Evaluation of the New Deal for Disabled People pilots
A hard copy of this report summary can be obtained by contacting Paul Noakes [E-Mail: Paul.Noakes@dwp.gsi.gov.uk] or by writing to him at the 'Social Research Division, Department for Work and Pensions, 4th Floor, Adelphi, 1-11 John Adam Street, London WC2N 6HT'.
Research Report No. 143 & 144
The New Deal for Disabled People (NDDP) pilots were set up in 1998, and consisted of two main strands – 12 Personal Advisor Pilots (PAS) and 24 Innovative Schemes (IS). The two strands were evaluated separately, and findings from the two reports presented below. Both evaluations aimed to assess how well the pilots helped disabled people to find or remain in work, and to advise about what was effective in the programme and what was not. The reports present findings from research carried out with a range of key stakeholders including clients, Managers and staff, Partners and Employers.
The main findings identified across the two studies were:
Activities:
- Services carried out three broad types of activities: “Mobilising clients” – encouraging active participation of clients in services; “Mobilising employers” – encouraging the involvement of employers, and increasing work opportunities for disabled people; “Matching” – finding suitable employment opportunities for clients.
Partnerships:
- Partnership working was important, especially with organisations that could provide employment related services to the client group including Disability Employment Advisers (based within the Employment Service) and also Benefits Agency staff. Partner organisations were felt to have contributed to an improved service, through the provision of additional resources and by helping achieve a more seamless journey for a client between different statutory agencies.
Specialisation:
- Staff within the pilot services needed to have a wide range of skills. Many service providers decided to specialise the functions of their staff so that they carried out specific client activities - e.g. initial client interview, job-matching, working with employers etc. – or provided specialised support for clients with particular types of disability.
Funding:
- There was some evidence that outcome-related funding which rewards paid employment leads to a focus on clients who are perceived as being easier to help into work.
Clients:
- The pilots worked with and achieved positive outcomes for a whole range of eligible clients, including those who were quite severely disabled. Although participants were more likely to be closer to the labour market, clients varied greatly in the degree to which they were ‘work ready’. Some required little input from services to move them into employment, whereas others required a number of intermediary steps.
- Clients were generally positive about the service they had received and felt it had made a positive impact on their overall move towards work. They appreciated the individualised approach and 'work focus' although intermediary benefits like social gains were also valued. Many of the clients who moved into employment felt in need of continued support from services.
Employers:
- Service providers were more successful when they had a good understanding of the local business environment, and viewed employers as ‘customers’ with their own varied needs. Employers appreciated general advice on employing disabled people. They particularly appreciated advice on the operation of the Disability Discrimination Act, enhancing the skills of personnel staff and managers in managing sickness absence, and information on services to support employees at risk of losing their jobs because of ill-health and/or disability. Some employers found that their fears about employing disabled people diminished after involvement with pilots.
Introduction
The New Deal for Disabled People (NDDP) pilots are part of a programme of new Government initiatives aimed at helping people move into or remain in work. The NDDP is targeted specifically at people with disabilities and long-term health problems, particularly those receiving benefits on the grounds of incapacity for work. The Department for Education and Employment (DfEE) and the Department of Social Security (DSS) are jointly responsible for NDDP.
The NDDP pilot programme consisted of two main strands: A Personal Adviser Service (PAS) which provided job search and employment advice to disabled people; and a series of Innovative Schemes which tested out a wider range of approaches to helping disabled people move into or remain in work. The DSS was responsible for managing the evaluations on behalf of both DfEE & DSS.
Evaluation of the NDDP Innovative Schemes pilots
By Dione Hills, Camilla Child, Vicky Blackburn and Penny Youll
The New Deal for Disabled People (NDDP) - Innovative Schemes project was set up in late 1998 to identify and test different approaches to helping disabled people move into or remain in work. Twenty-four schemes were commissioned over a two-year period, representing a wide range of different approaches.
