A year on – has the Plan for Jobs worked?
Published Date: 16 Aug 2021
One year ago, I wrote about the potential threat to deaf young people from the pandemic on their employment opportunities. 12 months later, what is the situation?
The impact of the pandemic on employment rates has not been as bad as was initially feared. The furlough scheme helped to protect jobs and the economy has rebounded strongly. Youth unemployment did however rise and many young people opted to stay in education this past year rather than try and find a job in difficult economic circumstances. Long-term unemployment amongst 16-24 year olds is sadly now double what it was before the pandemic.
We are a member of Youth Employment Group, a coalition of over 200 youth focused organisations and we were keen to work with other members to make sure that the Government’s Plan for Jobs was going benefit to disabled young people, particularly its Kickstart scheme for young people. We came up with a set of recommendations but did the Government actually implement any of them?
Well, as ever with policy work, you win some and you lose some!
There are some positives:
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A large increase in Disability Employment Advisors was announced earlier this year. These are people who work in Jobcentres that can provide disabled people with more specialist job searching support.
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The Government assured us that people applying to Access to Work for the first time would be prioritised – this would benefit young people taking up Kickstart opportunities.
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We and a deaf young person got to meet with the Minister for Disabled People, Justin Tomlinson in March to discuss our recommendations.
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After months of requesting one, an equality impact assessment was finally published for Kickstart this summer. There is also a commitment to evaluating the experiences of disabled people participating in the Kickstart scheme.
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Guidance for employers on Kickstart references the Disability Confident scheme.
However, there have been some frustrations:
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There has not yet been any action on supported internships . This has been kicked further down the road with the Government saying they will look at strengthening the schemes within their review of SEND provision in England.
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The Government does not appear to be able to monitor the total numbers of disabled young people accessing Kickstart which will make it hard to evaluate how accessible the scheme has been for disabled young people.
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Kickstart is still only available to young people claiming Universal Credit. Many deaf young people do not have this benefit and are excluded from the scheme. Government suggested they might be able to widen the scheme to more young people but have not yet done so.
This work hasn’t stopped. Despite the rebound, the economy is still 5% smaller than before the pandemic and there are worries that the job market will be challenging for young people over the next year. We are still collaborating with other organisations in the Youth Employment Group to lobby the Government to improve the support deaf and disabled young people get to make the journey from education to employment. For example, the Government has a consultation out on Disability and Health and as part of this, they are asking what support disabled young people need to successfully move into work. We are keen to involve deaf and disabled young people in this consultation. To get involved with this please contact [email protected]
Has the Plan for Jobs helped you/your child? If you are deaf young person looking for work at the moment we’d be interested in hearing about your experiences. Email [email protected] or if you feel you would like advice or support contact our helpline: www.ndcs.org.uk/helpline
