Helping The Long term Unemployed Into Work
The government yesterday announced measures to tackle unemployment and increase the responsibility of those on benefits to return to work. Benefit sanctions will be introduced for those who who refuse to attend Job Centres. But will these measures work? Indeed, do Job centres work? Or is the whole approach to the long term unemployed, and other socially excluded groups, misplaced and bound to fail?
Over the past couple of years Career Energy has been running pilot projects with ex-offenders and long term unemployed, to help them into jobs. We have been doing things very differently from the conventional, state-funded approaches, and getting outstanding results.
At the core of our approach is the recognition that everyone, even the most intransigent offender, has a unique identity and skill set. They may be wholly unaware of this but which, with the right support, their unique abilities can be identified and developed. At the same time most people would like to have a comfortable lifestyle and money in their pocket, even if they don’t want a conventional job.
The problems that most socially excluded groups face stem from poor education, low self esteem, extreme poverty or disability or sickness. But by engaging with people on a one to one basis we help them to find ways to overcome the obstacles, recognise what they are capable of, set goals for themselves and start to make changes in their life. What we do, works.
Of course governments have to deal with mass populations and is is very easy to adopt one-size-fits-all solutions. But the problems of the long term unemployed have never been solved and the latest initiative is almost certainly bound to end in failure. It is time for a more personalised approach, to take Job Centres out of the picture and introduce new services delivered by smaller, flexible, providers like Career Energy. It will cost more, but the benefits to the economy will far exceed the costs.
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Tags: Career Advice, Career Energy, job, Job Centres, job search, Long Term Unemployed, Redundancy, social exclusion, unemployment
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