The design of the evaluation is qualitative and included a two-stage visit to every scheme, analysis of documentary material, case studies of a small selection of schemes and emerging issues, and secondary analysis of monitoring data. An interim report was published in December 1999.
The report covers a range of topics including: description of Schemes; management and partnerships; scheme activities; learning about and working with clients; working with employers; evaluating success and sustaining and replicating schemes.
Service delivery
Activities:
- During the course of the evaluation a pathway model was developed which identified the need for schemes to undertake mediating, mobilising and job-matching activities. Schemes needed to provide clients with a smooth ‘pathway’ from the scheme to employment. To do this schemes often had to fill gaps in service provision. Schemes offered a range of activities including recruitment, marketing of activities to potential referrers and employers, assessment of clients whole situation, including work readiness and planning a programme of activities and services, and helping to identify suitable employment opportunities for scheme clients.
Partnerships:
- Partnerships were an important source of additional resources, advice and credibility in new areas. They also helped to ensure that existing services were ‘joined up’. They were set up to compliment the experience and networks of schemes lead organisations. Partner organisations often had very different agendas and priorities, which were mediated and managed through steering and advisory groups, or on a one-to-one basis.
Specialisation:
- The role of frontline staff emerged as crucial in building trust with clients, as well as delivering training, providing individual support for clients and ensuring they underwent a smooth ‘pathway’ into employment. The majority of staff worked ‘generically’ with clients. Where specialist skills were required, staff were recruited or seconded from other agencies to meet skill requirements. Staff recruited from ES brought valuable knowledge about the benefits system and facilitated links with the service.
Funding:
- Schemes found it difficult to predict and set appropriate targets for supporting clients into work. Difficulties arose when schemes had little prior experience of working with the client group, or where it took a long time for client interventions to be effective, for example with ‘difficult’ client groups such as mental health, learning difficulties, and brain injury.
Clients
- Schemes between them covered work with a whole range of eligible clients. Some targeted those who were more job-ready and thus easier to place, however others targeted those who were some distance from the labour market. Clients with more complex needs tended to require a longer period of time to progress and also more attention and support. Some client groups could require specialised support (e.g. those with learning difficulties, mental health problems, and brain injuries).
- Clients appreciated the highly individualised approach provided by the schemes and the sense of progressing along a ‘pathway’ towards employment. The work focus established by schemes was welcomed, however intermediary benefits like social gains were also highly valued.
Employers
- Schemes worked directly with employers to achieve job-outcomes, raise awareness and include them as partners in the scheme. Scheme staff learnt about treating employers as clients or customers. This involved using employer’s ‘language’ and responding to their individual business needs. Employers found that their fears about employing disabled people diminished after involvement with schemes.
- The approach to engaging employers varied according to individual employers’ willingness to become involved with schemes. Three ‘types’ of employers were identified
- 'closed’ employers – these had limited understanding of disability issues and were un-willing to engage.
- 'open to change' employers – these understood disability issues and viewed disabled people as employable.
- “engaged’ employers – these were committed to strategic change, and often contributed time, money and knowledge to the schemes.
Factors associated with success
- Of the most successful Innovative Schemes, the main factors, which influenced job placement, were:
- Comprehensive pathways being established from the point of entry into the scheme through to employment;
- Employment opportunities being integral to the scheme i.e. there was a job to go to; and
- Carefully targeting opportunities in the local labour market where there were skills gaps or labour shortages.
- Schemes which appeared less successful were:
- Less selective in terms of job readiness.
- Working with a client group with complex needs;
- Having long start up times due to lack of experience in the field; having to build up a referral and employer networks and having weaker partnerships;
- Working over multiple sites which necessitated a spread of resources;
- Showing weaknesses in the client pathway – primarily at the transition from scheme to work which in turn related to poorer links with employers.
