Change to the ‘employment support’ environment must go hand in hand
with change to benefit environment
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Claimant Commitment represents an opportunity to properly embed a culture of
rights and responsibilities
It is important to drive changes on both sides of the ‘R and R’ coin
If the benefit system is going to treat people more and more as individuals, the
employment support environment must do that
If we get the Claimant Commitment
right…

We will have a benefit and employment support
environment which:
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Is a genuine contract between citizen and state
Is a fair balance of the right to support and the
responsibility to seek work and contribute
 Is able to treat each individual differently, tailoring the
level of support (financial and otherwise) and the level of
expectation according to their need, circumstance and
ability to work
 Can enable UK Public Employment Service providers to
support more people into sustained work
What we know works

Identification of jobseekers needs from the outset
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Robust and reliable front-end assessment
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A ‘Black Box’:
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Tailored, personalised interventions rather than a rigid, tick-box set of activities, some
of which might be inappropriate
All activity should be: practical and essential AND based on what we know works

A clear focus on outcomes rather than inputs
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This means putting the right incentives in place both for jobseekers
and the people tasked with supporting them
We need to ensure that the Claimant Commitment reinforces
these fundamentals
The risks of the Claimant Commitment

Too much focus on responsibilities and not enough on supporting
individuals– more ‘I’ than ‘we’
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Too much focus on INPUTS rather than OUTCOMES
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Focus on quantity of activity rather than quality or appropriateness of intervention
Focus on monitoring compliance with instructions (‘are the boxes ticked’?) rather
than delivering positive interventions

A bureaucracy that feeds on itself?
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Lack of resource in the UK PES system to either:
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Deliver more and better tailored support to claimants
Adequately monitor compliance
What happens when claimants move onto the Work Programme?
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Danger of claimant running on two separate tracks – inefficient for taxpayer, bad for
claimant
Can’t allow providers to become another ‘compliance monitoring’ service – of an
agreement they do not own
Recommendations for success…
Trust Work Programme providers and delegate
authority

Providers MUST be allowed to deliver the support they
judge is best for the claimant – and be judged on their
results

Claimant Commitment should be ‘to participate in the
Work Programme as required by my provider’
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OR Claimant Commitment is to be agreed with Work
Programme provider – not separately with JCP Advisor
Recommendations for success…
Make use of the resource available

Earlier access to Work Programme for those at risk of
long term unemployment
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If additional resource is required to deliver increasingly tailored
support then the DEL-AME financial model ensures value for
money for the taxpayer – providers shoulder the risk of failure

Early diagnostics and intervention are key to preventing long
term worklessness – and reducing the long term cost of
Universal Credit
Recommendations for success…
Incentivise Work Programme to become even more flexible
Reforming the differential payments model
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Payment groups become redundant under UC
Alternatives:
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Time spent claiming (cumulatively over period rather than concurrently)
Use of assessment tool to identify needs/resource need to support from the outset – ‘Jobseeker
Classification Instrument’
Be bolder with the DEL-AME model - more resource to help those jobseekers with the most
significant barriers to work, in exchange for less for those with the least
Recommendations for success…
Don’t confuse the landscape
Work Programme must remain the only post-JCP employment programme run by the
government
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Don’t go back to the confusion of New Deal for X, Y and Z
We want to treat individuals as individuals – that means a Black Box, not a different
programme for everyone
Work Programme
Recommendations for success…
Encourage better integration between services
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Learn from ESF Family Support Programme and incentivise
‘progress’ as well as Job Outcome?
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Far fewer prime contractors to increase cohesion in the supply
chain network?
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Work Programme primes to administer ESF and SFA funds to
join-up services according to need in each area?
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Joined-up incentives – Jobcentre Plus and Work Programme
providers to share Job Outcome measure?