Can the young weather this long winter?

Ian Mulheirn tells us the facts demand we  replace "welfare scrounger" rhetoric with action for the young

Have you noticed how the weather is behaving like the economy? Just as we think we are through the worst of it another hard frost is upon us. Down at the allotment we can fleece against the cold, an act that may or may not protect first early potatoes, but for those hit hardest by the recession, weathering the economy is a good deal harder. 

Doing nothing is not an option. Only devastation follows neglect and the growing number of young unemployed people is a ticking time bomb for us all. The disproportionate rise of unemployment for the young is the clearest indicator that recession will continue and cost. The young really are our future (lyric alert) "teach them well and let them lead the way", let them languish and watch future prosperity fade away. 

I have been scanning the horizon for hope, but I can't find any data beyond a dismal 3% that indicates the Work Programme is actually getting the long term unemployed into work. @LiamByrne's recent blog for LabourList "Our young people need a real chance to work in a real job paying a real wage" highlights the plight of the young unemployed and communicates his sense of urgency. As the MP with a constituency where youth unemployment is higher than anywhere in the UK, with 30 jobless chasing each opportunity, he knows this is a crisis. His call to action is for Labour local authorities to make getting jobs for the young a priority, but it should be a matter of urgency for us all. I remember the 80's when jobs became a hopeless Holy Grail for so many and the so-called "rump" of todays permanently unemployed was created. We know that the first four years after a young person leaves school, college or university is critical and if they fail to launch in that time their future is bleak and their confidence gone. 

But the demonised, feckless, undeserving poor so commonly condemned by our increasingly intolerant population is in fact a myth highlighted by a really hard hitting piece by Ian Mulheirn, in this months NewStatesman, "The Myth of the welfare scrounger". Here Ian quotes the Department of Work and Pensions own research that shows only a small minority of adults - 11 per cent of claimants in 2010-11 - have a history of spending more than half of recent years on the dole. This is in sharp contrast with the British Social Attitudes survey which shows that in 2011 54 per cent of people thought that if benefits were lower people would "learn to stand on their own two feet", more than double the 26 per cent who felt that way 20 years earlier. As Ian tells us " it’s clear that the excoriating rhetoric isn’t based in reality".

When Social Enterprise London delivered a Future Jobs Fund programme in 2011, 74 per cent of the under unemployed 24's we placed in social enterprises came off benefits for good. The team and I agreed that although we met our target of helping 500 young people at the time we could have placed four times that amount. 

I don't know if social enterprise, community businesses or civil society organisations can still offer the young opportunity on that scale, given those that are still in business have had to weather two years of hard recession since the days of optimism when the Future Jobs Fund held real hope of our young. But I can say categorically, that if we don't make it the business of all of us to help our future business leaders, innovators and tax payers we will all have plenty of time to regret it. 

The Work Programme, Emma Harrison and employment subsidy myths

Today it's all about the Work Programme and Workfare and troubled A4E's recently resigned Chair Emma Harrison. It seems everyone has a point of view, as do I. Readers will know I have been writing about the Work Programme and more especially the Future Jobs Fund (FJF) that it replaced for some time.

The closure of RISE

From the RISE website

Like everyone I have been shocked by the announcement of the closure of RISE, the body in the SouthWest set up to support the development of social enterprise. This is a devastating loss. I haven't had a chance to talk to their ceo, my friend Lucy Findlay, who understandably is rather preoccupied, so I don't have all the relevant information, but I do know a thing or two about the challenges facing social enterprise support and it is time we all faced facts.

This Government has not prioritised the support of social enterprise business development in anything other than finance, by which I mean the actual money not help with working out if you need it or what you could do with it. So whilst money could be argued as the most important element of business growth I would also argue that for the majority of our members, making the most of the kind of finance that is on offer is not something they feel they can do at present, for now they want basic business advice, the support of their peers and access to the wider social enterprise community, and they have no money. In short they need what is referred to in our world as finance readiness, something SEL has been offering for 15 years and RISE for nearly as long. It is interesting to note that where social enterprise development agencies have been longest that is where the density of social enterprises is at its greatest. Chicken or egg?

