EUKN - United Kingdom - Evaluation of the Working Neighbourhoods Pilot: final report

Evaluation of the Working Neighbourhoods Pilot: final report

Introduction

This report presents the findings from the evaluation of the Working Neighbourhoods Pilot (WNP), established in 2004 to test new approaches to offering intensive support to help people find and remain in work.

Description

The pilot sites were found to be noticeably different from the ‘norm’ in terms of unemployment rates, benefit take-up, single parent households, levels of owner-occupation and educational attainment.

The barriers to employment identified centred around:

the availability and suitability of jobs,
lack of education and skills,
motivation to work,
poor transport,
lack of childcare facilities,
the decline of traditional manufacturing industries,
‘postcode’ discrimination and discrimination against the long-term unemployed.

Three main models of WNP delivery were in operation, each with a different approach to provision. Partnerships were very important to successful WNPs.

Background information

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) commissioned this report in 2003 to evaluate the WNP. It was undertaken by the Institute for Employment Studies (IES) in partnership with the Policy Research Institute, the Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research and GfK NOP.

It aimed to test the extent to which the WNP was effective in addressing long-standing barriers to employment in deprived areas and whether it increased the number of individuals moving into work and decreased the overall unemployment rate in the pilot areas.

Methodology

The research methods were both qualitative and quantitative and comprised four main components:

a literature review using UK, US and European literature, exploring barriers to employment at individual and community level;
a comprehensive analysis of secondary and administrative data, involving a statistical profile of the WNP and comparison areas using 2001 Census data, employment and unemployment statistics, benefits data, and records from the Work and Pensions Longitudinal Survey (WPLS) database;
detailed case studies of the pilot and comparison areas, involving three waves of interviews with stakeholders;
and an eligible resident survey (ERS), involving face-to-face interviews with approximately 1,200 residents across the twelve pilot sites who were both participants and non-participants in the pilot, looking at their attitudes to and experiences of employment, unemployment and jobseeking.

Conclusions

The WNP succeeded in getting a significant number of people into work.

The following strengths were identified:

the pilot’s flexibility;
partnership working;
a wide range of provisions;
testing different customer engagement strategies;
and the quality of staff teams.

The following weaknesses were identified:

pilot penetration among non-traditional groups remained low;
a lack of innovation in engagement methods and new provision strategies;
inadequate staffing in some areas;
a relatively short duration period;
and poor attention to demand-side measures to overcome unemployment.

Several recommendations were made:

initiatives must be allowed time to bed in;
management and staff teams must be right for the initiative;
a full range of support measures must be in place to address customers’ barriers to work;
attention should be paid to demand-side measures when designing policy interventions;
different methods for engaging non-traditional customer groups must be tested;
and the critical role of partners must be recognised.

Contact info

Department for Work and Pensions
Socialresearch@dwp.gsi.gov.uk

Publication date

Project finished

01/01/2007

Researcher

Sara Dewson and Jo Casebourne from the Institute of Employment Studies, Alison Darlow and Tim Bickerstaffe from the Policy Research Institute, Del Roy Fletcher and Tony Gore from the Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research at Sheffield Hallam University, and Shuba Krishnan at GfK NOP Social Research.

Links

Visit the Department for Work and Pensions website

Download the Ëavaluation of working neighbourhoods" (PDF, Eng, 400 KB)

Document type

research

Themes

Urban Policy > Economy knowledge & employment > Urban economy

Keywords

Employment