Young Offenders: Employment and Training

Baroness Stedman-Scott Excerpts

Wednesday 17th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stedman-Scott]

My Lords, the subject of this debate is critical to the young people of our country who find themselves being released from custody. I, too, congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Healy, on securing this debate. My heart beats in concert with her on this, because it is a very important issue. I must declare that I am CEO of Tomorrow’s People. I hope that the work we are doing with young people gives me some insight into how we need to support them when leaving custody; and, even more importantly, supporting them before they get there in the first place.

I am conscious of the work done by others in this field. There is the National Grid, Blue Sky and the Prince’s Trust to name but a few. The statistics of National Grid have been well voiced this evening, so I will not go over them. Blue Sky develops social enterprises for people to work in. It operates contracts and, therefore, is trading. Its concept is “not for profit” but it would call itself a “not for loss” organisation. Certainly, it makes sure that it pays its way in providing invaluable support to young people. The Prince’s Trust, which is well known to all of us, helps young people to start their own businesses.

My experience of these young people is that they are clever and talented. They are just waiting for someone to help them realise their talent and—perhaps I am old-fashioned—to love them so that they can blossom. A great deal is being done to help people make an effective transition from custody but, as the founder of the Salvation Army, William Booth, said when his son was waxing lyrical about the wonderful work that the Salvation Army was doing:

“Bramwell, that and better will do”.

We may be doing good things, but there are more and better things that we can do.

In preparation for my contribution, I read the Local Government Association’s paper on the resettlement of offenders, which lists well the key elements that young people need to make an effective transition from custody. I know that the debate today is focused on finding employment and training on release but other critical things need to be in place if young people are to get the best from any development opportunity. Indeed, when we see what they are, we start to appreciate why things do and do not work.

Those important components include accommodation and long-term mentoring. Let us not work with them for just a few moments; we must stick with them for a year or even longer. We should ensure that they have an acceptable attained level in at least literacy, numeracy and general education. They should also be given some personal development and vocational training. At the heart of the key elements is that these young people are prepared for the world of work and that they are given work experience. Much has been said about work experience and how, sometimes, people are abused but it gives an opportunity for young people to go to an employer and show what they are able to do in the working environment. Most importantly, all these things need to be packaged so that they can get and keep a job.

Recently, I have spoken to a number of young people who are sofa surfing. They go from one house to another sleeping on the sofa. From one day to the next, they never know where they are going to stay. If they do not have a sustainable and stable, in every sense, roof over their head, all the training, employment and support that they are given can be lost because they are worrying about other things.

Long-term personalised mentoring and support is not a commodity business. I regret that we cannot scale it up, solve the problem, stack them high and sell them cheap. It will not work. This should be an individualised and one-to-one practice. The young person in front of you and looking for help needs to be the most important person in the world to you on that day.

One thing that I have learnt at Tomorrow’s People is that it is not the time to walk away when someone gets a job and makes a positive step in their journey. We need to stay with them in order to get the sustainability rates that we want. It is hard enough to get a job if you are well educated, come from a loving home and have everything, as has already been said. If we do not prepare these young people well for the world of work and do not spend as much time with the employer as we do with the young person, we will never effect the integration.

For employers to take on these young people is a big risk, on top of their worries about profits and things like that. We have to give them as much support as we can. Let me give one practical example. We were asked by a very large company to recruit, integrate and induct 12 of the most challenging cases in its community into its workforce. The young people were all assigned a job.

One young girl turned up for work on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, and everyone was really happy with her. On Friday, she did not show up, so a member of staff drove to her house and knocked on the door. The girl came down in her PJs. She was asked, “Why aren’t you at work?”. She said, “I never went to school on a Friday and no one ever bothered to chase me”. The girl was told to get dressed and get to work. The second week, it happened again, but on the third week she turned up on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. The whole thing could have fallen apart for the sake of two car journeys. It is not rocket science, it is not sophistication, it is very practical.

