By Aaron Barbour
Jess Steele is Development Trusts Association Head of Consultancy and currently on secondment to the goverment Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG) working on community assets, such as the Asset Transfer Unit the “meanwhile use” policy, and rethinking community finance. Jess has been instrumental in developing Create: the Community Allowance, which we at Community Links have been involved with for the past few years, and have been blogging about over the last year.
Jess sent through some thoughts about the newly announced Future Jobs Fund and how this opportunity relates to the Community Allowance.
Here they are:
“OK, so I’ve seen Secretary of State for Work and Pensions’ James Purnell’s YouTube video and had a good look at the guide to the DWP’s Future Jobs Fund; and I think this is a major step forward, not necessarily as exactly what we asked for, but a step in the right direction thanks, in part, to our intensive lobbying, with the help of all our supporters.
The important points of the Future Jobs Fund (FJF) are:
- create additional jobs for long term unemployed people;
- benefit the local community; and
- create a significant proportion of jobs quickly.
DWP have accepted the ‘benefit the local community’ aspect (an enormous step forward from 2001, when I joined the National Community Forum).
They want the Fund to:
- include proposals for training to develop an individual’s skills;
- contribute to the creation of a significant number of new green jobs; and
- provide value for money and / or include additional funding from other sources.
They have accepted the idea that these jobs should include training to develop an individual’s skills. The ‘Green jobs’ reference is interesting, though I feel that more detail is needed to determine exactly what they mean by a green job. In other places they’ve talked about ’socially useful’ work. Their third bullet point talks about ‘additional funding from other sources’. One of the unique selling points for the Community Allowance is getting the wages paid through local programmes.
They want to involve other parties. It isn’t all local authorities.
- Other large organisations such as social enterprises and voluntary sector bodies will be able to bid as long as their proposals meet the criteria set out during the bidding process.
They have been increasingly recognising the need to involve other providers since the influential Freud report (and before). The door is open. (They hadn’t heard of social enterprises in 2001!).
However we need to continue influencing and shaping the criteria set out during the bidding process.
As well as making a significant contribution to the Government’s guarantee for young people, it will also provide much needed and valuable support to other people who have been out of work and on benefit for around a year, helping to ensure they do not lose touch with the labour market. This dual approach ensures that young and disadvantaged people do not lose touch with the labour market….We are particularly interested in hearing from organisations in areas of high unemployment to understand how we can best create new jobs in these areas.
The importance of deprived neighbourhoods is clear. They haven’t got the idea yet that new jobs can be created specifically to deal with the problems of deprived neighbourhoods but we’re getting there. We need to influence the kinds of bids that go in from Local Authorities (as the main bidders).
- We want to get this up running as soon as possible, with some jobs in place as early as October 2009.
Things are moving fast. The ideas, values and innovation behind the Community Allowance are too important – we won’t let go of the idea of our own pilots, or let them ignore the Right to Bid approach just because they’re going to be busy with this latest initiative, but we do need to move quickly to be part of this ‘Future Jobs Fund’ as well
OK, so what do we do from here? We need to continue with our DWP Right to Bid application, to be able to pilot the Community Allowance in 15 pilot areas; and we need to prepare for a Future Jobs Fund bid which will mean submitting our ideas outlining what we could do.”
If you’re interested in getting more involved with the Community Allowance contact our co-ordinator Naomi Alexander and visit our Community Allowance website: www.communityallowance.org