I know its not fashionable to say this, but is grant funding for social enterprises or their development really so terrible? I see no contradiction between social enterprise agencies making money through trading to deliver social impact and being in receipt of grant, nor have I ever thought support bodies must be self sustaining through fees to be legitimate. Social enterprise creates wealth in the most deprived communities and their social impact often provides the Government with a healthy return on its investment which must be worth making, no? The idea that such things as research and policy development for instance can be supported through income generation is simply not practical in my view. The RDA's have gone, and in London so has the Government Office and the majority of London Councils grant money as well, we have said goodbye to the wonderful Future Jobs Fund, and since the introduction of the Work Programme, work creation projects for most smaller providers have mostly gone too. All of this can be multiplied when you also add the European funding that can not be drawn down due the absence of matched funding. In short the cuts have been eye watering. 

SEL will survive, but not because we are better than RISE, nor because our members are more prolific or loyal than RISE members. No, we will survive because we have long since worked on adaptive relationships with clients through our consultancy, welcomed collaboration from private companies who sponsor our work in exchange for commercial access to our members, and have re shaped the organisation to offer only that which can be bought and paid for. The result is we are much smaller, you may have noticed, we do a lot less policy, but I like to think we are still perfectly formed.

I mourn the loss of RISE, I wish I had been able to do something to prevent it from falling over. I know some of its staff and have always been impressed by the quality, creativity and commitment of their approach, I am very sorry that social enterprise will lose that expertise. RISE was the best of us and it will be missed, especially by me. I can only hope that this will make those remaining work harder to support one another so that social enterprises get infrastructure that delivers growth, and we can be confident in saying we can not do that alone.

Tweeting about the riots @NCVO

Riot police charge past burning buildings on a residential street in Croydon: Guardian

Yesterday I went to a summit at SEL member, Rich Mix in Bethnal Green organised by NCVO to analyse the riots. It was the kind of edgy, gritty  debate I hadn't participated in for some time, and you didn't know which way the room was going to go. NCVO had invited over 100 people, which meant that those working at grass roots level were there to talk about what they understood to be happening in communities. Restricted access to the mike usually means the big guns don't turn up, but in the audience and participating at the roundtable discussion panels we had Stephen Bubb, CEO at ACEVO, the Minister for Civil Society, Nick Hurd, and members of the cross-party Riots Panel. I sat next to Stephen, which is always interesting as his views, like those of Stuart Etherington who opened and closed the event, are those commonly heard in Whitehall.

On my table I really enjoyed talking to @AndreHackett a graduate of the School for Social Entrepreneurs who had founded We Make a Change, an interesting organisation that connects communities with people who need to hear from them. I asked Andre the question that was bothering me: were the rioters in fact different groups operating as a mass? When the riots occurred it seemed to me that rioters fell into two groups, those who were angry, with a statement to make, and those who were just there to nick stuff. Given some saw themselves very clearly in one group and not the other and others had begun in one group but shape shifted in the electricity to the other, it was hard to analyse the motivation of the rioters as a single entity. I asked Andre about this as he had been working directly with those who rioted before and after the event, and he agreed. This idea that community is in fact a diverse group of opposing interests even in the manifestation of their rioting was echoed in Stephen's recent blog.

Both men argued, as I did, that young people need the hope of jobs in the communities in which they live. The lack of jobs for young people is a national crisis and one that will end, regardless of punitive action, with people out on the streets again and more worryingly slipping between society's cracks, disappearing without trace. A critical point made by one contributor was that young people are a resource, not a problem, this for me is the point of the exercise. There was a collective call for a young people's employment programme to sit alongside the work programme, which sounded a lot like the Future Jobs Fund. I know I bang on about the Future Jobs Fund, but it did work, the 500 young people we helped to get into work could have been 2,000 if we had been allowed to carry on, and we were just one provider, this is important and worth serious consideration. Yesterday it was announced that a further 77,000 young people had signed on since July. Getting them into jobs is the place to start to avoid future riots and further economic decline. But that takes enterprise - social enterprise if you ask me as the businesses that will be offering jobs to kids with limited qualifications and zero experience, in the places they live, will be social enterprises like Livity in Brixton that worked with over 1,000 kids last year.

This is clearly a hot topic as the twitter stream from the event,  has continued at least in my tweet world. We don't have quick answers but I do think we are getting there in the spirit of community, by working together.

