JESUIT SOCIAL SERVICES RESPONSE:
Victorian Government’s Employment Programs Review: Background Paper
October 2015
For further information contact:
Sally Parnell, A/CEO, Jesuit Social Services Tel: 9421-7600
Jesuit Social Services
Jesuit Social Services welcomes the opportunity to respond to the Victorian Government’s Employment Programs Review Background Paper. We commend the government’s focus on the employment needs of vulnerable and disadvantage Victorians. Jesuit Social Services has been a longstanding advocate for people with complex needs who are highly vulnerable in society. For over 37 years, we have accompanied people who are disengaged from education, training and work. By working in solidarity with people who are in need, Jesuit Social Services strives to build a just society where the dignity of all people is respected and the common good is pursued.
In particular, our Jesuit Community College, our Ignite Social Enterprise, our African Australian Inclusion Program in partnership with National Australia Bank (NAB) and our Workplace Inclusion Program all work directly with people disengaged from education and employment. These programs are highly successful at re-engaging vulnerable groups, supporting them through alternative pathways into education. These practical programs provide support for people to learn, train and take up employment opportunities. Our work is grounded in years of experience working with people involved in the justice system, culturally and linguistic diverse communities, refugees and asylum seekers, young people with mental health issues and indigenous communities.
Our service delivery and advocacy focuses on the following key areas:
· Justice and crime prevention - for people involved with the criminal justice system
· Education, training and employment - for people with barriers to sustainable employment
· Mental health and wellbeing - for people with multiple and complex needs and those affected by trauma, suicide, and complex bereavement
· Settlement and community building - for recently arrived immigrants, refugees, displaced people and disadvantaged communities.
Our employment initiatives are described below. A full description of our programs in provided at Appendix 1.
· Jesuit Community College: The College is a Registered Training Organisation and Learn Local organisation. We assist people facing significant barriers to learning, providing real skills for life, learning and work.
· Artful Dodgers Studios: Part of Jesuit Community College providing pathways to education, training and employment for young people with multiple and complex needs associated with mental health, substance abuse and homelessness;
· African Australian Inclusion Program: A partnership between Jesuit Social Services and the National Australia Bank that provides paid work experience placements for people from African communities.
· Social enterprise Ignite Cafés: Our Ignite Cafes (located in Hawthorn and Camberwell) are 'living classrooms' where people gain on-the-job, real work experiences and certified training. Through our cafes participants can gain experience in both back-of-house and front-of-house hospitality services while completing accredited courses through Jesuit Community College.
· Workplace Inclusion program: A program of Jesuit Community College that partners directly with employers to provide tailored pre-placement training and entry level employment opportunities for people experiencing significant barriers to social and economic inclusion. Since its inception in 2013, the Workplace Inclusion Program has worked with over 30 employers and placed 43 participants in employment opportunities.
· Industry Employment Initiative: The Industry Employment Initiative (IEI) is developing and prototyping a demand-led employment model that can meet the entry-level recruitment
needs of national employers around the country while improving employment outcomes for long-term unemployed jobseekers who want to work. Through the IEI, Jesuit Community College is currently working with Coles Supermarkets to support 30 highly disadvantaged young people into entry level employment.
Overview of our submission
The Australian job market has become more competitive over the past few decades as the number of traditional entry-level jobs has shrunk and the demand for qualified, skilled and experienced workers has grown. Victoria’s unemployment rate is 6.2 per cent. Currently there are six unemployed people for every job vacancy. There is also a significant mismatch in many sectors between the needs of employers, and the skills and capacities of the people who are looking for work. In addition people are remaining unemployed for longer, with the number of long-term Newstart recipients in Australia increasing by 50% in the last three years.1
Table 1: Victorian employment trends2
Victoria / May 2013 / May 2014 / May 2015Unemployment rate / 5.8% / 6.5% / 6.2%
Underemployment rate / 8.1% / 8.3% / 8.8%
Youth unemployment rate / 10.4% / 13.9% / 14.2%
Workforce participation rate / 64.9% / 64.3% / 64.8%
Victorians who are already facing disadvantage, – such as Aboriginal people, people with disabilities, people in the justice system, vulnerable young people, people from culturally and linguistically diverse communities, and people from rural, regional, or socioeconomically disadvantaged communities – already have higher rates of unemployment, underemployment, or long-term unemployment, compared to other Victorians. As the job market gets tougher these people are the ones most likely to lose their jobs, and to have difficulty finding and sustaining work.
