Friday 18 January 2019
JobPath Programme - Oireachtas Committee Room 4
Joint Committee on Employment Affairs and Social Protection Committee Room 4
The JobPath Programme Thursday 17th of January 2019
Dr Tom Boland and Dr Ray Griffin, Waterford Institute of Technology; Ms Catherine Greene, Kildare and Wicklow Education And Training Board; Mr Jeff Rudd and Mr Damien Fagan, United People.
Meeting starts from 45:58 onward so fast forward to there.
Thursday 17 January 2019
Committee told man on JobPath scheme had his CV amended against his wishes to conceal his ethnicity
Copy & pasted from thejournal.ie link at bottom of page.
Private companies operating JobPath get over €3k for every jobseeker that makes it through the scheme
A MAN ON the JobPath employment activation scheme had his CV amended against his wishes to conceal his ethnicity, an Oireachtas Committee was told today.
Researchers from the Waterford Employment Research Collaborative (WUERC) – a research initiative set out to develop large-scale datasets around the experience of unemployment, was highly critical of the JobPath scheme – told the committee members that “a traveller was enrolled on a course that required reasonable levels of literacy despite having low levels of literacy and also had his CV amended against his wishes to conceal his ethnicity”.
Dr Ray Griffin and Dr Tom Boland who conducted the research said the JobPath scheme should be “discontinued immediately”.
JobPath is an employment activation service provided to people who have been on the live register for more than 12 months and are trying to secure and sustain full-time paid employment or self-employment.
TheJournal.ie revealed last year that the private companies contracted by the State to run the scheme, are entitled to €3,718 for every jobseeker that gains sustained employment for one year through the JobPath scheme.
The two private companies employed by the State, Turas Nua and Seetec, to operate the scheme have received €75.7 million and €73.3 million respectively to carry out its work.
No positive experiences of JobPath
Dr Ray Griffin and Dr Tom Boland told the committee about the work they have carried out, in which they interviewed 121 unemployed individuals.
None of the interviewees reported positive experiences, with the researchers clarifying to the committee that they did not seek positive or negative experiences, rather just authentic accounts.
Their interviewees recalled being forced to “undertake futile bureaucratic routines such as mandated and monitored job search activity such as sitting at a computer for a prescribed period of time”.
They said their CV’s were rewritten in order to orient to existing job openings.
Interviewees told the researchers they were forced to undertake coaching, personal effectiveness and confidence training.
Giving further examples the committee was told:
An aspiring architect had her job-search micro-managed in a way that undermined her standing with local employers and was then directed to reduce her expectations and accept other work, and a pregnant woman was directed, under threat of sanctions to accept work at a call centre in a location some distance away which had no suitable transport options.
The researchers said their data clearly captures a shift towards a “less supportive, more conditional, less empathetic, more pressurising, welfare system, where the threat of sanctions was constant and individuals felt forced to perform as directed by case officers in Intreo or JobPath providers, often against their better judgement and usually without any positive outcome”.
Under the JobPath scheme many respondents told the researchers that they felt “actively and capriciously patronised, cajoled, threatened, manipulated and bullied”.
All respondents detailed the continual threat of sanctions, which made engagement and compliance with various tasks compulsory.
Our data demonstrates that beyond the actual application of sanctions, that the process of activation under threat of sanction is in and of itself a negative experience; the process is the punishment, as it were.
‘Poor practice’
Catherine Greene of the Kildare and Wicklow Education Training Board, but speaking on behalf of all training boards nationwide, said their organisations should have been tasked with the job that JobPath have been doing for the last number of years.
She told the committee it was “poor practice” to lift the JobPath model from the UK without making any changes or adaptations for working with the Irish public”.
She said the Job Path model was based on the model being used by the G4S recruitment company in the UK, which was criticised by the UK Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills.
“We have no difficulty with recruitment agencies as a model of accessing employment, but to use these services people must be highly skilled, workplace ready,” she said.
In terms of personal client testimony, she said to be referred to Turas Nua or Seetec – the private companies who are paid to run the scheme “is to be placed in a very vulnerable position and denied access to further education and training”.