Lessons from the demise of the Future Jobs Fund

Despite the success of this now-defunct scheme, social enterprises are still unable to take the risk of hiring long-term unemployed young people, writes Allison Ogden-Newton

• Allison Ogden-Newton
• Guardian Professional, Friday 26 August 2011 06.00 BST
• Article history

The Future Jobs Fund helped unemployed young people and the social enterprises they worked for. Photograph: Rex Features

In the next few days, Social Enterprise London's (SEL) final two participants complete their six-month paid work placements as part of the abandoned Future Jobs Fund (FJF) programme. SEL was part of the first wave of applicant organisations and so our experience over the last 27 months spans the FJF's complete cycle from glint in the Brown government's eye to one of its last beneficiaries.

When the FJF was announced in 2009, we had scant detail about how it would work and no idea about the scheme's suitability for social enterprise. We contacted our 2,400 members anyway to see if they were game for six months of a subsidised, long-term unemployed man or woman under 24. We were gobsmacked as the following 36 hours revealed hundreds of placement offers, and so London's Future 500was born.

The partnership we put together was with 164 social enterprises taking an average of four placements each. Given their small size, many employers needed more support to manage their young recruits than we had anticipated, but nonetheless they lived up to their reputation as social businesses and most made a job offer. In fact even though some participants struggled with the world of work – sadly, two even ended up in prison – 69% did not return to benefits, which achieved our ambition to work with those furthest from the labour market and help them become social entrepreneurs of the future. As Richard Cummings, HR director at Green-Works, told us: "The whole programme has been pretty painless and you guys really helped it work. Together we have made a real difference to the lives of so many people."

The scheme closed within weeks of the last election, so the 1,500 additional jobs we were subsequently offered have gone by the wayside. But why don't those social enterprises take young people on anyway if they have genuine jobs to offer? The answer is economic.

Social enterprises still struggle to attract mainstream investment so they are often undercapitalised and their restricted growth means that taking on skilled staff is a process undertaken carefully, and long-term unemployed young people with limited skills pose too great a risk. The wage subsidy combined with third-party mentoring, expertly delivered through social enterprises like Striding Out, reduce that liability. As Stephen Hurton, director of Proper Oils, told us, "Proper Oils would not ordinarily have offered him the job if we had not had the six-month period to induct and train him. This period was required to get the young person trained to a suitable level so he earned his offer of full-time employment."

This view was echoed by Caroline Roake, of Livity, who said: "For financial reasons, last year we couldn't have considered taking someone on without the FJF scheme, but having generated a junior receptionist role for it, we were very pleased to offer our receptionist an extension to her role after the six months were up. I'm sure there are many similar stories from other employers who have found they can't do without the person when the initial six months come to an end."

We know that FJF had difficulties elsewhere and some larger employers struggled. And we know that our final job number was particularly good, but as no project lead was asked to compile a retention rate figure and the government cancelled the evaluation programme we will never know with any degree of accuracy where it worked and where it did not. All we can go on is anecdotal evidence and the testimonies we still get from the social enterprises which became so committed to the project and the young people whose lives FJF changed forever.

"My coach definitely did help me to discover where I want to be and has helped me to become strong in the person I am," Sophia Williams, an employee at Think Productive, said.

Allison Ogden-Newton is chief executive of Social Enterprise London

This content is brought to you by Guardian Professional. To join the social enterprise network, click here.

Jobs are what they want

Image of Jobs from http://159.121.4.211/learning/liblearning21/resource/job_search.jpg via the Web

I wanted to share with you an email I received recently from Gavin Ramsey who now works for inspiring SEL member, Four Corners, London's centre for film and photography. Gavin's message underlines what I have been saying about the Future Jobs Fund: how for many it got them into jobs they wanted and why its equivalent replacement in social enterprise is desperately needed.

Hello Allison,

I hope you don't mind me emailing you but I just wanted to say that I very much enjoyed your piece on the Guardian social enterprise network with regard to the Future Jobs Fund.

As an obvious benefactor of the scheme I was saddened to see it cut and would like to offer my support in any way I can in your campaign to see a replacement.

With very best wishes

GavinGavin Ramsey
Gallery and Marketing Coordinator

Part-Time: Wednesday - Fridayfourcorners

As Ye Sow, so shall ye reap

Todays budget was billed by Chancellor, George Osborne as the blueprint for "Start up Britain".