The high volume, low margin nature of Commonwealth employment services such as jobactive means that many disadvantaged people are not provided with the intensive, ongoing and meaningful support they need. The cost for people left out of the workforce can be immense. The longer a person is unemployed, the harder it is for them to move into work. Some will face extended reliance on income-support payments and other social services, suffer from poorer health, or become marginalised from their communities.
The current high levels of youth unemployment are of particular concern. A growing number of the next generation of young people faces being locked out of employment. This will have potentially disastrous consequences for these young people, the broader community and the economy.
1 Department of Social Services, Labour Market and Related Payments: a monthly profile, July 2014, and Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, Statistical Paper No. 10 Income support customers: a statistical overview, 2011.
2 Australian Bureau of Statistics, 6202.0 - Labour Force, Australia, Sep 2015,
http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/6202.0
Highly disadvantaged jobseekers, face considerable and multiple barriers that prevent them from entering the formal labour market. However employment initiatives are often funded on the basis of single outcomes. We believe that programs should be funded on a milestones based system. This approach would help to ensure that programs address the transitions and needs of disadvantaged groups at different stages along the pathway to reengagement in education and employment.
An effective approach to disadvantaged groups requires providing ongoing, intensive support to build people’s capabilities; pathways to meaningful participation – such as training, skills development, work experience and opportunities for participation in the community.
Jesuit Social Services calls for a coordinated strategy to address the employment-related needs of vulnerable and disadvantaged groups. Such a strategy will provide pathways to employment, improve their health and wellbeing and reduce reliance on other services. To do this we recommend a strategy based on six key planks:
• Intervene early, and intensively, to prevent long-term unemployment and disadvantage
• Building the skills and capabilities of vulnerable people (including job-readiness training, for jobseekers with limited previous work experience, such as young people, long-term unemployed, people in the justice system, refugees and migrants).
• Linking education and training to demand, including a focus on positions that offer the real prospect of ongoing employment.
• Fostering business and community partnerships, and support existing partnerships to deliver pathways to employment, including ongoing post-placement support
• Trial a whole-of-community approach to harness community-wide efforts to address unemployment in areas of socioeconomic disadvantage.
• Evaluate and measure the long-term outcomes of employment-related programs to better understand the most effective models for vulnerable and disadvantaged groups.
This submission specifically addresses the Employment Programs Review questions 1-11 16- 17.
Commonwealth services work well for the mainstream majority
Commonwealth services cater well for a large proportion of the population who have a clearly defined set of skills and a clear sector they can target. However commonwealth services are high volume, compliance driven and provide short, sharp interventions that are not oriented to the type of intensive, holistic support that disadvantaged groups need to find and maintain employment. The narrow focus on employment outcomes fails to address the need for progress through participation for disadvantaged groups.
Where jobactive services are capable of placing a person in employment, often the employment position itself is problematic, often because the person is not well matched to the position, and therefore the job becomes unsustainable. In addition, too often the
training, and Work for the Dole activities take place without a clear pathway of how participants will move into work. There is also a lack of employer engagement in developing pathways into work.
Through our research and advocacy, Jesuit Social Services has consistently identified recurring systemic barriers to inclusion for the most disadvantaged learners and jobseekers in our community - these include:
· the churn of people through a range of ineffective programs or short term support
· limitations in the range of support offered to people who are clients of jobactive or mainstream training institutions
· insufficient recognition of the significant time and effort it takes to engage with and build trusting relationships with disadvantaged groups
· the lack of explicit pathways from training and learning programs into employment and participation
· the focus on compliance and meeting prescribed outcomes, which fails to address the needs of disadvantaged job seekers.
