Jobs agency fails to support homeless
Only 11 per cent of homeless people trying to get into work felt Jobcentre Plus offered them suitable employment, a report has found.
The Work Matters research, released last week by St Mungo’s during the charity’s annual action week, also found only 28 per cent felt Jobcentre Plus staff understood their housing needs.
Charles Fraser, chief executive of the charity, said: ‘Sadly, the evidence shows the inability of the current employment system to provide support on a human scale.
‘In relying on massive welfare to work programmes, which cater for the majority, society has lost the flexibility to provide services to the minority – homeless and vulnerable people – who need support so much more.’
The charity carried out 43 interviews with clients and surveyed 1,500 residents to produce the report.
It has handed the findings over to MPs and policy makers, and is calling on the government to adopt a ‘two stage back-to-work’ system.
This would introduce a basic capability test followed by specialist skills training and employability support to help people to become ready for a job.
The report suggests Jobcentre Plus acts as a gateway to specialist services to assess basic skills, mental and physical health and access to housing. If people do not meet the initial assessment criteria they would be referred to a specialist organisation in the voluntary, community or private sector that would be responsible for supplying the necessary support.
Mr Fraser said: ‘What we’re advocating in this report is a way to help long term unemployed homeless people into work step by step so they are neither trapped nor “parked” by existing services.
‘Keeping our clients unemployed costs a lot more than helping them back to work. The government must have the courage to pursue a subtle strategy, looking at long-term gain for individuals who otherwise have nothing.’
An early day motion tabled on 22 June by Mark Field, MP for Cities of London and Westminster, supports St Mungo’s attempts to get dedicated support for homeless people to help them back into work.
The EDM ‘recognises that the homeless, socially excluded and long-term unemployed require integrated, personalised and specialist support to get back into employment; and calls on the Department for Work and Pensions, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Department of Health to work together to improve the support provided to this vulnerable group’. It currently has 14 signatures.
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Readers' comments (5)
Anonymous | 28/06/2010 10:25 pm
I am homeless and I asked jobcentreplus if they could help. They told me they could do nothing for me, housing is nothing to do with them. They told me to go and see the council. Council say I'm not a priority need even though I'm homeless. But their definition of homeless is different to what you and me would describe as homeless.
Oh well, ho hum. Guess I'll just have to keep claiming JSA until such time that the council finally decide to house me.
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Anonymous | 29/06/2010 7:48 am
Or you could always get a job and house yourself?
Whatever happened to personal responsibilty? Too many people seem to think the world owes them a living for doing absolutely nothing! Yes there are those who genuinely need our help and they should and will get it, but far too many don't, they just expect it and we meekly oblige.
We cannot afford the welfare system as it stands now, recession or no recession, we need less waste, fraud and errors and more realistic approach to the whole way of paying and eligibility of benefits.
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Harry Lime | 29/06/2010 9:12 am
What exactly is "suitable employment"?? Perhaps the survey should have been widened to all of Jobcentre Plus's clients and the total would be even higher. I'd imagine there's a load of graduates currently being offered jobs barely above minimum wage, because there simply aren't the jobs out there, period. The idea that the tories are going to approve plans to make a further industry out of Job Centres, which are the antithesis of evrything they love, is so far wide of the mark it's untrue. Wait until IDS is in full flow, he'll be closing Jobcentres down, not expanding them!!
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Anonymous | 29/06/2010 5:59 pm
Anonymous #2
"Or you could always get a job and house yourself? "
Been there done that. As a single person I have no chance of getting a mortgage on my wages so I am forced to rent. Funny how I can pay someone elses! As rents are so high it takes most of your wages, you get to the point where you think "**d this". You point the finger at people like me, how about pointing at people who see houses as cash machines and not as a home!
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| 29/06/2010 11:30 pm
"Wait until IDS is in full flow, he'll be closing Jobcentres down, not expanding them"
I certainly hope so. The Tories had earlier promised to privatise JCP as it is simply not fit for purpose. I had the misfortune of having to avail myself of their "services" a while back and can confirm that they are a complete and total waste of time. Many of the "advisors" are so educationally challenged they can barely operate their computers. Some can barely speak English. More box ticking for the % of ethnics employed, irrespective of qualifications, no doubt. And the IT system on which they search for jobs was not actually designed for this purpose and consequently doesn't work. You cannot segment by industry or profession which makes the entire system completely pointless. Privately operated job sites clearly do the job they are intended for. They work. In contract the State run JCP IT system is so useless it cannot even begin to compare. Because it was never designed for job searching in the first place. You really couldn't make it...
JCP are practically the Platonic Form of public sector mismanagement; the yardstick by which incompetence is measured. The sooner JCP is privatised the better.
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