Both the Conservative Government and the Labour Opposition are looking hard at ways to encourage economically inactive adults – including the over fifties – back into the labour market.
There is a realisation that, if economically inactive adults – who are neither employed nor unemployed – are going to return to employment, they are going to need access to new skills and jobs support.
The idea of devolved People Hubs across England and the rest of the UK can provide a one-stop shop service for adults desperate to get back into work.
We need adult education
Adult Community Education (ACE) is at last clearly getting a hearing at the heart of government.
The recent report Playing the ACE by the Centre of Social Justice makes it clear that ACE is the key to turning round local economies and supporting individuals back into work and further skills training. The report also demonstrates that ACE can help those furthest away from the labour market to meet their life issues face on.
For the last 10 years, DfE funded ACE has been targeted at those furthest away from the labour market and the sector does an amazing job getting people contributing to society via work or volunteering. And yet, the Adult Education Budget has been cut and is 40% below 2009-10 levels; and the number of people they can support has been reduced by over 1.5 million annually.
Adult education has never been more needed. It is no accident that, as adult education budgets have decreased, the economically inactive numbers have increased.
Economically inactive people are out of work for various and multiple reasons. And in many cases, good reasons. As such, a one catch-all intervention will not work.
The Adult and Community Education sector
The ACE sector has extensive experience working with people who are furthest away from the workplace and with a wide geographical reach – they work out of 10,000 venues.
They work in partnership with other organisations who share the purpose of getting people back into work and/or integrated into the community.
Local frustrations
However, when speaking to a large group of ACE service leaders, they said they were frustrated by the differing and competing initiatives at a local level.
What they found most difficult was engaging with prospective learners who would not readily present themselves for learning opportunities through normal means but were in contact with various services of the council.
A three-fold solution
The solution is three-fold.
We need a government-wide plan across all relevant departments.
We need to give local authorities a formal role and funding to support the economically inactive back into work or learning.
And we need a one-stop-shop to deliver integrated learning, benefit and jobs support to adults in local communities.
People Hubs
Both the Government and Labour Opposition should take the idea of Family Hubs and develop a system of People Hubs.
People Hubs would provide a central support service at a local level to help people to get into work and address social problems.
People Hubs would harness existing information on individuals who could benefit from learning new skills by pooling knowledge and training intermediaries from other services to provide signposting to adult education, career guidance and mentoring of individuals into learning.
These hubs would bring together information on those who fall into the economically inactive category.
For example, those with long Covid are best found through the care and medical services, those with a disability through DWP or council services who provide adaption facilities, carers through caring associations and those with multiple issues such as drug or alcohol dependency through specialist services.
Working through trusted organisations and training personnel to support people into learning would help the economically inactive gain skills and confidence to return to the workforce.
To support this initiative, inducements would be needed to provide the hook to get new learners in.
Potential hooks include the promise of an interview with a local employer, new digital training, classes in subjects they might start their own craft business in, free qualifications in care so, when their own caring circumstances change, they are already trained for the care sector or even their own “learning voucher”.
People Hubs would also provide advice on how to train and claim welfare benefits. But if learning is to become a step towards working, Universal Credit will need to be reformed to facilitate training and retraining whilst claiming.
Devolved Job Centres and People Hubs
The Labour Opposition has proposed that the Job Centre network should be devolved to local authorities to become the foundation of integrated skills and jobs centres.
This idea has much to be commended so long as a back to work approach through learning and skills is not dominated by a back to work strategy based on taking any job.
Maybe a system of integrated skills and job centres could be termed People Hubs.
Making People Hubs happen
To make People Hubs happen, DWP and DfE would need to give local authorities a formal role to support the economically inactive back into work or study.
People Hubs would need resources to develop the concept of sharing information and training of intermediaries.
And Adult and Community Education learning organisations would need to be resourced to take on the extra students.
Susan Pember is Policy Director at HOLEX