Barriers to employment and job readiness
Each group can face unique barriers to employment based on their circumstances, however there are also be number of shared and overlapping factors across vulnerable groups that can pose a barrier to a person being ‘job ready’, these include:
· Individual factors - such as self-esteem and confidence issues, limited self-efficacy in relation to a particular occupation, limited English language ability, poor literacy and numeracy, low occupational skill levels or personal difficulties such as poor mental health or physical health or substance abuse issues.
· Life circumstances - such as homelessness, family violence, restrictions related to justice orders, lack of access to transport, complex financial situations, excessive debt and poverty, uncertain visa status or limited understanding of the job market and the Australian workplace culture.
Participants that need specialised support
We work with people involved in the criminal justice and child protection systems and are aware of the specific challenges faced by these people. This includes those people involved in or exiting the justice system and young people leaving protective care. Young people in our Youth Justice Community Support Service (YJCSS) are often disengaged from education at an early age, have lower-level cognitive functioning, have lived a transient lifestyle and are often institutionalised. Often these young people have had traumatic backgrounds and have not yet transitioned to a point where they have sufficient confidence and capacity to step into a workplace. This is further compounded by homelessness or living in home environments where there is ongoing family violence or a history of inter-generational unemployment.
This group of young people have in their formative years often experienced dysfunction, criminogenic behaviours and abuse, trauma and neglect. Supporting YJCSS participants into the work-force requires an approach appropriate to their life stage and individual experiences with the recognition that there will be set-backs. In addition employers need to have an understanding of how they can support the young person to manage and retain work.
Attention should be paid to the specific issues for people from culturally and linguistically diverse groups, including recently arrived migrants and asylum seekers, for whom language and isolation presents a barrier to employment. Often people in these groups may not be
eligible for Centrelink benefits or the assistance of jobactive because of their visa status. They may have work rights but not necessarily access to Centrelink and jobactive. They are also not eligible for training. Other groups that require targeted approaches include Aboriginal Australians, single parents, women experiencing domestic violence, early school leavers; and long-term unemployed.
Finally we are aware that there are a significant number of people who do not fall easily into the above categories. Often they are hard to reach and hard to engage. Their personal circumstances may be particularly complex, or they may be reluctant to engage with services. These factors can prevent them from either applying for or being eligible for Centrelink payments. This can also include people with disabilities that fall below the official eligibility level of disability required for disability support, or who have disabilities that they may not want to disclose. Often there may be untreated anxiety and depression issues and considerable backgrounds of trauma.
Recommended actions:
16) Services to help disadvantaged groups into employment need to be able to support their broader needs and the non-vocational barriers to social and economic inclusion. This should involve a tailored, flexible approach that addresses the needs of each individual and encourages pursuing education and eventual employment.
17) Promoting participation for the most disadvantaged requires holistic and ongoing support that is relationship-based, directed towards building capabilities over time, and provides clear pathways into learning and work.
18) Engagement activities in local areas needs to be funded for hard-to-reach groups, including for those that do not fit neatly into a category of disadvantage.
The following describes some of types of services we believe are required so that disadvantaged groups can build their capacity and be effectively supported into sustainable employment.
Services designed around milestones rather than single outcomes
Employment initiatives are often funded on the basis of single outcomes. However for some highly disadvantaged jobseekers, the barriers they face mean that they are some distance from entering the formal labour market. Programs that support people to transition on to further opportunities are more likely to see long-term reengagement in the education system or positive employment outcomes.
We believe that programs should be funded on a milestones based system. Funding providers based on milestones would potentially provide an impetus to deliver this type of support. Under such a milestone based system, outcomes would be remodelled to reward engagement and participation in activities recognised as essential to prevocational pathways, commencement and completion of training, participation in work tasters or work experience, through to employment outcomes.