Welfare to work - Work and Pensions Select Committee want to hear your thoughts

UKParliament

Hi MSEs

Are you having trouble finding employment?

Do you have suggestions how your community could help you find employment and support you in the process?

The Work and Pensions Select Committee want to hear from people about getting into employment. Share your thoughts and experiences in the welfare-to-work inquiry.

Details of the inquiry

The Committee is exploring options for the future, with a particular focus on promoting a broader range of specialist provision, including through innovative or community-level approaches, and how to support people who have the most difficulty finding employment, such as young people with weak educational attainment, older people, ex-incapacity benefits claimants and people with mental health problems. In particular, the Committee is interested in exploring possible recommendations for reform which:

- reflect the contemporary labour market
- address any deficiencies in the Work Programme
- consider more personalised, innovative or community-level provision
- support the hardest to help unemployed people

The deadline for written submission is 28 August 2015.

Find out more

Guidance for submissions
Work and Pension Committee

Thanks

Lucinda and Jo

DomRavioli

Don't classify everyone with MH problems in one. Its rude, unnecessary and discriminatory. That would be a start.

BlueEyedGirl

Yes, how about those employed to help others find work have a basic understanding of both mental and physical health difficulties.

red_devil

get rid of stupid pointless schemes such as CWP which don't help only hinder.

UKParliament

In a Special Report published by the House of Commons Work and Pensions Select Committee, the Government has responded to the Committee's Welfare-to-work report.

Read the Work and Pensions Committee's report on Welfare to Work

Read the Government's response

Select Committee report: Welfare to Work

When the current Work Programme and Work Choice contracts are replaced in 2017, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) must more effectively focus its contracted employment programmes (welfare-to-work) on unemployed people with challenging problems such as drug and alcohol addiction, illiteracy and innumeracy, homelessness and very weak employment history.

The DWP should also maintain, and ideally expand, a separate, specialist scheme for people with substantial disabilities, says the Work and Pensions Select Committee in its report.

Chair's comment

The Rt Hon Frank Field DL MP, Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee, said:

"DWP deserves credit for implementing a programme which, in general, produces results at least as good as before, for a greatly reduced cost per participant. But we must not forget that nearly 70% of participants are completing the Work Programme without finding sustained employment. We must do much better. Our recommendations aim to create an employment support system which is equipped to help into work people facing serious problems who have been distant from the labour market, and inadequately supported, for far too long."

Government response: Government plans and further scrutiny

The Government confirms its broad plans for the structure of employment support set out in the recent Spending Review:

• Broadly flat investment in the range of employment support but much greater focus on more intensive Jobcentre Plus support in the earlier months of benefit claims.
• From 2017, a single contracted employment programme, the Health and Work Programme, for unemployed people with health conditions and disabilities and claimants who have been out of work for at least two years (claimants are typically referred to the current Work Programme at nine or 12 months). This will entail a substantial reduction in funding for contracted welfare-to-work provision.

Chair's comment

The Rt Hon Frank Field DL MP, Chair of the Committee said:

"We found from our visits that many claimants should be referred to contractors early and not be kept warehoused at Jobcentre Plus. To help choose these candidates who need extra help quickly, and would thereby find work more quickly, we suggested that a simple set of indicators be developed to help distinguish them. We are pleased that the Government is exploring this option. But its approach, of identifying early those claimants who will need extra help to gain employment, is blown sky high by what appears to be its intention that claimants remain in the Jobcentre Plus system for at least two years prior to referral. This will undoubtedly cost taxpayers far more than a reformed system along the lines the Committee proposes".