This town is commin like a ghost town

I have just read Suzanne Moore's piece in this morning's Guardian "The scale of youth unemployment scares me. It's like before" and could not agree more.

Big Society - no money, no comment

Oh its all about the Big Society this week. This morning I have thoroughly enjoyed watching my friend Sir Stephen Bubb hurtling around the news TV studios this morning, keeping his end up ...

Big Society, a great idea but you can't have 'owt for 'nowt'

Yesterday, was crazy,  I gave interviews to both the Evening Standard and Financial Times and had chats with three Local Authority leaders and our own Minister, Nick Hurd, all of which was pretty good going given I'm stuck in bed with a nasty chest infection.

Recent weeks have seen a rocky ride for the Big Society, so interviewers were eager to hear me call it game over for the Prime Ministers favourite philosophy, but sadly for the quick headline, its so much more complicated than that. Big Society has a great deal in common with social enterprise, not least that people struggle to know what it is, and like social enterprise it seeks to combine two truths, one that communities could and should get involved with the services they need, and two that the finances that support a progressive benevolent state should not all come from a single source. Bingo, Big Society and social enterprise. But that doesn't mean that you can work miracles without financial support, or innovate without investment.

The Government must feel disappointed, wondering why we think we can ask for special pleading when all about us is being cut and why we don't seem more satisfied by the Transition Fund, Work Programme and Big Society Bank.

The lack of appreciation could come from an overblown sense of entitlement, or it could be that these initiatives belong to less pressing times. My analysis is as follows, the Transition Fund is a £100 million available now for civil society organisations who are suffering as a result of the cuts. Super. Its aimed at front line organisations but the money they ask for can not go towards the services from which statutory investment has been withdrawn, instead the money is for consultancy to assist in restructuring and finding sustainability through an alternative model. Sensible if its only an interim payment, but tough too. The Work Programme is the one that gets me. Gone is Future Jobs Fund, which in our hands got 500 young people into jobs in social enterprise of which 72% are still in those jobs, so it worked, but hey, its not as if youth unemployment is critical, oh hang on it is. Instead we, and the young people we could help, have to wait for at least 12 months for an initiative that wraps all Government support up into a single package tendered out in large geographical, dare I say regional swathes, to bidders who needed a minimum £50 million reserve simply to pitch for the work. Enter the private sector, exit our lot. We are told we can be suppliers to those private contractors, but with a funding structure that makes payment with unprecedented delays it seems very few larger third sector organisations will be able to carry the risk let alone the small community based ones. Finally, we have the Big Society Bank which is a good thing, but I ask you, why terminate the existing form of lending, Futurebuilders, which at the time of closure was receiving £80 million of loan requests a month, loans being repaid with only a 2% default rate, before having a vehicle to replace it?

In the meantime the local authority cuts, cuts to the Regional Development Agencies and quangos and closure of programmes like Future Jobs Fund have all led to many of the organisation's they contracted with, that's our lot,  facing April 1st with projected deficits and potential closure. These are the same organisations that with time and a little investment could generate partnerships and consortia, attract alternative forms of finance and be in place to deliver Big Society.

So you see, its a mixed bag. We really do want to take up the challenge, we're not looking for handouts but contracts and we are willing to be frugal,  but we need time to adapt and in the next few weeks, for many fantastic community organisations, time will run out. You can hardly blame people for being angry, they were expecting cuts, not closure and so instead of a blue print for increased community engagement, Big Society, sadly, is starting to look like 'owt for 'nowt'.

I enter the row over Future Jobs Fund

Social Enterprise Live carried a good piece today  on the growing debate over the Future Jobs Fund scheduled to close early this year. In SEL's experience it was a scheme that worked brilliantly in the social enterprise world and quite unlike the Single Work Program, which is due to replace it, it offered young people targeted support as well as opportunity to end up doing jobs that inspired them. I have just finished going through my in tray and I can't tell you how many emails I have had from social enterprises we worked with who loved the scheme and kids delighted to have landed jobs they are proud to do. It breaks my heart that we had to stop. As I told the reporter, Chrisanthi Giotis, today, which did not make it into the piece, we could have placed three times the 500 young people that we put through the program, and kids need good jobs more than ever. To re view the full article click here.....

