Keeping Work:
supporting homeless people to
sustain employment
Juliette Hough and Amy Webb
Broadway
28 March 2012
Workshop outline
Practice
• Broadway’s approach to building confidence and emotional
resilience to sustain work.
Research
• What we know through existing research.
• Broadway’s Keeping Work research – what it is and what it tells us
(so far) about what might help homeless people to sustain work.
Practice
• Discussion of the implications of the early research findings for our
practice.
The Broadway Employment
Academy Model
• ‘The Employability Challenge’ (UKCES 2009) that
defined employability skills as the ‘skills almost everyone
needs to do almost any job’.
• The Employment Academy delivery model references
the model provided in the UK Commission for
Employment and Skills report.
• Skills that ‘everyone needs to do any job’.
Positive Approach
A person should demonstrate:
• a foundation of Positive Approach: being ready to
participate, make suggestions, accept new ideas and
constructive criticism, and take responsibility for
outcomes.
Functional Skills
This foundation supports three Functional
Skills:
• using numbers effectively – measuring, recording measurements,
calculating, estimating quantities, relating numbers to the job.
• using language effectively – writing clearly, and in a way appropriate
to the context, ordering facts and concepts logically.
• using IT effectively – operating a computer, both using basic
systems and also learning other applications as necessary, and
using telephones and other technology to communicate.
Personal Skills
These functional skills are exercised in the context of
four Personal Skills:
• self-management – punctuality and time management, fitting dress
and behaviour to context, overcoming challenges and asking for
help when necessary.
• thinking and solving problems – creativity, reflecting on and learning
from own actions, prioritising, analysing situations, and developing
solutions.
• working together and communicating – co-operating, being
assertive, persuading, being responsible to others, speaking clearly
to individuals and groups and listening for a response.
• understanding the business – understanding how the individual jobs
fits into the organisation as a whole; recognising the needs of
stakeholders (customers and service users); judging risks,
innovating, and contributing to the whole organisation.
How it Fits Together
Impact on Practice
• Clients are better able to define in clear terms their
employability needs.
• Workers are better able to target key areas for
development pre-work and in-work.
• Skills Development Workshops are not generic
employability programmes.
• Mentoring support can be targeted on specific personal
development goals for effective in-work support.
How Broadway is developing
our in-work strategy
We are aiming to:
• Build an evidence base – accurate tracking of employment
sustainment for client.
• Stay relevant to clients in work – what is the offer, why stay in
touch?
• Continue to participate in the ‘Keeping Work’ research – support
clients engaged in project, review findings and implement
recommendations.
• Share Good Practice – what works best, who has what?
• Ensure Client Feedback develops service delivery – if it doesn’t
work, don’t keep it.
Keeping Work – the research
Keeping Work – the research
• A qualitative longitudinal research project which aims to
identify what helps homeless people keep work.
• Funded by Trust for London and (subject to contracting)
Department for Work and Pensions.
• Involves Broadway, Business Action on Homelessness
(our partners), Crisis, SHP, St Mungo’s, Thames
Reach…
• …and CDG, Seetec, Homeless Link, York University,
Department for Communities and Local Government.
Why do we need this research?
• Many homeless people struggle to sustain work.
– Only one third of a specialist provider’s homeless clients who
enter work are still in work six months later.
• We don’t know what works in supporting people to
sustain work.
• Little resources are available to support people to
sustain work.
• The policy environment is changing, and there is a new
emphasis on entering and sustaining work.
– The Government and Prime Contractors need good research to
inform them.
– Specialist providers need good research to inform our work,
demonstrate our value and attract funding.
In the words of one of our clients…
“There’s loads of money being spent getting people into
work and there is nothing being spent getting them over
the threshold… it’s like a bride getting married and you
can imagine all the effort that goes into the wedding but
when she walks up the aisle and there is no husband
there, well then, all the money and effort hasn’t been
worth it.”
(from Business Action on Homelessness and the New Economics Foundation)
The current policy environment
• The Work Programme: prime contractors are paid to
keep people in work.
– How can this be done?
– What role should specialist agencies have?
• Universal Credit (coming in 2013)
– How does the benefits system help / hinder people to stay in
work?
– How could Universal Credit improve things?
• Unemployment is increasing
– How does this effect our clients and the support they need?
Research – what’s already out
there?
• Sustainable employment: supporting people to stay in
work and advance by the National Audit Office.
• Making Work Work and Work it Out by Business Action
on Homelessness and the New Economics Foundation.
• Emotional resilience and productivity of the working age
population by Business in the Community and vielife.
• Work Matters, by St Mungo’s and Demos.
• A number of publications by Off the Streets and Into
Work.
The existing research - common
characteristics
Existing research
Focus
Barriers to entering
work
Methods
Surveys or one-off
interviews
Sample
characteristics
Not in work
Sample size
Small
Sample breadth One provider’s clients
Perspective
Policy campaigning /
service provision
How Keeping Work is different
Existing research
Keeping Work research
Focus
Barriers to entering
work
Facilitators to sustaining
work
Methods
Surveys or one-off
interviews
Qualitative and longitudinal:
5 interviews over one year
Sample
characteristics
Not in work
In work
Sample size
Small
60
Sample breadth One provider’s clients
6 providers and 2 prime
contractors
Perspective
Holistic, individual
Policy campaigning /
service provision
Research aims
• To identify why a large proportion of homeless people fall
out of work.
