Whoopee ! I have now completed my two-year stint on the Work Programme (WP).

Looking back, my initial reaction is: “what the hell was the point of that ?”

It is pretty difficult to see  much point to it, either personally or on a wider level. A 2012 report found that only 18,270 people out of 785,000 people enrolled on the WP had held down employment for six months or more – a success rate of 2.3%.

Given that 5% of the long-term unemployed would be expected to find employment if left to their own devices the WP can be considered less successful than doing nothing at all.

“Less successful than doing nothing at all.”  That says it all, really.

Of course it was always doomed to failure, simply because it was based on unrealistic expectations – that the only reason people are unemployed is because they are lazy / stupid / feckless, and all they need  is a kick up the arse.

There was a fatal flaw in their plans – simply that there is  something like  2.5 million unemployed and only 500,000 vacancieas. You can kick  arses until your foot drops off,  you still can’t fit a quart into a pint pot.

Mind you, my expectations weren’t very high anyway.

Prior to WP was New Deal (ND), and in this city we had two companies providing it. I had the chance to sample both, and found both to be pretty useless.

When I turned up for my WP induction I amused myself by spotting familiar faces –  just about all of the staff  in this new organization were formerly with one or other of the two crap ND companies that preceeded it.

And that’s how it works. A new company wins a contract to provide  WP or ND or whatever, but doesn’t actually have any staff or premises. So they rent some cheap office space  and re-employ all the crap advisers from the failing companies they replaced, and so the vicious circle starts all over again. Its the same old people, same old ideas (or lack of), same old same old…

The new WP provider with all the old faces in our town was called Ingeus. I was never quite sure how it was pronounced (in-ghee-us ?  in-jhee-us ?) but it’s a suitably ugly name for an ugly organization.

All these WP providers are for-profit companies, and you, the unemployed, are commodities. You might be the most wonderful, talented, compassionate  person but your value to them is purely financial. Get you into a job, any job, get paid for doing so.

Getting paid being by far the most important part from their point of view.

It has been argued that payment-by-results whereby companies only get paid for finding people work has meant that they focus on the “easiest” cases among the long-term unemployed with the most “difficult” effectively sidelined.

The term “creaming and parking” has been used to describe this process. The Department for Work and Pensions have denied that “parking” is an issue, but then they would, wouldn’t they ?

A study by the Third Sector Research Centre at Birmingham University found  widespread “gaming” of the Work Programme by private sector providers. They argue that because providers are not paid until an unemployed person has been in work for two years it makes little economic sense to concentrate on the most “difficult cases”.  study also found that the largest private sector providers known as “primes” were guilty of passing more difficult cases onto sub-contractors.

Furthermore “parking” means that charities are not getting referrals under the Work Programme as such customers are not considered likely to result in a payment for the provider.

One interviewee told the study:

“It’s not being PC but I’ll just say it as it is … you tend to get left with the rubbish; people who aren’t going to get a job … If the [prime] thought they could get them a job, they wouldn’t [refer them to] someone else to get a job.”

I got parked.  At least I assume that was the reason why I heard nothing from Ingeus for a period of 10 consectutive months in the middle of my 2 years. It goes without saying that that was probably my most productive time on the WP.

When I returned it was with a bang…

To be continued…