Scottish Drugs Forum
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THE DECISION by Scottish Drugs Forum, Apex Scotland and Scottish Council for the Single Homeless to press the Scottish Executive on the finer details of the continuation of employability projects for drugs users, the homeless and ex-offenders comes not a moment too soon.
All three charities have concerns that the scale of the monies awarded to Community Planning Partnerships to continue the former New Futures Fund projects - £3.1 million per year until 2008 - is not nearly enough. To put it in perspective, two years ago, the three charities highlighted that investment in the region of £20 million annually was needed to place 3000 people onto employability programmes each year.
It’s worth recalling the reasons for the disparity between the actual and desirable level of funding.
Firstly, the rise from £3.1 million to £20 million is to ensure that funding is extended from projects in eight pilot areas to projects throughout Scotland. This would give all vulnerable adults the opportunity to engage with early employability services.
Secondly, the higher scale of funding could allow CPPs to grasp the opportunity of making sure that employability for those furthest from the labour market – a challenging and resource intensive area of work - is a key aim.
However, there is a danger that the monies will be pointed towards those closer to the labour market – those who are “easier to place”. The Welfare Reform Green Paper makes significant reference to results-based outcomes and the fact that its language is couched in terms of hard indicators of success is not an encouraging sign for those working with the most difficult client groups.
CPPs are unlikely to be as familiar with the concept of employability for those further from the labour market and the temptation – perhaps even necessity – will be for them to focus on achieving quick targets by concentrating on less challenging groups. This may lead to providers selecting clients who are more likely to achieve and those who are not will be further marginalised.
fears
There are also are fears that the ethos of NFF is likely to be lost and that the projects coming under the local authority “ownership” might become a little more generic and will not be effectively linked into and integrated with treatment and care services. If we are to encourage significant numbers of vulnerable adults to develop employability skills it is crucial that people are picked up at an early point in their engagement with services.
Meanwhile, specialist, flexible - and sometimes smaller - services can be extremely important, especially when working with the most challenging groups. They may have a specific expertise in the holistic approach essential to effectively address the complex needs of individual clients.
However, all three charities rightly remain concerned that the Employability Framework (or Workforce Plus) may have a recommendation that there should be fewer contracts awarded, with larger providers potentially sub-contracting (or not) the work to smaller organisations.
Success should be - but is not - being measured in terms of “soft” as well as “hard” outcomes - such as evaluating the journey along the path rather than just whether someone was led into a job at the end of a specific period of time.
Finally it is not clear how the Executive intends to monitor use of the £3.1m - or, hopefully, £20m! - to ensure that it is effectively spent on people far from the labour market. Knowing their intentions would be most helpful, given the apparent lack of co-ordination within the Executive on this issue.
Without effective leadership from the centre, local responses will continue to be ad hoc and somewhat incoherent.