Evaluation of the New Deal for Disabled People Personal Adviser Service pilots
By Julia Loumidis, Bruce Stafford, Rachel Youngs, Anne Green, Sue Arthur, Robin Legard, Carli Lessof, Jane Lewis, Robert Walker, Anne Corden, Patricia Thornton and Roy Sainsbury
The New Deal for Disabled People Personal Adviser Service pilot began in six areas administered by the Employment Service in September 1998 and in another six areas under contract to private, public and voluntary sector partnerships in April 1999. The Personal Adviser Service aims both to assist disabled people and those with a long-standing illness who want to work to do so, and to help those who are already in work to retain their employment. Through local partnership, the Personal Adviser Service also seeks to promote the abilities of disabled people and to extend the range of services available to them.
The research consists of large-scale telephone and interview surveys of both participants and non-participants, together with a large programme of qualitative research including in-depth interviews with clients, personal advisers, service managers, occupational psychologists, employers and representatives of partner organisations. In addition, this report draws upon analyses of the local labour markets in the pilot areas, and makes comparisons with, a national survey of people who had been recipients of incapacity-related benefits during the pilot period. An interim report was published in December 1999.
The report covers a range of topics including: organisation and management; service delivery; engagement of client group; client experience; client outcomes; employer experience; services for job retention; and lessons to be drawn.
Take up
- At the end of the survey fieldwork the take up of the pilot service was relatively low. At the end of June 2000, three per cent of the eligible client group had responded to the invitation letter issues by the Benefits Agency directly (approximately 6,800 people). A similar number of people were referred to the pilot service by other organisations or got in touch themselves.
- The main reason respondents contacted the Personal Adviser Service was to receive help to move into work. The in-depth interviews also show that getting information and advice about benefits and tax credits was sometimes why clients contacted the pilot service. Being too ill was the main reason given by non-participants for not getting in touch with the pilot service.
Service delivery
Activities:
- The evidence is clear that both Employment Service and contract pilots effectively established a Personal Adviser Service. Similarities between the two types of pilots were more marked than the differences.
- Pilots assisted clients with a range of activities including: confidence building courses, vocational and educational training, interview preparation, work experience and in-work support. In most of the pilots, Personal Advisers could refer clients to an Occupational Psychologist who administered psychometric tests, and cognitive and behavioural assessments, and provided professional support to the service more generally.
Partnerships:
- Establishing effective partnerships required a considerable investment of time and energy. Partnership working developed in a number of ways with a tendency to move towards a smaller number of active partner organisations. Few pilots were able to establish effective partnerships with representatives of health services, and this is an area for further development. Effective partnerships were built upon; shared aims and a clear understanding of roles, commitment to partnership working and collaboration, effective communication and management, and involvement of key individuals and decision-makers.
Specialisation:
- The predominant model, particularly in the early stages, was for PAS pilots to adopt a holistic and personalised approach. Over time there was a greater trend towards specialisation, partly in response to the wide range of client and employer needs, but also in response to the greater emphasis on outcomes. Types of specialisation included: specialisation by “function”, with staff specialising in different stages in the process; and specialisation by “client group”, with staff focusing on work with employers, or with clients with different types of disabilities. Staff seconded from partner organisations were often a useful source of specialist advice.
Funding:
- The availability of the Intervention Fund was helpful to Personal Advisers in ensuring an innovative and responsive service to clients and employers.
- Some concern was expressed that the focus on employment outcomes had led to a reduction in the range of assistance given to those clients further from the labour market, and a reduction in in-work support
Clients
- NDDP is generally reaching clients who are closer to the labour market. For example, participants in PAS tend to be younger, better qualified, less severely disabled, have spent less time on benefits and have better access to transport than non-participants. Nevertheless, the pilots have worked with, and achieved positive outcomes for, people who are quite severely disabled. There were a large number of clients with mental health problems or who were some distance from the labour market.
- As pilots became more outcome focused, personal advisers had become more selective in who was accepted onto the caseload. Clients requiring longer–term help were more likely to be referred to an external agency.
- Clients were heterogeneous in their characteristics, needs and motivations. They could be categorised into six broad categories: (i) those who had identified a job and perceived few problems; (ii) those who had identified a job but had concerns associated with their impairment health; (iii) those actively seeking work but finding few suitable jobs; (iv) those seeking training or education, and hoping for funding; (v) those perceiving significant barriers to work; and (vi) those who appeared a long way from the labour market.
