Creating a Fairer Scotland: Employability Support

56 Turnberry Road
Glasgow

In our experience, employment support services that are flexible and tailored to the needs of the individual work best and are likely to have the greatest impact. Those who are confident, motivated, experienced and qualified will generally be able to find, engage and make the most of the support that is widely on offer to them, as long as the support is well publicised and easily accessible. People who struggle to make the most of existing support services, frequently have a complex and individual mix of issues to overcome, which can take time and care to unravel and understand. A one-size-fits-all approach is unlikely to be successful. Tailored support is particularly relevant to supporting those who are furthest away from being ‘job-ready’. The tailored support requires to be available locally. It is helpful if the same providers can provide support at the transition stage to ensure that there is continuity across the pipeline and relationships are sustained.
We must ensure that individuals have the appropriate core-skills, knowledge and attributes for employment. Individuals need to believe that, with the right effort, they can be successful in a competitive job-market. This requires the creation of a trusting relationship with support service personnel who can identify flexible solutions and are able to empower and build capacity. The best support services do not simply fix a person’s problems by getting them an email address or creating a CV for them. Instead services should encourage and equip people to not only address today’s issues, but also build the knowledge, skills and confidence to tackle tomorrow’s issues independently. Too few services work in this way, creating a dependency culture for those wanting to improve their prospects.
We know that people are often very wary of disclosing their lack of core skills, especially to job-centre staff, so support services need to be independent of benefit claiming systems and processes.

Most businesses in Scotland have a good idea of the skills, knowledge and attributes needed in their own workforce and there is considerable synergy of needs across many sectors. Good communication skills, a positive attitude, problem-solving skills, good time–management, team work and working well under pressure are regularly highlighted by businesses. Ensuring that these skills and attributes are built into employability support programmes wherever they are delivered, and whoever they are delivered by, will ensure that everyone has the basics to compete for, hold down and progress in work.
This again highlights the need for flexible and tailored programmes of support that respond to the aspirations of the individual and reflect the needs of employers.
There are some excellent partnership approaches with employers in Scotland, but this needs to be rolled out across Scotland as a preferred methodology. Everyone will benefit from a prosperous economy and everyone can play their part. There is also a need to start planning around the needs of people and businesses in the future. Too often we are rushing to train and support people for today’s challenges and not planning for tomorrow’s opportunities.
It is important that accurate and accessible information is available for professionals, adults seeking work, parents and young people so they can understand the local and wider opportunities that are likely to come up in the immediate and longer term. Information is currently available on a regional basis, but for some areas, this does not represent the real picture locally as figures can be skewed by wider influences, such as the average wage.

Strengths:-
• A wide range of services, using a variety of approaches, which have been developed across Scotland (successful and not so successful) means that there is a significant practice-resource to learn from.
• In many areas, people have a choice of provider to get support from
Weaknesses:-
• There is still work to do to ensure that people benefit from effectively joined up services. Project overlap and perceptions of competition between service providers are still evident. This can lead to fragmentation of services that may not reflect local needs.
• Too many services are taking a quick-fix approach to their clients, fixing the immediate problem for people rather than helping to build the capacity for the individual to deal more effectively with problems.
• Payment by results can lead to a focus on clients who will generate income for the organisation while those who require most support can often feel short-changed. The mandatory element for some adult programmes can be problematic due to the effect on motivation levels and some referrals are inappropriate as clients have not been able to stabilise other areas of their lives; drug use for example.

Topic based academies linked to evidence based demand, such as retail academies have worked well and there have been positive outcomes in relation to employment.
There are also examples of effective partnerships that have been developed between Community Learning and Development (CLD) staff and DWP staff (plus others). Raised awareness and clear referral processes have between the two services has led to more people getting the support they need, especially when they have core-skill needs.
Community Learning and Development Managers, Scotland will be able to provide examples of effective practice on request.

• Develop clear, effective local leadership of all employability support services through Community Planning Partnerships and ensure that the best/most suitable providers are chosen whether statutory or private providers. Do not have too wide a range as this increases fragmentation.
• Disseminate and encourage the use of, the most effective practice models based on the employability pipeline. Establish a good practice framework for support services in Scotland which reflects the need to provide flexible, tailored support for individuals. This framework could also recommend that support services promote independence/ self-determination and take a holistic view of the individual and focus on both short and long term goals rather than ‘quick fixes’.
• Change the funding model, so that it is not based on results, or has a better pro-rata rate for those furthest from a positive outcome.

We need skilled and committed staff who have the time to engage individuals, building supportive relationships and working in partnership with them to develop an individualised action plan that reflects their needs, ambitions and any barriers they may be facing. There should be opportunities for the individual to reflect on and receive feedback on progress toward their goals. This again highlights the need for flexible and tailored programmes of support.
Extensive time and expertise should be allocated to coaching and motivation.
One of the main barriers to employment is mental health. There requires to be significant investment in support and resilience-building services for those hoping to return to employment and carrying on into the first weeks or months of employment.

