The first step towards recovery is admitting there is a problem, the second step is trying to address that issue. While the first step is often the hardest – it is usually the catalyst for making change happen.
However there is one problem that has been in the background of our society for a long time and yet despite open recognition of its failures we have continued to do nothing to address it. I am of course referring to the job centre.
Through my work I have spent a large amount of time interacting with young people and in particular talking about their access to employment. And one actor that has been repeatedly mentioned as a barrier to meaningful employment was the job centre.
However on reflection, it is not just young people who hold this view. Almost everyone I know has at least one anecdote about how bad the job centre is or how it has let down a friend or member of their family. And yet despite this seemingly universal opinion we have categorically failed to address the problem.
The Labour party’s view of social security is to act as a safety net when people are in need and the job centre is a crucial element within this system. However when examining the situation that is taking place on the ground it appears that the safety net has a gaping hole in it.
The vast majority of feedback from young people in a recent research piece stated that the job centre, rather than being a force for good in supporting young people into meaningful employment, was having a negative impact on their development and career chances. Often placing them in short term, low paid employment that had no bearing on their skills or aspirations.
The job centre was described as a ‘processing line’ where young people are rushed through their appointments, pointed in the direction of the nearest job, patted on the back and sent on their way – all in under seven minutes flat. Missing the real support that young people craved which was advice on their CVs, feedback on their applications and to have one individual who would be there for them.
The job centre should be a supportive environment that builds on the skills young people have obtained through school and college and in some circumstances universities. It should assess and tailor its service to the individual, by listening to their needs rather than directing them to the nearest short term job only for them to return through the revolving door a few months later or in some cases a few days later.
Naturally schools, colleges and apprenticeships will be the ideal preparatory environments for young people but for a plethora of reasons they are leaving these places of education and not being able to access the jobs market. It is at this point that the job centre becomes the only instrument of government that is invested in young people and has a duty of care to help them into employment.
However, in delivering this duty the job centre fails spectacularly. Young people are shunted around irrelevant ‘training’ courses and not ones that are reflecting their skills to date. The relationship between the job centre and the individual should be responsive and adaptive in order to ensure long-term employment. There should be a chance to discuss what training (or retraining) opportunities would work for you – but this is not that case. I have lost count of the number of young people who have told me they attended a ‘social media’ course – to which they knew more than the facilitator.
In more worrying examples young people who have specialised in particular areas through their education and training are simply told that there are no jobs in that field and have to move into another. Disregarding their skills and expertise in an attempt to boost statistics for the month. The support offered is not flexible enough and a rigid processing regime has taken over genuinely trying to help individuals. This is not the fault of the staff themselves but a reflection on the direction this government has taken in helping those weakest in society.
This Tories enjoys painting a picture of the young people who find themselves accessing social security as those who make the choice not to work or who get pregnant simply to claim housing benefit. However the young people I have interacted with, who depend on the safety net, are smart, engaging and hungry to build themselves a career with many wanting to start their own businesses.
Not everyone has the ability to drive themselves forward or to be a ‘go-getter’. Many of the young people will be battling their own disadvantages before they even leave the front door. A significant amount will not even have a front door to call their own. The Labour party I believe in should be fighting for these young people now and the very voices that we should be channelling when holding the Government to account. There are organisations that advocate for these young people but for our party this should be at the core of what we deliver in opposition – not just for their’s, but also for our own political sake.
The rhetoric of ‘strivers vs shirkers’ dominated conversations on the doorstep and our inability to challenge this is one of the reasons we lost the last two general elections. Labour needs to frame its offer to young people – and society at large – on how it will treat those who need to access the safety net and the job centre is the perfect place to start.
We will be out of power for another four years but there is an opportunity for the Labour party to call for a ‘root and branch’ review of the job centre and to promote an alternative offer to young people who find themselves in need of accessing the safety net.
If we want to regain the ground with the public on how the Labour party would address the social security system we need to start having that debate and setting out our position now. If we wait to propose a few alternatives six months before the general election in 2020 we will lose the argument again – and worse still we will lose the chance to help young people whilst in opposition. Because as we have seen over the previous five years, if we do not help them now – no one will.
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Liam Preston is a member of Progress
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This hits the nail on the head. The world of work is changing rapidly, the jobs that people were initially trained for may not exist by the time they retire. Through no fault of their own many people are going to experience periods of unemployment.
If Labour advocated a policy of really investing in job centres to give the kind of real support you suggest then it would appeal both to the left (who like to see people helped) AND the right – because surely it is better to invest a few thousand pounds in making sure someone gets into the right job (and then pays taxes for the next 30 years) rather than having the revolving door you describe, which is massively costly to the taxpayer in terms of paying benefits and foregone taxation.
In general this article misunderstands the function of the job centre. It has never been designed as a careers advisory/guidance service. The staff were never expected to provide this level of service which requires greater specialist knowledge both of the labour market and of the organisation of education and courses which link with the market along with the psychology of the youth to be served. This Careers Advisory Service did once exist though and delivered services at very low cost through its efficient organisation and agility.
Memories are quite short though as these were abolished by the Blair led Party (ironically at their peak performance). They were sold off to private companies – very often being sold on again until they diminished to social oriented organisations serving the homeless disengaged. In one instance with which I am familiar the Careers Advisory Service which placed tens of thousands of young people into training places leading to (real) employment was sold to a shipbuilders (yes, a shipbuilder) who subsequently sold it again, much reduced in size, until its effectiveness was diminished to irrelevance until the services ended. These actions left many in Labour responsible for this ideological decision – making to then pretend that job centres provided this ‘old’ service. They never did and were never meant to. It is not surprising they are ill – equipped to perform.
It is important that we learn from past Labour ideological errors, particularly as lack memory allows the repeating of mistakes.