• To identify what helps homeless people keep the jobs
they start.
• To influence policy and practice to ensure that more
homeless people are able to sustain work.
What the existing research tells us:
Barriers to sustaining work
• Casual, temporary and part-time contracts
• The benefits system
– Does work pay?
– Accruing arrears
• Inappropriate accommodation
– High rents ( arrears)
– Noise
– Discouragement from peers
What the existing research tells us:
Barriers to sustaining work (2)
• Poor support
– Discouragement from staff to work
– Lack of knowledge about in-work benefits
• Support needs
– Lack of in-work support
– Low emotional resilience
– Re-emergence of drug, alcohol or mental health issues
Existing research
recommendations
• Provide in-work support:
– Site visits, mediation, debt counselling, problem solving.
• Provide personalised, flexible pre-employment coaching (with joint
working between providers).
• Make work pay: pay incentives, wage supplements or London living
wage.
• Job Centre Plus should proactively offer in-work benefits.
• Speed up rapid reclaim process for benefits.
• Regulate temporary work / pay incentives to employers to provide
longer term / permanent work.
• Provide appropriate accommodation (though moving on soon after
starting work can be very destabilising).
• Provide opportunities for progression.
Keeping Work: our progress
• In-depth interviews conducted with 9 homeless people
who are about to start / have just started work.
– Through Beyond Food, Broadway, Business Action on
Homelessness, Crisis, St Mungo’s
– 6 through specialist schemes
– 1 has already fallen out of work
What does the Keeping Work
research tell us?
Very early findings
Motivations to work
• Almost everyone wanted to work.
• People are willing to work for very little money (eg.
£12.5k).
• Work can provide:
–
–
–
–
A sense of purpose
A meaningful, structured way of spending time
A positive sense of identity and social status
As well as money
Q: Are the jobs that people commonly enter enough to
provide these things?
Q: Will these motivations change over time?
A model of sustained employment?
Any job
Better job
Career
(from Business Action on Homelessness)
• Some of our interviewees were going into ‘any job’,
others into a ‘better job’ (on their chosen career path).
• ‘Any job’ can provide a sense of purpose and increase
self-confidence.
• But entering ‘any job’ can narrow other opportunities.
Q: When should people enter ‘any job’ and when should
they aim for a ‘better job’ instead?
Settling in and emerging problems
• Before starting work people tended to be very positive,
excited and sometimes anxious.
• Soon after starting work, people tended to remain
positive and excited.
• We have conducted one second interview (2 months in):
difficulties are becoming more apparent.
Q: Could this positive attitude mean that problems might
be hidden from support providers early on? Might they
emerge once support has been disengaged from?
Moving off benefits
• Almost everyone was confused about what starting work
would mean financially.
• One person had already built up arrears.
• People were making financial decisions (eg. how many
hours to work, what salary to accept) based on
incomplete / inaccurate information.
• Often, staff were not knowledgeable enough about inwork benefits.
Q: How can we provide clear, accurate advice around
financial matters and benefits?
A lack of information – a lack of
control?
‘I got the job and she [my keyworker] said ‘Congratulations, come
on, let’s go and sign you off’. I said ‘no, wait wait wait’. They’re going
to owe me a week or a week and a bit [of benefits], so I don’t know
how it’s going to work […] God knows, I’m really a bit kind of up in
the air about that’.
– Sarah (40s)
• A number of people did not know: the financial
implications of working; what their job title was; when
they would start; what organisation they were working
for.
Q: How can we support people to be informed and in
control?
Emotional resilience
• Business Action on Homelessness research suggests
this is important.
• Many people displayed ‘emotional resilience’. They had
transformed their experiences of homelessness into
positive experiences which had helped them learn and
grow.
• Many people still had low self-esteem and praise was
important to them.
Q: How can we help people build emotional resilience?
Other emerging themes
• Adapting to a workplace culture – learning ‘unwritten
rules’.
• Managing substance, mental health and physical health
issues.
• Managing the demands of 9-5 (or shift) work.
• Moving on – some people are keen to, others feel under
pressure to.
So… what might help homeless
people sustain work?
• The research will provide more answers as it develops.
• Pre-work support:
– Clear and accurate financial / benefits information and advice
– Build emotional resilience
– Ensuring that the job entered has meaning to the individual.
• In-work support?
– Access to in-work support
– Quick identification of and management of arrears
– Further exploration needed…
• And we’ll be looking at Government policy, the benefits
system, and what employers can do.
Our website
•
•
•
•
Join our discussion forums.
Read blogs by homeless people starting new jobs.
Sign up to receive our research reports.
Follow links to other research about homelessness and
employment.
• Keep up to date with homelessness and employment
news.
www.keepingwork.org
Discussion
1. When should people enter ‘any job’ and when should they aim for a
‘better job’ instead?
2. Are some jobs more likely than others to provide a sense of
purpose and status? If so, which ones? How can homeless people
be supported to access these?
3. Could people’s positive attitudes when starting work mean that
problems might be hidden from support providers early on? Might
they emerge once support has been disengaged from? If so, what
does this mean for our practice?
4. What are your thoughts, comments and ideas about this research?
Contact us
Please contact us with ideas or questions:
Juliette.hough@broadwaylondon.org
Amy.webb@broadwaylondon.org