Getting Disadvantaged Parents into Employment: The Working for Families Fund in Scotland

Abstract

Between 2004 and 2008, the Scottish Government's Working for Families Fund (WFF) in Scotland offered support to parents seeking to move into, within or towards employment, education or training. Focused on disadvantaged parents, the programme had registered a total of over 25,000 clients by April 2008, with 66 per cent of these having achieved a significant outcome during the life of the programme. In this paper, we examine the policy background from which the WFF programme emerged. The paper outlines key features of the programme that are distinct from other programmes (particularly the New Deal for Lone Parents) as well as setting out the key outcomes of the programme. The paper identifies some lessons concerning how WFF operated, and, finally, it outlines the key conclusions.

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to acknowledge the huge support from those who were involved in WFF across the Scottish Government, local authorities, the Advisory Board, the participants of WFF and others. Many staff at the Employment Research Institute also contributed towards the evaluation, including, but not only, Robert Raeside, Colin Lindsay, Jesus Canduela and Cathy Craig.

Notes

¹ From May 2007, the SNP took over administration of government in Scotland from the previous Labour–Liberal Democrat coalition which had developed the WFF programme. WFF funding was streamlined on 1 April 2008 into the Fairer Scotland Fund (FSF) which replaces seven previous funding streams, including WFF, as part of the Government's Concordat with local government.

² According to HM Treasury (2006), the overall UK employment rate in August 2006 was 71.6 per cent of the working age population (using the Eurostat definition, which includes females aged 15–64 years), which is above the Lisbon target of 70 per cent, but below the government's aspiration.

³ Those that did not come under the eligible criteria for support from New Deal for Lone Parents at that time.

⁴ Although it would have been of great interest, resources restricted the gathering of data on factors such as the impact of work on children and other household members.

⁵ Improvements in employability were measured by responses to a series of 10-point Likert scales completed at the initial Registration with WFF and again 6 months after Registration. Three scales from the original forms were included in order to measure these improvements in employability: ‘How would you rate your job skills (in relation to the type of work you are looking for or would like to do?); ‘How confident are you when meeting new people?’; and, ‘If you are not currently in work, how confident do you feel about starting work’. An improvement was registered if a client indicated a positive improvement on one or more of these scales.

⁶ In addition, 10 per cent (2631) of clients were still active with WFF, but had not yet achieved an outcome. Sixty-three per cent (1662) of these clients had registered with WFF during the previous six months and in many cases little or no progress would be expected within this timescale, especially as many clients were far from work ready and therefore a longer period of support would be needed. Some 24 per cent (6000) of clients had exited or become inactive from WFF (i.e. were no longer receiving support) without achieving any of the above outcomes.

⁷ Some individual projects were able to lever in European Funding using the Scottish Government funding as matched. However, this represented only a very small proportion of the overall funding.

⁸ The response rate was 70 per cent (14 out of 20).