Scrapped £1 billion jobs fund gets more support

What next for the Future Jobs Fund?

If you use my blog links on anything like a regular basis you will be well informed about the world of social enterprise. The wise heads I follow are leading thinkers, commentators, agitators and satirists and serve to keep the rest of us honest in our assessment of progress. One of the most incisive thinkers has to our friend David Floyd at Beanbags and Bullshit who posted a few days ago on Future Jobs Fund. I encourage you to read the blog Looking to the Future, in its entirety because, as always, David has done his homework. The points he makes are illustrated by his experience of the Future 500, SEL’s program to enable unemployed young people access jobs in social enterprise. I was chuffed to read that his experience of our scheme was a positive one, and that the points he makes from it was that firstly, social enterprises found FJF helpful, secondly that young people did got jobs through FJF and lastly that it might have been expensive in relative terms but what is the real cost of failure? I would like to add to Government consideration, more specifically that of the DWP, that there might be a  need to choose between affordability and success. They could, for instance, put an unemployed young person on hypothetically, scheme A which cost £6000 (FJF) and has a 65% chance of securing the desired outcome (SEL’s post program retention rate) or scheme B which is a more affordable £2400 (the average cost of a back to work scheme) where they have a 25% (average commercial success rate) chance of getting a job. When Government’s own statistics point to the lifetime cost of missing the window of employability when a young person comes out of school or higher education in the hundreds of thousands, the maths seems simple.

We hope to utilise our considerable experience in getting young people into social enterprise jobs as we work with partners on the new Work Programme for 2011, here in London. Lets hope in the scrabble to engage with this vital agenda there is time to listen to those with commitment and track record.

Is it fear of flying or fear of falling?

I write poleaxed by fear.  Ever since my children were born I have developed a phobia of flying. Prior to that I was fearless, I even enjoyed paragliding but since Joe's birth fourteen years ago I have really struggled to get on a plane. The upshot of this is that our family carbon footprint, at least as far as flying is concerned, is pretty low, as we have only flown twice.  I do however believe passionately that social enterprise is a global movement and as such travel to see who is doing what, is a must. If possible we really should compare notes and draw inspiration from our colleagues around the world. That is what organisations like SEL are for, to bring the best examples of social enterprise development worldwide to the door of London's movement, and to promote the wonderful work taking place in the capital to an ever increasing international audience.

It is social enterprise day in South Korea tomorrow so I am off in a couple of hours to address a social enterprise symposium and give a few interviews. Without doubt London is seen as the global capital of social enterprise, but I know for a fact that South Korea is a real hotspot for social enterprise and I am looking forward to seeing how they do it there.

My mouth is dry, my heart is pounding and I feel sick, and let's face it, silly. But thanks to Diazepam I will get on that plane. Let's hope once my knock out drops kick in, it's the right plane.

While I am gone, the lovely SELittes will be preparing the launch of the social enterprise Route Map for Local Authorities and getting more young people fantastic jobs in social enterprise through our Future Jobs Fund program which, because it started early on in the year has been allowed to run until the program's termination early in 2011.

The statistics, out today, that there are 70 graduates applying for ever job vacancy stopped me in my tracks. For those who haven't had time to think about it, this is very, very bad. Firstly, that statistic refers to graduates, what about all those young people without further education?  Secondly those young people are starting their post education life with heavy debts and profoundly limited job prospects. This means that even if they had an entrepreneurial idea and felt like working for themselves, with a student loan hanging round their necks and no assets,  they are unlikely to be able to borrow more money to develop the idea. Lastly, it means that having failed to get many of last years graduates into jobs we are on course to end up with the highest levels of graduate unemployment in the developed world, authors of our own lost generation.

So what we need are jobs, and businesses to create those jobs if we are to capitalise on the creativity, optimism and energy that most young people possess in spades. What ever the Coalition Government come up with in terms of getting young people into inspiring jobs, we at SEL will do all we can to help.  Through the Future Jobs Fund we have learned 3 important things. Firstly, if social enterprise is singled out for job creation, it performs well.  Secondly, that financial incentives to create jobs work well for social enterprises because they are typically under capitalised. We have found that once the social enterprises take the young people on, they offer them permanent jobs at the end of the program because by then they have become invaluable. Lastly, and this is key, there are job opportunities in social enterprise and a will from ethically motivated employers to do their bit.