There appears to have been a lack of recognition by Turas Nua of the trauma for people being at a major crossroads in their lives, in addition to a lack of understanding of their need to manage challenging barriers in terms of childcare, transport, disability, illness, bereavement, addiction issues and mental health issues post redundancy and financial stress.
She also gave the committee a number of examples of the Turas and Seetec experience.
She outlined one example of “inappropriate” behaviour in a case which a Department of Social Protection officer referred to the agency.
Man taken off education training
A JobPath operator in dealing with a 62-year-old man who had left school aged 10, and who had labouring jobs prior to spending over 20 years of his life in prison who was receiving Jobseekers Allowance after exiting the probation service, and experiencing anxiety.
The association said his only outing was to walk to his mother’s grave in darkness. His basic skills led the association to recommend a part-time literacy/ communications, computers and woodworking workshop in the local Adult Education Centre.
“He agreed to engage with the programme and I put counselling supports and made tutors aware of his anxiety issues. After six weeks into the programme he was called up by Turas Nua and removed from his Education programme, two weeks later he came to me in an extremely agitated state asking me to make a CV as he had been ordered to return to Turas Nua by the end of the week with evidence of 15 job applications submitted,” the committee was told.
“In this three-week period while he was engaging with Turas Nua, three different Turas Nua advisors had contacted me for a copy of his CV. Our client did a full year with Turas Nua without getting any work and we have recently learnt that he has returned to Turas Nua and he will be with them until Sept 2019. At present he is not engaged in any education/training or employment, but he is required to attend on a monthly basis,” said Greene.
Had her organisation, the Adult Educational Guidance Association (AEGA), been invested in during the years of austerity, rather than JobPath, unemployment statistics would have been so much better, she said.
She said the “forced march pattern” of this recruitment model has been unsuccessful with only 9% of participants securing longer term employment.
The committee was told there are serious questions to be asked in terms of the delivery model, given that it has been awarded a budget of €140 million since 2015.
“Only 9% of participants have progressed into full-time employment and 11,000 participants who previously used Turas Nua and Seetec are returning for a second year of participation. By comparison, in that same period i.e. the four years 2015- 2018 inclusively, the Guidance Services have met with and progressed more than 208,000 beneficiaries on an annual budget of just 6.55 million with a cost to the state of €125 per beneficiary,” it said.
Scrap JobPath
WUERC suggests investing in training and the Back-to-Education scheme, and to scrap JobPath.
“Policies which emphasise welfare conditionality and sanctions are short-sighted: requiring compliance under threat of being put below the minimum level of income has mainly negative consequences,” it said.
It added that the payment-by-results and short-term orientation of the JobPath contract are “unsuitable policy instruments”.
“The impact of JobPath on individual lives is decidedly negative, even where sanctions were not imposed. We envisage a long-term impact on overall social cohesion as a result of the experience and throughput of citizens through the initiative.”
Speaking in December, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar indicated that the JobPath scheme might not be needed in the future. The contract for Seetec and Turas Nua is due to expire this year.
“We are entering a different phase in our economy where we are heading towards full employment so obviously services such as JobPath may not be needed in the future but that is an assessment that the Minister, Deputy Doherty, will have to make,” said the Taoiseach.
Sinn Féin John Brady said Minister for Social Protection Regina Doherty remains in “complete denial” about the failure of the scheme.
TD Bríd Smith said the “vicious ways” to force people into unsuitable employment is totally unsuitable.
Fianna Fáil TD John Curran, chairman of the committee, said the issue of JobPath has been something it has been investigating for some time now. Due to the contract for the service being possibly up for renewal shortly, the committee’s report is “timely” and will make recommendations to government.
Seetec and Turas Nua were contacted for comment, but nothing was received by the time of publication.
https://www.thejournal.ie/jobpath-committee-4444680-Jan2019/
Private companies operating JobPath get over €3k for every jobseeker that makes it through the scheme
A MAN ON the JobPath employment activation scheme had his CV amended against his wishes to conceal his ethnicity, an Oireachtas Committee was told today.
Researchers from the Waterford Employment Research Collaborative (WUERC) – a research initiative set out to develop large-scale datasets around the experience of unemployment, was highly critical of the JobPath scheme – told the committee members that “a traveller was enrolled on a course that required reasonable levels of literacy despite having low levels of literacy and also had his CV amended against his wishes to conceal his ethnicity”.