- Overall clients were generally satisfied with the help received from the Personal Adviser Service. For example over four-fifths said that their adviser had listened to and understood what they said (84%) and were happy with the time spent with their adviser (84%), and about three quarters were pleased with the pace that things were moving (74%). However, two fifths (41%) felt that the service had been able to offer them the help and support they needed, although an additional 26% judged it too early to say.
- While clients welcomed the personalised approach, they did not always experience the Service as seamless.
- Accurate and timely information and advice about benefits, tax credits and financial support for moving into work could be critical in decisions made about working.
Employers
- Employers were heterogeneous in their experience of employing disabled people and in their needs from the Personal Adviser Service. Employers’ approaches to employing disabled people fell into two distinct groups: those who were already actively committed to employing disabled people and those who were not. The former group included large public and private sector organisations that had in place a number of systems and structures to support the employment of disabled people. Employers who were not actively committed included smaller public and private sector organisations with little experience of working with disabled people, and little knowledge of the type of adaptations or support that would make a post accessible to them.
- Personal Advisers’ work with employers fell into four distinct categories: (i) assessment and preparation of both client and employer prior to a post or work placement; (ii) access to wage subsidies and placement payments; (iii) facilitating adaptations to the workplace environment and other financial support to help the client to undertake the post or placement; and (iv) in-work support to clients and employers.
- Employers who had some direct involvement were not fully aware of the full breadth of support available from Personal Advisers.
Publication details:
Hills, D. Child, C. Blackburn, V. and Youll, P (2001) “Evaluation of the New Deal for Disabled People Innovative Schemes pilots ”(DSS Research Report No 143) Leeds, CDS (£36.00)
Loumidis, J. et al (2001) “Evaluation of the New Deal for Disabled People Personal Adviser Service pilots ”(DSS Research Report No 144) Leeds, CDS (£44.00)
Relevant publications:
New Deal for Disabled People:
Arthur S. at al (1999) “New Deal for Disabled People: Early Implementation” (Department of Social Security Research Report No 106), Leeds:CDS
Blackburn et al (1999) “New Deal for Disabled People: Early Findings from the Innovative Schemes” DSS In-house report No 61
Green, A. Owen, D. Hasluck, C. (2001) “New Deal for Disabled People Local Labour Market Studies ”DSS In-house report No 79
Corden, A. Sainsbury, R. (2001) “Incapacity Benefits and Work Incentives” (Department of Social Security Research Report No 141), Leeds:CDS
Other:
E Grundy, D Ahlburg, M Ali, E Breeze & A Sloggett (1999) “Disability in Great Britain: Results of the 1996/1997 Disability Follow-Up to the Family Resources Survey”
(Department of Social Security Research Report No.94), Leeds:CDS
R Dorsett, L Finlayson, R Ford, A Marsh, M White and G Zarb (1998) “Leaving Incapacity Benefit” (Department of Social Security Research Report No.86), Leeds:CDS
G Zarb, N Jackson & P Taylor (1996) “Helping Disabled Workers ”(Department of Social Security Research Report No.57), London: TSO
K Rowlingson & R Berthoud (1996) “Disability, Benefits and Employment ”(Department of Social Security Research Report No.54), London: TSO
R Sainsbury, M Hirst & D Lawton (1995) “Evaluation of Disability Living Allowance and Attendance Allowance ”(Department of Social Security Research Report No.41), London: HMSO.
A Hedges & A Thomas (1994) “Making a Claim for Disability Benefits” (Department of Social Security Research Report No.27), London: HMSO
B Erens & D Ghate (1993) “Invalidity Benefit. A longitudinal survey of new recipients ”(Department of Social Security Research Report No.20), London: HMSO
S Lonsdale, C Lessof & G Ferris (1993) “Invalidity Benefit. A survey of recipients ”(Department of Social Security Research Report No.19), London: HMSO