It's a dirty job but somebody's got to do it

No more money for nothing or unemployment cheques for free. The new Work Programme will replace the current back to work schemes and provide a coherent package of support for people out of work, regardless of the barriers they face or the benefits they claim, or so they say. Unemployed people have rights as citizens they are not the cause of the financial crisis but an easy target to blame - whilst not exactly placing economically inactive people including those on incapacity benefit into a sin bin there is a definite 'moral' undertone - a bit of "priggy banking" going on and a pushing of helping people into work (what work?) and sanctioning those ( i.e. reducing benefits) who don't respond to this help.

We could applaud DC/NC for hot wiring the radical changes to the UK welfare system but that accolade has to rest very firmly with the Brown-Blair bunch and not forgetting Boy David Freud who jumped ship from Tony to Tory (was there ever really a difference?) faster than you can write the word “conditionality”.

But before we call in the Freud squad to deal with the 29% of the working age population who are economically inactive/workless here in Northern Ireland, we need to consider just what the implications of carrot and kick welfare reform Let's take a quick meander through the welfare reforms championed by new labour, the third way and the road to conditionality starring No Hope, Sting Crossly and Definitely No More - we can call it a conditionality health check, or better still a government conditionality warning label ... you are responsible for your inactivity and continuing this will ultimately damage your wealth…. and as for your health well it's not illness at all its merely a bio-pyscho-social condition that requires a number of robust motivational efforts to get you back to work – we'll call it the "carrot and kick" model if you don't like the carrot we'll kick you where it hurts.

Let's look at the redefining of what constitutes incapacity and the associated introduction of the all work test replaced by personal capability assessments and a number of active welfare models. the driver for this is based on the model developed in the US by "Income protection organisations" insurance companies to you and I who sell Vocational Rehabilitation and tailored return to work programmes.

Long term unemployment, economic inactivity and worklessness is everybody's business and for some it's very big business indeed.

The corporate services director of one such Income Protection company with the ear of government noted in 2003 about Pathways to Work

"Although we can say that we are 90 per cent of the way there in policy terms, the real challenge is delivery - in particular the role of the intermediary. We believe that it is absolutely vital that all employment brokers are properly incentivised to move disabled people along the journey into work and that there are enough of them to do the job. The next step therefore is for private sector to work alongside government to achieve delivery, focus and capacity building within the system."

This is echoed by Freud

"The Department (for Work and Pensions)should develop a funding approach which will allow it to direct spending towards such groups, who have complex and demanding problems, in a more individualised way. Such programmes should be outsourced into the private and voluntary sector, giving them the incentive to improve performance".

This "buy one get one free" incentivising of welfare may well fare well for those who put profit before people and indeed Freud himself noted that there was no conclusive evidence to suggest that the private sector out-performed the public sector on current programmes, there were he noted, clear potential gains from contesting services, bringing in innovation with a different skill set, and from the potential to engage with groups who are often beyond the reach of the welfare state.

For those organisations like my own the value proposition that drives us to support people on incapacity benefit and other so called inactive benefits to re-enter or enter sustainable employment is that we know the wider impact of economic inactivity is much more for each individual than the effect they feel in their pocket what we don't do is view people as unit costs and revenue streams and profit margins or base our service on quick wins, or as I heard it described recently "picking the "low hanging fruit" that is doing the least with the easiest to work with. I am not at all convinced by the contention that creaming leaves more resources available to work with the hardest to help.

We and our colleague organisations who have successfully supported hundreds of people back to work, the only incentive needed for them to engage with us is the strength of the relationship of trust that supports, encourages and enables them develop their confidence about work and builds their capacity to make sustainable employment an achievable goal.

Let’s be clear about it, long term unemployment, economic inactivity and worklessness blights communities and lives and it results in children brought up in poverty becoming adults living in poverty. All of us working to support people back to work have a duty and responsibility to do all we can to help them to achieve sustainable employment, economic self sufficiency and a route out of poverty. This should not mean people who have been enabled to stay on ‘silo’ benefits for years and as a result losing skills and confidence for and about work should be seen as the problem or punished by the solution.

We need to work together through for example Neighbourhood Renewal partnerships – where there is clear understanding of local need and the drive and determination to articulate that need fairly and to respond to that need through an enabling process linked to labour market realisms - not a regime that punishes people doubly - one for becoming ill and two for failing to get well soon enough. Either that or perhaps the poor house should open for business again.