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.

Will we get what we deserve with payment by results?

A one-to-one meeting at the Pertemps office in Hull as part of a work programme session for the long-term unemployed. Photograph: Christopher Thomond

There was a divergent discussion yesterday between a number of us on Twitter about payment by results (PBR): does it work or doesn't it? we asked. My point was that despite it being a hot topic, PBR has been around in one form or another for 20 years. Having said that, PBR today isn't just PBR, it's PBR plus.

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.

Big society – can we have spin-outs without spin? The chief executive of Social Enterprise London worries that presentational issues will get in the way of encouraging new models of public service delivery

As seen in the Guardian online today.....

"Big society" is big news. But what does it mean? If so-called spin-outs from the public sector are all part of this headline policy initiative, has big society helped or hindered?

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'.