The recession is a global  phenomena so I am interested to learn more about how South Korea is handling their economic setbacks,  particularly in terms of jobs creation.  If my experience of other South East Asian economies is anything to go by, they will be thinking long term and planning not just 5 years, but 2 generations hence.

There are some things that Governments should prioritise no matter what, and I think employment for young people should be right up there at the top of the list. After all without young people like my nephew Tom, graduating with a solid 2:1 from Newcastle University this week, getting his opportunity, who is going to pay the tax that covers health, education and the retirement for folk like me? Each generation needs the last, and letting the young fall away from the bottom of the ladder ends, history tells us, badly.

SELing social reformation

It's been quite a week; so much so that it's taken me until now to blog - so I've got a great many things that I want to share with you.

I'll start with the last half an hour and work my way back to the start of the week.

I have been watching the Twitter feed on Bigotgate and whatever you might think of what the PM said and how he and his team subsequently mishandled it, the one issue that is only just surfacing is that very little has been said in defence of the Eastern Europeans in the UK who work hard, pay taxes and nonetheless can't vote.

What's happening in social enterprise? I have to tell you it is frantic, behind the scenes SEL and our members are having a thousand conversations about the changing landscape and how social enterprise is going to deliver social reformation.  As a trained historian I keep coming back to that which went before. What social enterprise is proposing is a Reformation, we want to challenge conventional thinking that neatly divides the world up into business, government and charity. Top of the list are education, health, energy, regeneration and above all money. We can do this, but only with the support of a Government that carefully listens to the detail and helps us put into place the necessary investment.

Today 2000 charity leaders came out in defence of the Future Job Fund. I am not a charity leader but if they had asked me I would have joined them.  At SEL we put together London's Future 500 which is putting over 500 young, unemployed people into social enterprise jobs, and I have to tell you, it is going well.  The applicants are enthusiastic, the employers are being, as you would expect from social entrepreneurs, supportive and early findings show that the number of permenant job offers coming out of the scheme is high. Surely no government could contemplate ending a program like that? Not when all of us fear growing unemployment, particularly in the young.

That is the saddest thing about new governments; change for change's sake. They often think ending things will save money and on the face of it that can be true.  But then the social cost is felt and then they have to invest in a new program to address the problem which ends up being more costly than keeping what was originally there in place. I have seen it in further education, the FEFC becoming the LSC and that being abolished in favour of...well, what?

Last night I had the Tory local authority candidate, Paul Hodgins, on my door step.  I must have been one of the few people he spoke to that evening who had actually read his parties manifesto, as I have poured over all the major parties proposals (incidentally, in return, increasing numbers of candidates are looking at SEL's own manifesto; encouraging) I asked him if their commitment to enabling communities to run local schools would, if they won, lead to something being done about our local school. I have met our local MP Susan Kramer and she seems like a good egg, and yet Shene School remains an unacceptable choice for many local parents.  Having said that Paul didn't seem to share my fury over the shambles that is Richmond secondry education, so I'm not sure he's going to get it sorted either.

On Tuesday we had an amazing event on the crucial issue of social impact assesment.  Like it or not, and despite what anyone says to the contrary, in future there will be more counting.  If its jobs, contribution to GDP or energy consumtion savings there will be more counting and those who get on board with how to do it will be in the strongest position.  The event was held in conjuction with PricewaterhouseCoopers and the London Development Agency and attendees were social entrepreneurs and accountants.  One lot knew all about social impact and the other, measurement and assessment. Combining the thinking of the two is the challenge.  Having been involved in this field for over 4 years and with our resident expert Sabina Khan, SEL's Director of Policy and Research at the helm, we are doing a great deal on this. So if you are interested check out our website for more information.

Finally, a few quick gardening updates.  I have got in my beetroot, salad, chard and carrot seeds, and I am preparing my runner bean beds.  But the crops at the moment are the real highlight of the week.  We have had our first asparagus, delicious and sweet and my purple sprouting is, as you can see from the photo, outstanding!

Both of them have interesting effects on the colour of your wee, so eating them together can provide endless entertainment.  All good clean fun! Talking of which, I'm off now to watch the leadership debate.