Dr Ray Griffin and Dr Tom Boland who conducted the research said the JobPath scheme should be “discontinued immediately”.
JobPath is an employment activation service provided to people who have been on the live register for more than 12 months and are trying to secure and sustain full-time paid employment or self-employment.
TheJournal.ie revealed last year that the private companies contracted by the State to run the scheme, are entitled to €3,718 for every jobseeker that gains sustained employment for one year through the JobPath scheme.
The two private companies employed by the State, Turas Nua and Seetec, to operate the scheme have received €75.7 million and €73.3 million respectively to carry out its work.
No positive experiences of JobPath
Dr Ray Griffin and Dr Tom Boland told the committee about the work they have carried out, in which they interviewed 121 unemployed individuals.
None of the interviewees reported positive experiences, with the researchers clarifying to the committee that they did not seek positive or negative experiences, rather just authentic accounts.
Their interviewees recalled being forced to “undertake futile bureaucratic routines such as mandated and monitored job search activity such as sitting at a computer for a prescribed period of time”.
They said their CV’s were rewritten in order to orient to existing job openings.
Interviewees told the researchers they were forced to undertake coaching, personal effectiveness and confidence training.
Giving further examples the committee was told:
An aspiring architect had her job-search micro-managed in a way that undermined her standing with local employers and was then directed to reduce her expectations and accept other work, and a pregnant woman was directed, under threat of sanctions to accept work at a call centre in a location some distance away which had no suitable transport options.
The researchers said their data clearly captures a shift towards a “less supportive, more conditional, less empathetic, more pressurising, welfare system, where the threat of sanctions was constant and individuals felt forced to perform as directed by case officers in Intreo or JobPath providers, often against their better judgement and usually without any positive outcome”.
Under the JobPath scheme many respondents told the researchers that they felt “actively and capriciously patronised, cajoled, threatened, manipulated and bullied”.
All respondents detailed the continual threat of sanctions, which made engagement and compliance with various tasks compulsory.
Our data demonstrates that beyond the actual application of sanctions, that the process of activation under threat of sanction is in and of itself a negative experience; the process is the punishment, as it were.
‘Poor practice’
Catherine Greene of the Kildare and Wicklow Education Training Board, but speaking on behalf of all training boards nationwide, said their organisations should have been tasked with the job that JobPath have been doing for the last number of years.
She told the committee it was “poor practice” to lift the JobPath model from the UK without making any changes or adaptations for working with the Irish public”.
She said the Job Path model was based on the model being used by the G4S recruitment company in the UK, which was criticised by the UK Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills.
“We have no difficulty with recruitment agencies as a model of accessing employment, but to use these services people must be highly skilled, workplace ready,” she said.
In terms of personal client testimony, she said to be referred to Turas Nua or Seetec – the private companies who are paid to run the scheme “is to be placed in a very vulnerable position and denied access to further education and training”.
There appears to have been a lack of recognition by Turas Nua of the trauma for people being at a major crossroads in their lives, in addition to a lack of understanding of their need to manage challenging barriers in terms of childcare, transport, disability, illness, bereavement, addiction issues and mental health issues post redundancy and financial stress.
She also gave the committee a number of examples of the Turas and Seetec experience.
She outlined one example of “inappropriate” behaviour in a case which a Department of Social Protection officer referred to the agency.
Man taken off education training
A JobPath operator in dealing with a 62-year-old man who had left school aged 10, and who had labouring jobs prior to spending over 20 years of his life in prison who was receiving Jobseekers Allowance after exiting the probation service, and experiencing anxiety.
The association said his only outing was to walk to his mother’s grave in darkness. His basic skills led the association to recommend a part-time literacy/ communications, computers and woodworking workshop in the local Adult Education Centre.
“He agreed to engage with the programme and I put counselling supports and made tutors aware of his anxiety issues. After six weeks into the programme he was called up by Turas Nua and removed from his Education programme, two weeks later he came to me in an extremely agitated state asking me to make a CV as he had been ordered to return to Turas Nua by the end of the week with evidence of 15 job applications submitted,” the committee was told.
