Outsourced training is failing the disabled, MPs argue

18 Jan 07
Ministers should reconsider their outsourcing plans, a welfare expert warned this week, amid evidence that many organisations providing employment and training services are failing people with disabilities.

19 January 2007

Ministers should reconsider their outsourcing plans, a welfare expert warned this week, amid evidence that many organisations providing employment and training services are failing people with disabilities.

The Commons Public Accounts Committee reported this week that a third of the 200 organisations providing a major programme for disabled people, Workstep, had failed to place a single person into an unsupported full-time job.

The committee also found that, despite a government target to get 1 million of the UK's 2.5 million incapacity benefit recipients into work, just 160,000 people with disabilities were covered by government programmes during 2004/05.

A confusion of outdated and overlapping Whitehall initiatives designed to assist disabled people into work, combined with 'unreliable' data on projects provided by 500 organisations nationally, also meant that 'no-one knows' whether £320m spent on these services represented value for taxpayers, the MPs said.

Richard Exell, welfare and labour market officer at the Trades Union Congress, told Public Finance that the PAC report raised questions over the Department for Work and Pensions' wider plans to change its contracting methods.

'The DWP should think again about how it contracts out its services – it's certainly not working well at the moment. What comes across clearly from the MPs' report is the difficulty in managing large numbers of providers. Yet the DWP says it wants to use more voluntary bodies, for example, to assist disabled people with training.'

The PAC discovered wide variations in the quality of six government programmes offered by providers contracting with Jobcentre Plus. 'Acceptable standards are not always achieved,' they concluded.

Between 2002 and 2005, for example, over 50% of the learning offered under the Workstep scheme was judged 'unsatisfactory' by the Adult Learning Inspectorate.

The large number of providers being used also prevented the DWP from undertaking the inspections required to improve programmes, MPs warned. They also urged ministers to focus on helping people with disabilities to retain jobs once in employment.

The DWP is reviewing its services for disabled people and plans to report on the issue this spring. Ministers recently committed the department to a national roll-out of the successful Pathways to Work project.

Anne McGuire, minister for disabled people, added: 'We [also] intend to reduce the number of contracts and simplify our processes.'

However, the reduced number of direct government contractors could be deceptive: departmental sources confirmed that ministers favour a 'prime contractor' model, where a single provider acts as a directing agent for other sub-contractors.

Exell warned that 'could stymie the local innovation and diversity that may be required to assist some people with disabilities'.

PFjan2007

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