|
Talking of programs, how many of the programs which are being run in the States, to help people improve their circumstances, are run by private organisations, and how many of them are badly run and/or badly conceived (usually in the wake of some knee-jerk political reaction to bad unemployment figures) ?
In the UK, there are some good programs to help people get back into work and some good routes back into the workforce, with help from trained advisors...
Then there are the rest of the programs, which are appalling. They rake in our tax money in contracts, and deliver badly conceived and badly run courses/sessions, with untrained/undertrained, badly paid and disillusioned staff. The attitude of many people working within the system towards their clients is, frankly, shocking.
Out of the dozen or so Basic Employability Training courses (literacy, numeracy, life-skills and job search skills) operating in this area, before the goal posts changed and drove everyone ot of business, the one I worked at was pretty chaotic. We operated on a shoe string, in classrooms held together with sticking plaster and good will. With bookcases we'd filled with books we'd all bought or borrowed and learning materials we'd designed and made (along with the standard curriculum stuff, which just repeats the kind of learning that put these people off school in the first place).
In order to buy ourselves time to tackle the mountain of paperwork, we'd end up letting them sit there working through their glossy DfES workbooks, ticking off the sections they'd *coughs* 'mastered'. We did this for maybe two afternoons a week. I always felt really shit about it. particularly for those who were at the lowest ability levels, because they couldn't even do the workbooks. Wordsearches and picture books.
We were known to be the best in the area. There was almost universal shock in the field locally, when our company wasn't successful in its bid under the new system. Other companies just left them doing word searches for weeks at a time. They taught them nothing, and treated them like children: authoritarian and humiliating.
In job search, we coached them in interviewing, letter writing, helped them with CVs, coached them in phone techniques, and sat with them (sometimes) when they made phone calls. We telecanvassed local employers to try and get them to take on our clients on a 'Job Trial' thereby protecting their benefits if the job went drastically wrong, I went to an interview with someone, to a local superstore that used to take on learning disabled workers on Job Trials and often employed them at the end. Those jobs did not go on our figures until they'd been employed there for at least 2 months.
Other companies, I know, were putting jobs on their books, when they'd got someone a day's work, or a week in one of the local packing plants. How does that help someone who has been unable to form regular patterns of work?
Just because a program claims to be helping doesn't mean it actually is.
|