“In this three-week period while he was engaging with Turas Nua, three different Turas Nua advisors had contacted me for a copy of his CV. Our client did a full year with Turas Nua without getting any work and we have recently learnt that he has returned to Turas Nua and he will be with them until Sept 2019. At present he is not engaged in any education/training or employment, but he is required to attend on a monthly basis,” said Greene.
Had her organisation, the Adult Educational Guidance Association (AEGA), been invested in during the years of austerity, rather than JobPath, unemployment statistics would have been so much better, she said.
She said the “forced march pattern” of this recruitment model has been unsuccessful with only 9% of participants securing longer term employment.
The committee was told there are serious questions to be asked in terms of the delivery model, given that it has been awarded a budget of €140 million since 2015.
“Only 9% of participants have progressed into full-time employment and 11,000 participants who previously used Turas Nua and Seetec are returning for a second year of participation. By comparison, in that same period i.e. the four years 2015- 2018 inclusively, the Guidance Services have met with and progressed more than 208,000 beneficiaries on an annual budget of just 6.55 million with a cost to the state of €125 per beneficiary,” it said.
Scrap JobPath
WUERC suggests investing in training and the Back-to-Education scheme, and to scrap JobPath.
“Policies which emphasise welfare conditionality and sanctions are short-sighted: requiring compliance under threat of being put below the minimum level of income has mainly negative consequences,” it said.
It added that the payment-by-results and short-term orientation of the JobPath contract are “unsuitable policy instruments”.
“The impact of JobPath on individual lives is decidedly negative, even where sanctions were not imposed. We envisage a long-term impact on overall social cohesion as a result of the experience and throughput of citizens through the initiative.”
Speaking in December, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar indicated that the JobPath scheme might not be needed in the future. The contract for Seetec and Turas Nua is due to expire this year.
“We are entering a different phase in our economy where we are heading towards full employment so obviously services such as JobPath may not be needed in the future but that is an assessment that the Minister, Deputy Doherty, will have to make,” said the Taoiseach.
Sinn Féin John Brady said Minister for Social Protection Regina Doherty remains in “complete denial” about the failure of the scheme.
TD Bríd Smith said the “vicious ways” to force people into unsuitable employment is totally unsuitable.
Fianna Fáil TD John Curran, chairman of the committee, said the issue of JobPath has been something it has been investigating for some time now. Due to the contract for the service being possibly up for renewal shortly, the committee’s report is “timely” and will make recommendations to government.
Seetec and Turas Nua were contacted for comment, but nothing was received by the time of publication.
https://www.thejournal.ie/jobpath-committee-4444680-Jan2019/
JobPath Scheme A Dead End For Unemployed
Copy and pasted from Irish times link at bottom of page.
Participants allege bullying, intimidation and threats in back-to-work programme
In one instance, it is alleged a Traveller man had his CV amended to conceal his ethnicity.
Experts have called for widespread reform of a key Government back-to-work programme for the long-term unemployed, following allegations of bullying, intimidation and threats of sanctions over
jobless people.
In one instance, it is alleged a Traveller man who was enrolled on a back to work programme with
the service – called JobPath – had his CV amended to conceal his ethnicity.
The criticisms will be aired at the Joint Committee on Employment Affairs and Social Protection,
which is hearing expert testimony on the JobPath programme on Thursday.
In an opening statement to the committee, seen by The Irish Times, academics from the Waterford
Institute of Technology (WIT) will say JobPath users they interviewed described feeling they were
in a system which “actively and capriciously patronised, cajoled, threatened, manipulated and
bullied them”.
“Many identified this service as the State deliberately attempting to lower their expectations of
work, firstly in terms of their reservation wage, but also interfering in their family and caring
responsibilities.”
“A Traveller was enrolled on a course that required reasonable levels of literacy despite having
low levels of literacy, and also had his CV amended against his wishes to conceal his ethnicity,”
according to the WIT statement.‘Bureaucratic routines’
In interviews with 25 users of the scheme, the WIT academics said they reported they were “forced to undertake futile bureaucratic routines”, experienced “having their CV rewritten or ‘massaged’”, were forced to undertake coaching and training delivered by unqualified and inexperienced trainers, and had been “intimidated over technical or minor infractions of rules”.
