To ask for opinions on the 'Get Britain Working' white paper?

[Locutus2000]

Now it's out in full?

Summary

Short version: Lots of reviews, 'carrot not stick' approach. Revamp jobcentres.

Nothing will change.

How do they expect these non working people to manage?

Can people go from a non working mindset to an engaged, ready for work mindset? Just like that?

Lip service as always

• I've worked in employment support for many years, but not on government funded programmes and there in lies an issue, that too much money is given to contractors who fail, with profits going to large organisations elsewhere and job seekers still in the same position after long term programmes.
• Disability or long term condition, employers want productive units and there's no slack in organisations to deal with those who fail to perform and this is something that many organisations deal with by performance management.
• So OK, where's the employers with the apprenticeships and please, no more business admin or beauty therapists, both of which are cheap and easy to deliver, but rarely fit the needs of employers. We need skills and that means that the young person needs a good foundation education level, we need training centres of quality, quality tutors and equipment and our FE is on its knees in many places, alongside paying poorly for quality staff and support.
• £240m is a drop in the ocean for the issues we have and will not touch the additional FE provision.
• Jobcentres transformed! This I have to see, as presently they are benefit opening and sanction centres, and where are the full time, permanent, pensionable roles, or are we talking filling more zero hours, poor condition jobs where people are thrown before profit. Does the government realise that the local labour markets often do not support the employment that young people want or have been repeatedly told they can have? Where's the transport, the infrastructure, and it is no good focusing on post 16, if the 11 years of compulsory education prior to this has been awful and they are well behind where they need to be.
• Those with criminal records? I am currently on a programme where many have records and they are just not even being considered for employment, yet could have been trained in prison, so how's that being implemented?
• Mental health support to be expanded from on its knees to what and by whom? Apps, AI are NOT the answer and extra capacity from where, you can't just fiddle with real mental health issues and some mental health issues stem from years of trauma (Adverse Childhood Experiences), others may be an excuse or even caused by the experiences of the last few years, so having an app installed on the phone you can't afford the mobile data on is not going to help, is it!
• Producing a CV does not a job get or make and here I will add digital poverty, lack of IT skills and it is lacking in the young, which is a national disgrace and really needs to be addressed as part of the national curriculum properly.
• Measures announced around fueling growth, where? I have heard of more redundancies in the last couple of months than in years and I've just been made redundant from successfully having worked with job seekers for years and a friend from the NHS, as a Social Prescriber, supporting those with mental health lost her job, due to lack of funding from the NHS last week!

The issues are huge, complex and have been shouted out loud over the years again and again.... to anyone who would listen, but the DWP and the Government are yet again fiddling without truly getting to the heart of the issues, including housing where no work exists, inability to travel due to no public transport and never having had the money to learn to drive, let alone own a car, that schools are not fit for purpose, social mobility is a lovely term and just not happening, that rents are well beyond rents and too many of our young live in homes they have to fund but work isn't paying.

I know it is not all young people, but I have worked and am talking about the group that this report is about and I have barely touched the issues, just raised a tiny number.

yeah, and if you have no references, no employer will take you on, even voluntary jobs want references

If they are simply lazy and don't want to work they shouldn't be allowed to have benefits and leach off of the rest of us. I think if the benefits are revoked they will get in that working mindset real quick.

Some of it sounds like fluff, such as rebounding things, mayor's getting powers.

Some of it sounds unbelievable, like increasing mental health support capacity? Can we actually do that, do we have any qualified staff left? Maybe we can.

But I am quite interested in the youth bit and changes to the apprentiship levy which could be useful.

It's just increasing the size of government again.

My son is 19. Spent a year after college trying to get an engineering apprenticeship. He applied for over 60 schemes, had two rejection letters. Just two out of sixty applications. Its soul destroying for young people. It all needs to be joined up for the latest scheme to work properly, which i doubt it will

I visited the local job centre about a year ago as I was winding up my business. It's 5 miles away with one bus per 2 hours. We are 9 miles from the centre of Bristol. It's ruralish but not highlands of Scotland! I was looking for advise on benefit (I'm entitled to fa because I was self employed and paid lower stamp I knew this but wanted to check) my mates who have used the place told me that I'd not be seen without an appointment. I was so that's a positive.
On the down side I was 54 at the time and wasn't asked if I needed to find another job or how I would manage on no money coming in.