I come to the most difficult part of what I have to say and I hope that the Minister is sitting down and happy. All of this needs money and there is not a lot of that about, is there? I am not making any judgments about that, but I know that there are people, employers and people who care about our society, who are prepared to invest in this area of work through the medium of social impact bonds and social finance. I want the Minister, please, to spend some time seeing whether we can accelerate our social investment activity. Patience is not a virtue I have managed to cultivate and I think that I am going to give up trying, because we need to go faster and the one thing that is holding us up is the commissioning side, from Government. Please do not take that as a judgment: we just need to get better at it.

Young people’s history in this field is well documented and well versed; everyone knows what they have done wrong and I would like us to spend time giving them a destiny and forgetting their history.

Welfare Reform Bill

Baroness Stedman-Scott Excerpts

Tuesday 13th September 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stedman-Scott]

My Lords, I begin by declaring an interest as CEO of the employment charity Tomorrow’s People which aims to help people get and keep a job and to help them to focus on their destiny rather than their history. I hope that in relation to universal credit this Bill will help people to get extra focus on their destiny. In addition, before I joined your Lordships' House, I worked on the reports, Breakdown Britain, Breakthrough Britain and Economic Dependency, all of which were undertaken in conjunction with the Centre for Social Justice.

In my experience of working with unemployed people, they want to work. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, said, they do not need to be whipped. They want to be independent and to make the choices in their lives that they see those in work making. The difficulty comes when trying to make the transition from welfare to work when the system in place does not generate sufficient incentives to work. I draw noble Lords’ attention to a conversation I had with a young couple a few weeks ago. They had a child. The mother of the child had a part-time job working 19 hours a week. She wanted more hours because she wanted to be able to do more for her family. She managed to get another job which meant an increase to 29 hours a week, and she took the increased hours at the weekend so that childcare could be managed. You would think that it was something to celebrate. In front of me, her partner said, “Well, if you didn’t work, we wouldn’t have to pay the rent”. This is what we need the new system to stop. The principle of the universal credit is most welcome. It will simplify the current system, and I hope that the introduction of the new single taper, which will withdraw support as earnings rise rather than stop them altogether, will make the statement that work must pay a reality. At the moment, the withdrawal of benefits when somebody gets a job is all or nothing, resulting in people asking, “Why should I bother?”. This, I hope, changes things greatly.

However, I urge the Government to make sure that the changes which will affect unemployed people under the universal credit are communicated effectively and professionally. We must turn every stone to make sure that they are fully conversant with the flexibilities and opportunities that are presented to them, and help and support them through their journey back to work. It would be a travesty if we failed to do this. It is critical that all front-line staff, either from the DWP or indeed the various providers that interface with unemployed people on a daily basis, are well trained and that there is no opportunity for confusion or lack of clarity on these significant technical and cultural changes.

The introduction of the universal credit is long overdue, but I fear that the question we have not asked is: how are we going to support our unemployed people in the most effective way during their period of economic inactivity at the same time as introducing these changes? This is not a question for the Bill but it is something we must give thought to. If the jobs are not there, and the magic wand of the Minister cannot create them, what are we going to do to make life better for people during this period?

Like many of your Lordships, I have received several briefings on this Bill. They raise some understandable concerns and I would just like to mention one: childcare. One of the greatest obstacles faced by people looking to return to the labour market is that of affordable, quality childcare. The provision of childcare is not covered in this Bill but it will seriously affect the ability of people to take a job if it is not in place.

I greatly welcome the principles behind this Bill but it involves major changes that will need to be carefully worked out. I thank the Minister for the consideration that he has given in the briefings to the feedback we have given him. My father had the politically incorrect job of furrier—he made fur coats. He said the advice his first boss gave him, whether he was making an expensive mink coat or one of less expensive skin, was always, “Measure twice and cut once”. With all the proposed changes that this Bill brings to welfare reform, we would all do well to adhere to this advice.