Burton to tackle jobless crisis with radical approach

ITS TITLE, Pathways to Work, sounds relatively modest but the scheme launched by Minister for Social Protection Joan Burton this month will involve the most radical shake-up of unemployment policies for a generation.

Up until now, there has been a substantial disconnect between welfare providers and job and training agencies. Responsibilities have been split between a myriad of bodies, with a myriad of computer systems that did not talk to each other.

But under a comprehensive new policy to be announced by Ms Burton, the Department of Social Protection will become a “one-stop shop” that will host all those services. From later this year, unemployed people will be able to access a single integrated service to get payments, community welfare services and training and upskilling referrals.

A number of important pieces have fallen in place in recent months, including a big influx of staff to the department. Some 1,000 community welfare officers from the HSE and 700 labour and employment service employees from FÁS have moved over to Social Protection. The service has a working title of the National Employment and Entitlement Service or NEES. “The object is to bring those three things together and have a coherent service,” Ms Burton told The Irish Times.

Along with the new service will also come major changes of approach. The first is the introduction of a new profiling model. When somebody signs up, they will have a profile prepared that looks at employment and educational records, and predicts their chances of a timely exit from the register. If the outlook is poor – because of low educational attainment or poor work experience – the person will be transferred to a training expert.

Burton says the service has already been “road-tested” with positive results. In the past, as many as 40 per cent of people called for FÁS interviews failed to show up. Under tests, people were called to a meeting, made aware of all their options, and told they had to engage.

“Engagement has increased dramatically. Show rates are now 90 per cent,” she says.

Another major change will be the introduction of 600,000 public service cards with high-quality photos, signature and other electronic data. It can be used as a swipe card for payments, will contain data on status, and can be used as an “identity marker” to help tackle fraud. Burton says that while overall levels of fraud were small, even a 1 per cent rate costs the State a large amount of money.

She says that it would not be an identity card per se, but instead entitle one to access services, helping to eliminate the problem of people fraudulently using multiple identities.

Another major initiative will allow people to take up short-term contracts without losing any social welfare entitlements. “There is the certainty of social welfare system versus the uncertainty of modern short-term contract labour. It brings flexibility, an assurance to the individual that if you take short-term work, can go back into system without losing out,” she says.

She says her other major preoccupation is dealing with how the system deals with lone parents. “In Scandinavia lone parenting is not status for the whole of your working age life. It is only when your children are smaller and then you are expected to go back to education and training to improve. The corollary of that is that you have to have good childcare and after-school service.”

She says that some lone parents who are early school leavers are at the highest risk of poverty.

“Do we accept that or see how we can change that around?” she says. “If they do not get a chance their child is at risk of becoming an adult who is also income poor. We have to stop that cycle.”