Clear identification of gaps as part of the pipeline, sharing good practice and reducing the elements of competitiveness to increase genuine partnership working. The funding and competiveness which has been created currently works as a barrier to effective joined up practice.
It is important to recognise that a needs-led approach has been a long standing principle of CLD services across Scotland. There are a range of significant skills and expertise within CLD in relation to assessing and co designing services which meet local people’s needs, as has been evidenced through Education Scotland inspection findings.
There is some work to be done to raise awareness of the employability pipeline framework and the benefits of using it. It might be useful to have a forum for sharing practice nationally, if it does not already exist. Any activities that would encourage individuals to use the pipeline and assess their own needs would be positive. It can be common for support services to view the pipeline as a linear model rather than a flexible model which individuals or service providers can tap into to create their own action plan.

In many cases, those who will struggle the most to find employment can be identified quite early on in school. More integration at this stage would be invaluable in maximising the impact on the individual and helping to prevent people ‘falling through the net’. This would also give services time to further build the confidence and self-belief of disengaged young people and provide an environment where their core skills can continue to develop during and after the transition from school to the outside world. This type of tailored early intervention would provide an opportunity for the young people to really think about what type of employment / training they would like to pursue in the future. It would need to be acknowledged that this type of intervention can take time and does not easily lend itself to fixed-term, pre-prepared programmes.
Again, more support is required for those experiencing mental health issues at an early age. Waiting list times for ‘Calms’ or other counselling support are an obstruction to many young people and adults being able to move on and sustain outcomes.

The current model of 13 weeks is very limited and does not effectively allow enough time to build up relationships with those most removed from programmes. It would be better to have programmes which can be run for longer depending on the needs of those who are and are not participating.
If we commit to a tailored approach then a judgement has to be made on how long the journey to employment will take. This will be quite difficult in the early stages but what we can say is that, if a tailored approach is taken, then the staff who build a relationship with the individual will be better placed to make that judgement than if people are simply processed into a series of pre-planned and fixed support/training options.

Benefits:-
• Planning a consistent approach using the most effective support models
• Benchmarking and comparative performance measurement is more straight-forward
Challenges:-
• Ensuring that the most effective approaches are being used
• Ensuring that the drive to achieve targets does not lead to a lower quality/less effective (capacity-building) service.
• The ability to adapt to local needs and contexts is lost or significantly reduced.
• Depending on the funding model it is important to ensure there is a provision for those furthest from the labour market including those with additional support needs.
• It is important that there are opportunities within a national programme to ensure time is funded to create relationships with local employers and not have an over reliance or large scale chains of employers.

Localised programmes work best for those who are unable to travel or have multiple barriers and/or commitments such as childcare or other caring responsibilities. They also work well within smaller local authority areas. Many adults and young people find it daunting to travel out with their local authority areas and need to build confidence and skills in their immediate vicinity prior to progressing onto national programmes which tend to be more centrally based and require significant travel.

Either the local Community Planning Partnership or the local authority.

Those furthest from the labour market because of the barriers they face would, and should be the biggest beneficiaries. Creating an integrated and effective support and employment network would reinforce the fact that being in work can be a positive influence on people in terms of their health, their wellbeing and their ability to support themselves and their families.

That no-one is left behind as Scotland grows and prospers. That everyone has the opportunity to contribute to and benefit from growth.
That they feel valued as part of Scottish society and are encouraged when successful rather than punished when they fail.

It needs to be intelligence-led. It also requires to complement the existing provisions and be an approach based on values of inclusion and fairness which helps people fulfil their potential. Strong, local leadership, rather than simply control or guidance, is required to galvanise and integrate existing and new/revised services.

It is crucial to ensure that the funding model is most appropriate for the context and does not lead to unintended consequences. Funding models should include:
• the ability for partnership bids to come from community planning partnerships or as a partnership through the local authority
• the ability for programmes to range in length to meet the needs of participants/clients
• a range of providers which provide an integrated service and not a competitive one
• packages which support transition.
• maximum economies of scale for specialist services, which could be purchased on a national basis such as counselling or mental health support.
• practical support to over come barriers, such as the childcare fund which was part of the Working for Families programmes and proved extremely beneficial.

Payment for progression should be part of the programme but not the driving force as it can have unintended consequences and therefore exclude those most in needs of services.
The measurement of progression is key to evaluating the effectiveness of services however, and having a common framework for progression would be far more useful than the generally narrow interpretation of ‘achieving a sustained destination’.

• A universal framework that can identify and give a value to individual progression, which comes in a form that is easy to use, can easily be integrated into existing databases and is understandable to a range of people and service providers.
• A system that engages all services who can positively impact on an individual’s employability.

• Increase opportunities for choice and decision making within programmes. Many individuals can feel mandated to attend rather than motivated to participate.
• Taking a holistic approach with each person, ensuring they feel supported and involved at every step of their journey encourages participation if the programme is right for them.
• Tailor development programmes to individual needs.

Community Learning and Development’s ‘Social Practice’ model of delivery (http://www.cldms.org.uk/discussions/social-practice-model-of-adult-learning ) would be particularly useful to those who are not ‘job-ready’ There is strong evidence that this model is effective in engaging, building positive relationships and creating meaningful opportunities for people to achieve their employability goals.