Supporting People Into Work
Jeff Mitchell

Drafting In The Reserves

Jeff Mitchell explains how the current crisis is an opportunity to prevent entrenched, long-term worklessness.

Now is not the time for third sector organisations to be territorial. We need to forge partnerships that play to our strengths and make us more than the sum of our parts. We must respond to the huge, emerging need that will fall out of the lockdown. I know we’ve heard it all before. But for organisations that can see past competing for funding, the mutual benefits are greater, if not for us, then the communities we serve.

Last month, I presented a warning of a debt time-bomb, (read it here). For advice agencies, all the signs were there. Call rates were lower than this time last year. And a public health message prevailed that said ‘dig in, stay safe, and worry about the future once the danger has past’. That’s good for tackling the virus. It’s the worst advice, though, when it comes to money. Now Citizens Advice has published research that concurs: Six million people have missed at least one debt payment. Four million, at least one rent payment. 

The support sector has a unique opportunity to intervene before the debt time-bomb explodes. We must not do the thing we whinge about indebted people doing: putting off action until it’s a crisis. We need to reach out now while lockdown and policies, like the extended moratorium on evictions, provide some breathing space. We need to catch people at the top of that slippery slope. We must help them re-organise their finances and their priorities, and access emergency and ongoing support. (This is something Clean Slate offers with its money health-check service.) But we can also be talking about employment.

GETTING TO WORK

In the latest issue of Quids in! magazine (here), we presented the maybe surprising work opportunities that have opened up. Its digital sister, the Quids In Readers Club email (here) did the same. We revealed how, in some sectors, employers have needed staff so badly they have dropped online applications and sometimes even interviews. They just asked people to turn up with ID and start working. For editorial purposes, given the priority need to access food throughout the lockdown, we focused on the food supply chain. We profiled jobs in food retail, distribution, warehousing and agriculture.

With staff on sick leave, shielding or caring for kids at home, recruiters have even welcomed people usually placed on the ‘reject’ pile. It’s a prime opportunity for many of the people Clean Slate usually works with who have histories of mental ill-health, offending, homelessness, substance misuse, as refugees or weaker English. Now is the time to create a current work history and prove themselves on the job.

As more businesses open, but schools don’t, bosses will continue to face similar challenges. Not everyone can or should work, we know, if they or someone at home are shielding, (although it’s unclear how employers will wear this, if an employee refuses to return). Nor can everyone get to where the work is. Warehouse work is often outside prime locations. Crop-picking may require a slightly dodgy train or bus ride out of town.

Here’s the rub: When the lockdown ends, experts believe the UK will face mass unemployment. It could be worse than after the financial crash. It’ll be just at the time when the debt time-bomb potentially explodes. The Guardian reported on 9th June that research by ManpowerGroup was predicting a dire outlook on employment: “It found that companies in all big sectors of the economy are more likely to cut jobs than to hire people over the next three months, from July to September, the weakest forecast since records began in 1992. The survey comes as companies prepare to start weaning themselves off the government’s furlough scheme, which covers the wage bill of almost 9 million workers.”

People facing barriers to employment, including those who have been already been unemployed for a while, will remain at the back of an even longer queue.

PICK FOR BRITAIN

Waitrose and ITV have joined forces to advertise the ‘Pick for Britain’ campaign, which mimics the Trainspotting ‘Choose Life’ call to action and lays it over a series of land army-style images. It aims to recruit 70,000 workers to prevent produce going to waste and has won the support of Prince Charles. Actually launched by Defra, the project is supported by the NFU, the British Growers Association and the Association of Labour Providers.

As our name suggests, Clean Slate Training & Employment CIC was founded to create and support disadvantaged people into work. Having spent 15 years at The Big Issue, culminating in a few years as managing director, I left with an unshakeable belief in long-term unemployed people’s sometimes hidden potential. I’d seen people with health issues, prison records, former drug or alcohol issues, and even those sleeping rough, prove themselves able to do a day’s work and help themselves off the streets. So the same must be true for hundreds of thousands of long-term unemployed people. More than 3,000 people have come through our services and many of those have proved themselves employable – not only to employers but to themselves as well.

The barriers to work are temporarily down, thanks to Coronavirus. While providing guidance towards making ends meet financially, we’ll be exploring options for unemployed people to take advantage of one of only a small number of positives during lockdown. We know what a challenge it already is to build up the confidence and self-esteem of people who have been rejected more times than they can remember, let alone being forced to do this remotely by phone or video call. But we have always been up for that fight. Social enterprises are all about doing business, usually meeting an unmet need within communities, often with one hand tied behind their back.

WHAT CAN I DO?

Like the sound of how we’re joining the dots between money problems and employment? Let’s talk. Drop me a line.

Last month, I described the debt time-bomb as a worst-case scenario for landlords, authorities and support agencies. Now I’m adding skyrocketing unemployment to the list of threats to the wellbeing of communities and our ability to meet their needs. Debt and worklessness will destroy people unless we intervene. Now.

Next month: What did digital ever do for us, really? How Coronavirus changed everything and why now is the time to help people cross the digital divide