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Section 5: The Workforce Plus Action Plan
This Plan sets out actions for national and local partnerships. It is only the start of a process which will develop as partnerships share their knowledge and experience of what is needed to achieve an effective and coherent employability service across Scotland.
Workforce Plus will support action at national and local levels to increase the numbers of people in sustained employment; in particular reducing the numbers dependent on Department for Work and Pensions ( DWP) benefits in seven priority areas by 30,000 by 2007; and 66,000 by 2010.
To deliver this objective, Workforce Plus will support the development of effective programmes in the public, private and voluntary sectors.
National Action
In support of this objective, we will establish a National Workforce Plus Partnership to co-ordinate and prioritise actions across policy areas and programmes. The partnership will consist of the members set out in Section 4, and be jointly chaired by the Scottish Executive and Jobcentre Plus in Scotland
The National Partnership's tasks in its first year will be to:
- Lead the development of partnership working by NHSScotland, Jobcentre Plus and others to deliver the health-related aspects of this Framework and UK welfare reform policy.
- Maximise value for money and job outcomes by reviewing and aligning training and education budgets and responsibilities where necessary, and also in response to employers' needs, particularly in relation to the development of soft skills.
- Agree and implement action to engage more employers - both private and public - in Workforce Plus. This will include an action plan to drive forward the role of the public sector as an employer
and procurer of services, building on the Partnership Accord between DWP, the Executive and COSLA. - Support the local, joined up delivery of employability services, providing leadership and the facility for service development, and build their capacity of services. Examples of this will include the commissioning guidance for employability services for mental health clients, and starting to develop the capacity of services for people with learning disabilities.
- Develop more detailed plans for aligning Workforce Plus with the Executive's policies for regeneration, community learning, community justice and volunteering.
Local Action
We will prioritise the Closing the Opportunity Gap target areas with additional funding of £5.6 million in each year for 2006-07 and 2007-08, to review, plan and implement the collaborative improvements in Section 4. The funding will be managed through Community Planning Partnerships alongside the Community Regeneration Fund and the ROA process, and will be available for use across the CPP area.
These partnerships will also be invited to pilot an information and brokerage service for local employers, to complement the services of, and in partnership with, Jobcentre Plus. This will test whether there is demand for employers for such a service and if it can address some employers' criticisms of an uncoordinated approach by local agencies. A key criterion for success of such a service will be maintaining and improving on the number of people locally moving into sustained employment, which will be monitored by the Workforce Plus Team.
Developing learning and sharing knowledge about employability
We will set up a central Workforce Plus Team to promote and support the development of employability services across Scotland. The Team's main functions will be to:
- Account for the use of additional funding to deliver the worklessness targets in the Closing the Opportunity Gap areas
- Support the development of effective partnership working between agencies across Scotland
- Develop and disseminate national models for client assessment, referral protocols and tracking mechanisms
- Ensure that employability is reflected as a priority in the Executive's policies and policy making processes, including the actions set out in Section 1 of this Framework
- Develop provision to support local areas in training and development to improve the skills of frontline staff, and the capacity of organisations and employers, to manage employability services
- Develop and disseminate a body of evidence identifying effective and ineffective practice in employability
- Monitor and evaluate the success and impact of Workforce Plus, based on
- The headline targets for Closing the Opportunity Gap
- Delivery of this Action Plan
- Bringing together consistent data, developing data for particular client groups, and taking an overview of local partnership evaluations.
The team will need elements from within the Executive as well as outside expertise and elements of external scrutiny. We will develop a more detailed business plan for the Team, including elements of work to be carried out in house and contracted out, by autumn 2006.
Responsibility and review
The Scottish Executive will be responsible for Workforce Plus, working closely with the Department for Work and Pensions and Jobcentre Plus. Within the Executive, the Cabinet Delivery Group on Closing the Opportunity Gap will have overall responsibility for the Framework, with the Enterprise and Lifelong Learning Ministers in the lead. The lead in each local Workforce Plus partnership will be decided locally, but within the Community Planning framework. CPPs will be responsible for accounting for the additional resources from the Community Regeneration Fund.
We will review Workforce Plus as we assess progress towards the first part of out targets, by the end of 2007. This review will take into account the proposed enquiry into employability by the Scottish Parliament's Enterprise and Culture Committee.
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