Where is the long-term plan on job Šcreation?
Derren Hayes
Monday, March 31, 2014
At an event in parliament last week, young people and MPs gathered to discuss the challenge of youth unemployment. Organised by youth initiative the 99% Campaign, the panel concluded that unless speedy solutions are found to help the near one million young people not in education, employment or training (Neet), the problem could blight a generation for decades.
This is one of the few issues that receives cross-party support, so it was disappointing to see the lack of imagination in the Budget on how to tackle it. Pinning all our hope on apprenticeships in the service sector and traditional blue-collar trades is short-sighted - both are synonymous with low pay and vulnerable to the unstoppable forces of globalisation. There appeared little in the Budget for the development of technology-driven jobs and industries that the economy will need to find in great numbers if it is to offer the children of today a prosperous adulthood.
Something that is crying out for the Treasury to reform is the Youth Contract. As we revealed on our website last month, the flagship government training scheme for 16- and 17-year-olds resulted in just five of 1,700 "extended cohort" young people – young offenders, looked-after children and those who did badly in GCSEs – remaining in education, employment or training for at least five months. There were questions over the £1bn scheme before, but with funding tight, we have to get more bang for our buck than a 0.03 per cent success rate.
The government should either go back to the drawing board or reform the Youth Contract by giving more control to local authorities to channel some of the funding into working with young people earlier, before they have failed in education, become Neet or offended.
You have to be inside the tent to influence decisions
The decision by children's minister Edward Timpson to commission what amounts to a feasibility study into the widespread outsourcing of struggling children's services represents the thin end of the wedge. While the study is linked directly to the future of children's social care in Birmingham, the fact it has one eye on developing alternative delivery models that can be applied elsewhere means the government is determined to make it easier for councils to outsource services if they are deemed to be failing.
Ofsted's tougher social care inspection regime makes it likely that more children's services will receive "inadequate" judgments and so be looking for solutions. Who's to say that outsourcing will only be considered for failing areas? The silver lining for children's services is that the study has sector leaders at its core: new Association of Directors of Children's Services president Alan Wood and chief children's social worker Isabelle Trowler. While both were involved in the reviews into Doncaster and Birmingham children's services, their central role in the study should ensure the sector has a hand in shaping the future. And as Wood himself says in our interview, it is "much better for the ADCS to be involved in things, than not to be involved".
derren.hayes@markallengroup.com