I haven't read the WP summary but what do you mean manage? I imagine the same way millions of people who really can't be bothered with work and would like to go back to sleep when the 6am alarm goes off, but don't because they have to work...?

I want to see the recognition that this will take more than a generation to transform.

Those who think people are just lazy need to look at themselves and ask why, if it's so easy, they haven't chosen to be lazy and claim benefits themselves. Then they might realise that no one is born thinking "I know. When I grow up I'll make sure my life is completely chaotic, I can never hold down a job or own a house, can't travel and won't ever have a sense of accomplishment about a job."

Yes, some people are undoubtedly lazy. But they didn't get there overnight. That "don't work, won't work" mindset (which definitely exists) is the culmination of a lifetime of factors, such as poor parenting, trauma, constant knock backs and sheer bad luck. By the time people are in that mindset they are past the point of sanctions having the effect of making them get proper paid employment, let alone be worth an employer taking that risk on them. Which means we'd be imposing sanctions on people who are among our most vulnerable and who've already been let down repeatedly by life. As adults they may not be very nice and we don't have to like them or excuse criminal/socially corrosive behaviour, but a fair and just society should recognise its role in allowing adults like this to develop and seek to change it. That means ploughing a fuck ton of money into education and skills training and child social care. Which most people don't want to do.

When I was a skint single parent, I would have been better off not working as benefits would have paid me more than my salary minus the cost of my commute, mortgage and childcare. I often went without food. I didn't leave work because I had a career and long-term prospects to incentivise me, plus I didn't want to lose my house. If I'd had no qualifications, no prospects and was living in rented accommodation, quite frankly it would have been a bonkers decision. Self respect does not put food on the table.

So we should just let them go from being non working to being retired? Do you have a non working brain?

Who will be responsible for differentiating between “simply lazy” and not? I can see this approach becoming a disabled person’s nightmare.

Exactly this. It’s always those who have been afforded more privileges than others who take the “they’re just lazy” approach.

Manage..... as on a high proportion are 'off' work/out of work due to poor mental health, disability,anxiety.....

I would love to work, I'm a carer for dc3 (8) he attends a SEN school and I'm limited to 10am-2pm hrs as there isn't any childcare available for children with his needs.
I phoned the job centre last week to ask for any advice on updating my qualifications or help to access work but was not helped whatsoever, I was passed to three different numbers, each one saying that my enquiries were not their job to deal with.

No one really wants to help, it's all talk no action.

Says someone who totally doesn't understand what it's like to work with no experience or support

My DS has just spent four months job hunting. He left school with a levels. He applied for jobs for 5 hours every day apart from 1 day a week where he gave himself a break. Is had a bit of experience working in shops and restaurants previously and was looking for jobs that he met the requirements for.
He went to the Jobcentre very optimistically thinking they would help him get a job came back absolutely devastated saying they spoke to him like dirt and said it was a really horrible experience. It took a lot of handholding to get him back into the building.

He applied to over 80 jobs. For each job he would write a covering letter, change his CV and/or adapt the online responses. His father and I helped and we are very good at job hunting and his father has worked in recruitment so knows how to play the game.
He got and failed at 3 interviews.
He has eventually managed to get a job at a warehouse. It's not his dream job but it is a job. He got this in the main because we know somebody that work there and they gave him a good word.

If he didn't have our support and encouragement I think he would have given up long before. He got depressed, disheartened and angry at points.

Our son has good role models in us, we both work as does everyone in our family and most of our friends.
He is bright, articulate, not disabled, has English as his first language and is a white male with no criminal record. We live in a major city with hundreds of opportunities, good transport links and lots of different industries.
He has good solid friends who also are actively engaged in things so he is not tempted into a bad world.
We managed to give him haircuts and get him suitable clothes to wear to an interview. We have helped to be confident and picked him up when he is down.

Imagine any of those things being slightly different. If he was disabled, or not particularly bright. If we didn't work and didn't know anyone else that did. Or we lived in a place with high unemployment, little industry, poor transport. If we couldn't pay for a haircut or for a shirt. If we were shit head parents, or alcoholics or drug addicts or violent or ill and unable to help him.

He was so upset and disheartened and yet he is probably in one of the best situations any person can be.
It makes me so angry when people are so dismissive of unemployed people, it lacks such empathy.

Yes a very small number of people don't actively want to work but if you scratch beneath the surface they actually usually don't have the confidence to put their head out the parapet or have done and been beaten down and now act as if they don't want to work because it's hard to admit no one wants you.

