REPORT:

Critically examine the impact of a recent or proposed change in funding on your organisation’s provision in relation to the teaching remit.

Institutional Context, Nature and Purpose

The Careers Development Group (CDG) is a Welfare to Work charity that supports unemployed customers to find and sustain meaningful employment. Customers are aged between 16-64 and referred to 13-week courses from Jobcentre Plus. Many have multiple barriers to employment such as lack of recent work experience, disabilities, health problems and lack of relevant employability skills. In addition, customers often face anxiety, depression and low self-esteem, all of which impact their ability to find employment.

To overcome these complex needs, CDG provides training, work experience and other support that can enable customers to achieve a better quality of life. Back to Work activities include job search; job brokerage; work experience placements; environmental and community sector placements; vocational qualifications; information, advice & guidance; pre-employment training; motivation and confidence building; literacy, numeracy and ESOL training.

Role within Institutional Context

The role of the Senior Personal Advisor (SPA) consists of delivering Literacy, Numeracy and ESOL Qualifications. In addition, internal and external vocational qualifications such as Security, Retail, Forklift and Construction are also organised and financed via the SPA. City & Guilds award the delivery of Literacy, Numeracy and ESOL qualifications and delivery levels range from Entry Level up to Level 1.
General Sources of Funding to Lifelong Learning
Major contributors to Lifelong learning Funding include the Skills Funding Agency (SFA); the Young People’s Learning agency (YPLA); the Higher Education Funding Council England (HEFCE) and the European Social fund (ESF).
Major Sources of Funding to Own Provision
CDG is primarily funded from the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) and the remainder of the funding originates from European Social Fund (ESF). The ESF was set up to improve employment opportunities in the European Union and focuses on people in society who are susceptible to unemployment and social exclusion. The London ESF Regional Framework 2011-2013 defines its priority target group as “those furthest from the labour market”. These include the long term unemployed, lone parents, mothers returning to work, people with carer responsibilities, people with health problems, disabled people, ethnic minorities or migrants, people aged 50+ with low or no qualifications, offenders and ex offenders and homeless people (London ESF Regional Framework, 2010, 11-12).
Role of Government Policy in Influencing Provider Priorities
The October 2010 Spending Review has awarded £7.8 billion in funding to The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) enabling it to make considerable reforms to the Welfare System. As a result of the funding, DWP are set to introduce the delivery of a new Work Programme due to start in the summer of 2011.
The Work Programme aims to deliver a new approach to employment related support services that in essence supports more people off benefits and into work. The Work Programme will simplify the current benefits system; critiqued as too expensive and failing to reach the hardest to help customers (The Work Programme Prospectus, 2010, 2,) and replace it with a programme that delivers more personalised, individualised support to a wide variety of customers. The Work programme will be prioritising its focus to help people into sustained jobs and will reward “stronger incentives” to providers that maintain strong performance in this area (The Work Programme Prospectus, 2010, 3,).
The value of these contracts will therefore be very high resulting in many providers beginning to place bids for the delivery of the Work Programme. DWP stresses that successful bidders will be dependant on several factors including an organisations ability to deliver “high performance and value for money” as well as being “expected to have good financial standing”.
CDG has a bid in for the Work Programme for the London area and is also working in alliance with Maximus to place bids in for the Work Programme frameworks in all nine regions in England. Currently CDG are working in partnership with Maximus to develop a new delivery model for the Work Programme.
Recent/ Proposed changes in Funding
As the Work Programme looks to start nationally by the summer of 2011, CDG has defined this transitional period, between bidding for the contracts and its eventual start, as one where “the next few months remain crucial” (Clifton, 17/11/2010). The organisation therefore emphasises the need for “CDG to show good performance” and to deliver in a “cost effective and value for money manner” (Clifton, 17/11/2010). Consequently, the need to adopt a “Save and Prepare Strategy” within CDG remains central to its future success.
As mentioned earlier, in order to ensure successful bidding, DWP expects organisations to have good financial standing, and as a result CDGs ethos towards cost effective measure has resulted in a temporary freeze on operational funding until the Work programme begins in Summer 2011.
Impact of changes upon Organisational Provision and Teaching
