David Cameron announced on Tuesday that young people who have been out of work, education or training for six months would have to take on unpaid community work if they want to claim benefits.
What this “community work” involves in practice is poorly defined, and there’s a real danger that the government is pursuing an idea which has already fallen flat once in this parliament. The initial Help to Work Programme was launched with great fanfare in April 2014 to make young people work for their benefits. Its stumbling progress should act as a salutary lesson to Number 10.
Firstly, evidence suggests that community work has minimal impact on whether young people get into long-term employment, even if it does reduce the welfare bill a little. Secondly, this may cause problems for the charity sector – which understandably responds badly if co-opted into projects and policies on which it hasn’t been consulted.
@GdnVoluntary keep volunteering voluntary. Not hard to figure out really. Be nice if the government actually talked to us first #keepvolvol
— Ben Gilchrist (@bengilchrist) February 17, 2015
We have already seen this in action. Help to Work was boycotted by many charities who were deeply unhappy about being asked to clean up after what were seen as government failings. Under the banner Keep Volunteering Voluntary, more than 350 charities — including national giants like Oxfam, Shelter and Scope — publicly refused to have any part in it. It wasn’t just a political gesture from these charities, either. The assumption that volunteering is free help, and carries no burdens in hosting and training, is as widespread as it is wrong. New workers aren’t necessarily the gift to the sector that the government imagined.
Meanwhile many existing volunteers, whose time is equivalent to billions of pounds every year to the sector, could walk away if the charities they care about become a depository for people who don’t really want to be there, something highlighted by NPC research last year. That’s a big risk when so many charities exist day-to-day on their help and goodwill.
Most worryingly, though, the government is in danger of repeating an old mistake in the way it views charities. It just doesn’t work to treat the sector as some inert mass looking to Whitehall for help and support. In many cases it’s a vibrant body of innovations and ideas, from whom the government could learn. And on youth unemployment, the ideas are already there.
@GdnVoluntary doubt charities will be keen to get involved. Is this a rehash of the previous scheme that no-one wanted?
— Helen Gore (@HellyGore) February 17, 2015
Hundreds of charities in the UK are specialists in helping young people into work. Co-ordinating the efforts of these charities is vital, if they are to identify which interventions are effective and which aren’t, to target their resources accordingly. For example, NPC has established a Journey to Employment framework (Jet) to achieve exactly this, something already used by dozens of charities, here and in Northern Ireland. It helps charities measure what makes a difference to a young person finding and keeping a job: is it their personal circumstances, their skills, their emotional capabilities (or a mix of these and more)? Volunteering might be part of this, but it’s hardly the only or the best answer. For each jobseeker, the needs will be slightly different.
This is where charities full of local knowledge bring so much value, and where a one-size-suits-all speech from ministers is least effective. But this is squeezed out by the rush to eye-catching punitive measures.
The government is right to think about charities when it looks for solutions to youth unemployment, but the solution on which it settled last year was the wrong one and may well prove to be the wrong one again now. There’s a pool of expertise out there, if only the government would engage with it.
Russell Hargrave is the media manager at New Philanthropy Capital
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