NCVO have published a report calling for a major overhaul of how welfare to work schemes are designed and paid for.

The government’s new Health and Work Service in England and Wales will be delivered by Health Management Limited, a MAXIMUS company. 

Almost 1 million (960,000) employees were on sick leave for a month or more each year on average between September 2010 and October 2013. As part of the government’s long-term economic plan the new service will help employees and employers to manage sickness absence.

After a poor start, the performance of the Work Programme is at similar levels to previous programmes, according to a report published by the National Audit Office. Current published data may understate actual job outcomes and the DWP is also forecasting further improvements. At the same time, the Department has reduced costs and the risks of paying for poor performance. If the Department can achieve the much higher rates of performance that it now expects for the remainder of the Programme, the Programme has the potential to offer value for money.

Esther McVey, Minister for Employment, recently announced that the Department for Work and Pensions is to launch a commercial process under which Remploy Employment Services would leave the public sector by March 2015.

The Government envisages that the commercial process will create a Joint Venture between a partner or investor and Remploy Employment Services staff operating as a social business in the private sector.  

This research finds that of the 4.2 million people who are out of work and disabled, fewer than one in ten (380,000) are being supported through either the Work Programme or the Government’s specialist disability employment programme, ‘Work Choice’.  Fewer than half of disabled people are in work (49 per cent) compared with three quarters of non-disabled people.  This gap has not closed in recent years, and that disabled people and those with health conditions are much more likely to be long-term unemployed and less likely to find work than the non-disabled.

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This piece was written by VRA Corporate Member, The University of Salford.

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