Design principles and features
Approaches should be designed with progress into sustainable work in mind and be robust in the context of expected changes to national funding patterns and programmes (e.g. DWP Commissioning Strategy). Funders will link their funding over time more closely to the desired outcome of sustainable work.
Best practice in relation to design principles and features should include:
Principles
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Focus
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Focusing active and engagement services in areas where priority client numbers are highest
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Quality
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Ensuring that any client who engages with the service receives a high quality, responsive service
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Performance
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Funding partners need to establish high expectations of performance, more actively manage poor performance, build on the organisations or approaches displaying high performance and on approaches that work. The key driver for enhancing performance is the way in which services are procured and contracts managed
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Existing resources
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Approaches should be taken forward within existing resources on the assumption that with the right skills, systems, focus and support they can deliver high outcomes
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Providing employment
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Funding partners have a major role to play as employers, both in terms of ensuring that they are making their jobs accessible to people in the priority client groups and in creating stepping stones to conventional work.
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Frontline staff
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Employability services need to “recruit” frontline staff across a range of services who work with priority clients. This will transform the scale of frontline resource but it needs to be done in a way which supports them to focus on identification and effective referral while not distracting them from their “day jobs”
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Features
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Joint staff training
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Development and implementation of a programme of joint staff training across the range of services and organisations who engage with priority clients, to enhance awareness of the significance of their role and how they can contribute fully
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Clear entry points
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This could take the form of specific branded ‘front doors’ into specific services or a branded ‘no wrong door’ approach backed by effective assessment and referral
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Shared assessment
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Shared ‘in the round’ assessment processes adopted by all relevant organisations
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Case management
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A method of providing a range of services to a client whereby the case worker arranges, co-ordinates, refers and monitors a package of multiple services to meet the individual’s specific needs. The provision of services may be located within a single organisation but are more likely to involve a number of different organisations, services and projects
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Employer engagement
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Active and co-ordinated engagement process for employers which is backed by mechanisms to identify appropriate vacancies and support for employers, based on the business benefit to them, to recruit priority clients
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Training
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Which should be closely related to specific vacancies or skill shortages and involve skill development pre- and post-employment
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In-work support
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To help individuals settle and progress in work
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