Great post @YYURYYUCICYYUR4ME

I read the comments section on this in the Times today. It was 50% 'No employer in their right mind would employ someone with health problems', 'you'd have to be mad to hire someone with a patchy work history', 'why should we offer flexibility', 'stop all home working and send everyone back to the office' and 50% 'Take the benefits away from the lazy scroungers they'll soon work then' and 'sponging off the system with their self-diagnosis' and 'the bone idle with their so-called mental health problems and bad backs' and 'anyone with a laptop can do a job from home'.

What are people with chronic health problems and disabilities supposed to do? They're between a rock and a hard place.

And then there's the issue of actually finding a job. The number of people who want to work vastly outnumbers job vacancies. I'm looking for a new job at the moment and it's practically tumbleweed in my sector. There's recruitment freezes and redundancies left right and centre. The last job I applied for was pulled because of funding.

My ds has been the same. Trying to get part time work around his Uni studies for two years now. He's a bit socially awkward but willing to work hard and has tried everything. Even applying to KFC they wouldn't consider him as he "didn't have kitchen experience". How on earth are you meant to get any experience when nowhere will give you a chance? Just in the last week he has managed to get a seasonal job in a supermarket. My older DS helped him tweak his CV. I just hope this works out for him but anyone thinking it is easy is deluded.

Dread to think how much that cost to be written up. Stopped reading after few lines as not impressed by style. Wouldn't even bother recommending to someone to go to the job centre went twice once when single mum at 18/19 with toddler and they just wanted to tell me what benefits I could get nothing about education or training. 15 yrs later went again told to go online and apply for 5 obs a day didn't matter what ws doing more than that already only went to see if I could get my stamp covered or any help with finding a job few days later was sent P45 in the post still no idea why as had nothing and just showed nil for the period.

One of the major issues is that I can not see how these reforms begin to stop the can't work, won't work mindset from ever developing. Once someone has developed this mindset, it takes so much more effort to bring them back to a can do mindset.

Tackle poor parenting, poorly disciplined children, reform the secondary curriculum and it bring it up to the needs of a 21st child, make the school day longer for secondary children to accommodate it if necessary, there is no reason why secondary children are finishing school at 2.30pm. Bring back drama, music, art, coding, dressmaking, hair, make up, beauty etc to engage children.

Start talking to children about careers/well being from Year 6, let them know what is out there and more importantly, what they need (both qualifications and softer skills) to actually get into the career of their choice. A young person should not get to the end of Year 11 and not know what their talents and skills are and how they can use them to become a self sufficient adult and what makes them happy.

There also needs to be changes regarding SEN funding in schools either you up the funding and give the increasing numbers of children the support they need in mainstream schools or you re-open dedicated special schools in order to give young people the help and support they need to be able to function independently as adults.

And finally we need to be brutally honest with our young boys and let them know what life is like after they receive a criminal record. It is not like America where after 3 offences you are sent away for a long time, with a roof over your head and 3 meals a day. This is the UK, most likely you will released after 3-8 years (dependent on crime) with a criminal record that you need to declare on every job application. Just over 1 in 4 people with a criminal conviction find work and although I have no figures, I can guarantee you that they are not doing jobs they really want to do which also have good career progression.

Nice as these reforms look on paper, if the Government really wants to increase employment they have to start asking far more difficult questions and more importantly tackled the root of the barriers identified. Anything else is just lip service and helps no one.

I’m always cynical and I’ve always thought of the various benefits reforms as diversions to take our focus away from the government. Look over there look over there, don’t look over here. Kick the disabled and single mums because it’s all their fault the UK economy is in such a state because of the barely noticeable amount they are claiming in the greater scheme of things. Now it’s the 18 to 21’s turn to be held responsible for the economy grinding to a halt. It’s because Britain isn’t working apparently. You know, like the whole country is languishing on benefits or something. It’s all a load of cobblers designed to turn us against each other.

What will be expected is that all disabled people have to start explaining themselves to all and sundry (not just the DWP and/or Job Centre) as to why they cannot meet working hours. Only by full disclosure and humiliation will they then be given the all clear to claim benefits, maybe be given a badge to wear at all times deeming them ‘economically unviable people’ just to try and give that extra push into work. Only through embarrassment and suggesting that disabled people are a waste of the population’s money will the work force be reignited.