Get emergency foodPeople facing hunger and hardship overwhelmingly want opportunities to work, but are often locked out through a combination of poor health, caring responsibilities, financial insecurity, a lack of suitable job opportunities, and employment support that is not designed around their needs.
Today we have released new research with the Institute for Employment Studies, exploring the features of effective employment support for people with more complex barriers to work. It is based on a series of interviews and workshops, hearing from employment support experts; food banks; parents; young people; carers and disabled people with lived experience of needing a food bank.
It comes at a critical moment, as the UK Government undertakes significant reforms to employment support. We’re seeing a patchwork of new pilots and programmes emerging, testing more tailored, voluntary and specialist support, along with plans for further devolution. Our findings strongly align with this direction of travel.
For example, both food banks and people with lived experience argued strongly that the punitive approach to conditionality has been counterproductive. Requirements to attend Jobcentre appointments and search for work are generally insufficiently tailored to people’s circumstances, and engagement with the Jobcentre is focused on compliance rather than supporting people to make sustainable progress towards work. Food banks reported frequently seeing people forced into crisis as a direct consequence of sanctions which reduce or stop people’s social security payments for days or weeks.
We welcome government acknowledgement that these rigid approaches have failed and strongly encourage the shift towards more personalised and flexible programmes that focus on sustainable progress into work. To support this, the priority must be increasing voluntary engagement with support that is responsive to people’s circumstances, and ensuring sanctions only ever feature as a very final backstop when barriers to engagement have been understood, support and flexibility have been offered and reasonable adjustments have been made.
We have also identified where the government needs to go further to ensure its investment in employment support programmes successfully engage people with more complex barriers to work.
Hunger and hardship increase stress, create long-term damage and new barriers to overcome, and hold people back. We found that ensuring people can afford the essentials is crucial for enabling effective engagement with employment support and breaking down barriers to work. This is why we’re calling on the UK government to take further steps towards an Essentials Guarantee for Universal Credit – a protected minimum level of support that at least covers life’s essentials – and to protect financial support for disabled people.
We also found that employment support cannot be separated from wider issues that people need help with such as mental health problems, housing, debt, caring responsibilities, language barriers, and financial insecurity. Effective support was described as addressing the whole person, recognising that many people are not immediately job-ready and require a period of confidence-building, financial stabilisation, skills development, or specialist support before they are ready to engage with the labour market.
We heard from food banks playing key roles in people’s journeys into work, including supporting people who are furthest from employment. Staff described how trusted community settings, holistic support integrated with advice and wider services and volunteering opportunities help people address barriers, build confidence, and take gradual steps towards employment. These approaches were often viewed as more engaging and accessible than widespread employment support delivered through statutory services alone.
This tells us that schemes for people experiencing hardship, or with more complex barriers to work, would benefit from much deeper connections with wider services, including advice, community spaces and crisis support. Greater local flexibility and stronger partnerships between services would enable more holistic, accessible and effective support. Delivery within existing community hubs would help to overcome trust barriers, as well as increasing touchpoints and supporting outreach to people currently receiving little or no support with employment from the Jobcentre.
Over the coming weeks and months Trussell are therefore going to be further exploring the merits and practicalities of integrating employment support with wider local support services and community organisations, including health and wellbeing, housing, language, debt advice, income maximization, and crisis support services. If you’d like to hear more or discuss our emerging policy development in this space, please do get in contact.
If the government is serious about ensuring everyone has the opportunity to access the ‘purpose and dignity’ of good employment, then they need to acknowledge the barriers created by being unable to afford the essentials and prioritise support that addresses the many impacts of financial hardship.