Welfare Reform on the Web (November 2001): Social Security - UK - New Deal

DRAFT SOCIAL SECURITY (LITERACY ETC SKILLS TRAINING PILOT) REGULATIONS 2001: REPORT BY THE SOCIAL SECURITY ADVISORY COMMITTEE

Department of Work and Pensions and Department for Education and Skills

London: TSO, 2001 (Cm 5224)

The Regulations would allow a pilot scheme to be established whereby benefit sanctions would be imposed on people claiming Jobseekers Allowance who refused to participate in literacy and numeracy training without good cause. The Committee recommended launching the pilots without the benefits sanctions; the government disagreed.

MOVING THE "HARD TO HELP" INTO THE MAINSTREAM

M. Stewart

Working Brief, issue 127, 2001, p.8-9

The UK Government is committed to achieving full employment. Achieving this means moving particularly disadvantaged groups of unemployed people into work. This presents an opportunity for those running programmes aimed at "hard to help" clients to shift their initiatives from the margins into the mainstream.

SOCIAL CAPITAL, OR LOCAL WORKFARISM? REFLECTIONS ON EMPLOYMENT ZONES

M. Jones and A. Gray

Local Economy, Vol. 16, 2001, p. 178-186

Argues that there has been a shift within employment zones from innovation - based local partnerships, practising progressive and sustainable welfare reform through experimentation, to a workfarist local regime of labour market discipline and regulation. Workfarism operates through the combined mechanisms of privatisation and localisation and is driven by output-related funding and target chasing so that as many unemployed people as possible can be moved into employment as quickly and cheaply as possibly. The regime is no longer about tailoring local provision to enable local people to achieve lifelong learning.

WELFARE TO WORK AND DISABILITY

P. Bivand

Working Brief, issue 127, 2001, p.13-15

The fear of having their benefits stopped will discourage disabled people from looking for work through the New Deal.