Freezes towards operational funding as part of a drive towards a Save and Prepare strategy has impacted various areas of organisational provision and teaching. For example, some centres delivering the provision of Construction Skills training have now closed as a result of cost effectiveness. This does not mean that the Construction Courses have been abandoned, rather other centres will be expected to accommodate rooms in order for the Construction training to continue.
Security Training courses will continue to run, however the grants available to process SIA Licences will be withheld until further notice. The SIA Licences are a legal requirement for any customer wishing to work in the Security Industry. This setback can therefore contradict the organisations efforts to enable customers into sustainable employment. However, this measure was deemed necessary, as it was evident that limited job outcomes were occurring in comparison to the huge amounts of grants being issued out.
As part of it Save and Prepare strategy, CDG is also undergoing a recruitment freeze. With its determination to prove it has good financial standing, CDG has also begun increasing its weekly occupancy continuously until February 2011, when the referrals from Job Centre Plus will stop in preparation for the coming Work Programme. The increasing volume of customers is deemed necessary to strengthen successful bidding with DWP. However, the current recruitment freeze means staff numbers are a lot lower and arguably may not be enough to cope with the growing volume of customers being referred. Nevertheless, CDG is determined not to reduce costs by initiating grand scale redundancies. Rather, several staff are currently being shifted to other centres where staff numbers are lower and customer volume is greater.
DWP advocates that the Work Programme will select the best possible providers who are capable of delivering high numbers of sustainable job outcomes. DWP have stated that they will not specify what provider will deliver, however bidders for Work Programme contracts will need to provide a summary of the minimum service they will offer to all customer groups. At this point in time, it is difficult to see where the provision of Literacy, Numeracy and ESOL finds it place within CDG. With such a strong focus on job outcomes, it is evident that qualifications towards improving Literacy, Numeracy and ESOL are not a priority.
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The uncertainty of the delivery of Literacy, Numeracy and ESOL within CDG conflicts with the findings identified in the Moser Report in 1999 and the Leitch Review in 2006. Claus Moser highlighted that the vast numbers of the functionally illiterate and functionally innumerate adults within the UK was having a severe impact on productivity in the UK economy. As a result, the need to remedy the situation had to be “a priority for Government” (Moser, 1999, 1). Moser stressed the need for basic skills education to be both free and long term. Furthermore, Moser identified that the Government’s New Deal had a crucial role in ensuring that unemployed people get the opportunity to improve basic skills (Moser, 1999, 5).
Therefore, it is difficult to see where Moser’s original findings find resonance under the current commitment towards bidding on the Work Programme, which focuses on the need to secure sustainable job outcomes above anything else.
How does organisation plan to address/ How has it addressed the changes?
Although the situation may seem bleak, the DWP is being co-financed with the European Social Fund. Under the current framework, the ESF is still committed to supporting the priority target groups defined earlier as “those furthest from the labour market”. The ESF has identified this as “Priority 1.1” and allocating £299 million to this priority in order to “improve the employability and skills of the unemployed and economically inactive people” (London ESF Regional Framework, 2010, 11). Indeed, while DWP are clear that they have left it up to organisations as to what they will deliver, they are resolute that “Work Programme providers will be required to meet a range of ESF requirements” (Framework Agreement for the Provision of Employment Related Support Services, 2010, 1).
Therefore, under Priority 1.1, the indicative activities that the London ESF Framework will look to support are Skills for Life, including the basic skills of Literacy, Numeracy, ESOL, ICT skills and financial literacy skills. Therefore, in order to satisfy ESF requirements, CDG will still need to deliver Skills for Life and ensure that these programmes “are strongly embedded in the workplace…vocationally relevant and linked to employer needs” (London ESF Regional Framework, 2010, 13).
Discussions are currently underway with ministers to determine how ESF funding can be best utilised to add value to the Work Programme.

Evaluation of proposed Solutions
It is evident that the ESF will continue to provide funding to those organisations that continue to deliver the Skills for Life Strategy. As proposed, in order to ensure success, teaching needs to be embedded in the workplace and linked to employer needs. By so doing, CDG can aim to meet its goal of enabling customers to achieve sustainability in work.

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This graph highlights the current rates that CDG receives from DWP. Over two thirds of the income received originates from job outcomes and only one third derives from qualification outcomes. The latter is set to reduce even further in preference for the need to secure increased job outcome rates as a result of winning bids for the upcoming Work Programme.