PUBLIC allegations have been made recently that commercial
organisations in receipt of huge grants for training young people,
and placing them into regular employment, have defrauded the
system. Much of the information leading to these allegations has
come from "whistle-blowers" - employees taken on to audit these
payments internally.
The companies concerned have denied these allegations, and it is
not my purpose to pre-empt what may well be a judicial process.
What concerns me is that the National Audit Office is reducing the
risk of fraud by new procedures that require outcomes to be
validated before payments are made.
At first hearing, such precautions sound sensible, and first
reactions for many will be "Why has this taken so long, and awaited
possible fraudulent practice, before being put in place?" But it
was because such precautions were brought in that many excellent
projects in the old Youth Training Schemes, run by the voluntary
sector - including churches - in the 1980s, were closed. These
schemes had fewer overheads, and placed young people in jobs
without the financial rewards that are given now.
Some of the present schemes are a mix of training for young
people on benefits, to enable them to learn the basics of a trade,
and workplace disciplines, such as timekeeping, that will help them
to be more employ-able. But, if the expenses for running these
projects are paid only when a young person completes training, or
successfully lands a job, how are the staff to be paid? And how are
the other expenses of running their training to be paid, while this
is going on?
IN THE late 1970s, I was a member of a voluntary group of
Sheffield churchpeople, brought together by the Sheffield Senior
Industrial Chaplain, the Revd Malcolm Grundy, to set up a training
scheme dedicated to helping young people with special needs and
learning difficulties. The group also included youth workers, the
chief engineer of a Sheffield steel company, and an industrial
designer.
The local Manpower Services Commission (MSC) officers, who were
responsible for implementing such schemes, agreed to the setting up
of a training workshop, beginning with the basic skills of a
traditional Sheffield industry: metal. Starting with 16 young
people, making castings in brass and aluminium, the workshop (a
registered charity) expanded to train 60 at any one time. They
learnt other skills, too, such as finishing and polishing metal,
catering, computers, and printing, as well as literacy, and social
skills. Trainees included young people with Down syndrome.
One of the conditions laid down by the MSC was that the workshop
had to raise ten per cent of its overheads by income from
manufactured items. The boost in morale to these young people -
most of whom had achieved very little educationally - in finding
that someone wanted to pay for something they had made, or done,
was phenomenal.
Every trainee who stayed with the scheme, and proved his or her
worth, gained a full-time job, and kept it beyond the agreed trial
period. Much of the credit for this was due to volunteers from
REACH (Retired Executives Action Clearing-House), who persuaded
companies to take our trainees.
WORKSHOP 6 was frequently referred to as "the showpiece of the
voluntary sector" in South Yorkshire. It was part of the condition
for MSC funding that the Workshop could not have a faith or
political bias.
It ran for 15 years, and had to close only when the Thatcher
government changed the conditions for subsidising these schemes.
The first condition introduced was that the workshop would have to
raise 20 per cent of its own funding - a practical
impossibility.
But the second condition was similar to the proposals that are
now being made. It was that the workshop would receive a training
grant for each young person only when he or she passed a National
Vocational Qualification (NVQ) 2.
Such a condition had two huge drawbacks: how were the staff to
be paid during the months the trainees were working towards this
qualification? And, for someone with, for example, Down syndrome,
NVQ2 would be entirely out of reach.
The workshop finally had to close, to the dismay of not only the
staff, but others, such as the local social-work teams, and job
centres.
NOT ALL such voluntary-sector schemes were without their faults
or mistakes, but I do not recall reading of any instance of the
abuse of grants.
I believe that there are many people in the voluntary sector who
would be just as creative today in finding ways to help these young
people. But, if the same mistakes are made by the Government as
were made then, they cannot get off the ground.
The schemes should be accountable financially, of course, but a
better way of validating such efforts has to be found than the
purely financial. They will need to be self-sustaining, not
dependent upon government or charitable subsidies; and finding ways
to accomplish this will not be easy. New approaches will be needed
- possibly entrepreneurial.
Many voluntary and other organisations are, at present, enjoying
the fruits of the fact that one of the few retailing booms is in
charity shops, and these may provide a guideline.
For several years after the closure of Workshop 6, former
members of staff and management-group voluntary trustees would be
accosted in the city centre by young men or women who asked:
"Weren't you with Workshop 6? It changed my life."
Not many schemes give that sort of satisfaction, but such
comments left the recipients with a sense of having made a useful
contribution to another's life, together with regret that it had
had to stop.
The Revd Brian Cranwell is a retired priest in the diocese
of Sheffield, and a former management consultant.