One user reported being sanctioned and afterwards how she “was forced to rely on charity and high interest debt, and experienced food poverty”. The academics also describe how a pregnant woman “was directed, under threat of sanctions, to accept work at a call centre in a location some distance away which had no suitable transport options”.
Another expert, Catherine Greene, who is a guidance counsellor with the Kildare Wicklow Adult Guidance Service, will also give evidence to the committee.
Her opening statement details a case study which she worked on of a 62-year-old man who had left school at 10 and spent 20 years in prison, and “whose only outing was to walk to his mother’s grave in darkness”.
Part-time programme
The man was placed in a part-time programme on the advice of Ms Greene. But six weeks later he was called up and removed from his education programme,” according to her opening statement.
“Two weeks later he came to me in an extremely agitated state asking me to make a CV as he had been ordered to return . . . by the end of the week with evidence of 15 job applications submitted.”
She also criticised the design of JobPath, which she said was heavily modelled on the UK, and put in place in Ireland “without making any changes or adaptations for working with the Irish public”.
She said that to be referred JobPath “is to be placed in a very vulnerable position and denied access to further education and training”.
“The forced-march pattern of this recruitment model has been unsuccessful, with only 9 per cent of participants securing longer-term employment.”
https://www.irishtimes.com/business/work/jobpath-scheme-a-dead-end-for-unemployed-claim-experts-1.3760516
Participants allege bullying, intimidation and threats in back-to-work programme
In one instance, it is alleged a Traveller man had his CV amended to conceal his ethnicity.
Experts have called for widespread reform of a key Government back-to-work programme for the long-term unemployed, following allegations of bullying, intimidation and threats of sanctions over
jobless people.
In one instance, it is alleged a Traveller man who was enrolled on a back to work programme with
the service – called JobPath – had his CV amended to conceal his ethnicity.
The criticisms will be aired at the Joint Committee on Employment Affairs and Social Protection,
which is hearing expert testimony on the JobPath programme on Thursday.
In an opening statement to the committee, seen by The Irish Times, academics from the Waterford
Institute of Technology (WIT) will say JobPath users they interviewed described feeling they were
in a system which “actively and capriciously patronised, cajoled, threatened, manipulated and
bullied them”.
“Many identified this service as the State deliberately attempting to lower their expectations of
work, firstly in terms of their reservation wage, but also interfering in their family and caring
responsibilities.”
“A Traveller was enrolled on a course that required reasonable levels of literacy despite having
low levels of literacy, and also had his CV amended against his wishes to conceal his ethnicity,”
according to the WIT statement.‘Bureaucratic routines’
In interviews with 25 users of the scheme, the WIT academics said they reported they were “forced to undertake futile bureaucratic routines”, experienced “having their CV rewritten or ‘massaged’”, were forced to undertake coaching and training delivered by unqualified and inexperienced trainers, and had been “intimidated over technical or minor infractions of rules”.
One user reported being sanctioned and afterwards how she “was forced to rely on charity and high interest debt, and experienced food poverty”. The academics also describe how a pregnant woman “was directed, under threat of sanctions, to accept work at a call centre in a location some distance away which had no suitable transport options”.
Another expert, Catherine Greene, who is a guidance counsellor with the Kildare Wicklow Adult Guidance Service, will also give evidence to the committee.
Her opening statement details a case study which she worked on of a 62-year-old man who had left school at 10 and spent 20 years in prison, and “whose only outing was to walk to his mother’s grave in darkness”.
Part-time programme
The man was placed in a part-time programme on the advice of Ms Greene. But six weeks later he was called up and removed from his education programme,” according to her opening statement.
“Two weeks later he came to me in an extremely agitated state asking me to make a CV as he had been ordered to return . . . by the end of the week with evidence of 15 job applications submitted.”
She also criticised the design of JobPath, which she said was heavily modelled on the UK, and put in place in Ireland “without making any changes or adaptations for working with the Irish public”.
She said that to be referred JobPath “is to be placed in a very vulnerable position and denied access to further education and training”.
“The forced-march pattern of this recruitment model has been unsuccessful, with only 9 per cent of participants securing longer-term employment.”
https://www.irishtimes.com/business/work/jobpath-scheme-a-dead-end-for-unemployed-claim-experts-1.3760516
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