Parental Employment Support 2023-24
North Lanarkshire Council · 12 May 2023
Back to Enterprise and Fair Work Committee — 12 May 2023 and its agenda
Text extracted from the council's PDF. Layout and reading order may differ from the original.
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North Lanarkshire Council Report Enterprise and Fair Work Committee Does this report require to be approved? ☒ Yes ☐ No Ref JO’N/PK Date 12/05/23 Parental Employment Support 2023/24 From Janie O’Neill, Chief Officer (Education-South) E-mail oneillja@northlan.gov.uk Telephone Executive Summary The Scottish Government has indicated a significant increase in funding for parental employment support will be made available in 2023/24 as part of its measures to address child poverty. North Lanarkshire Council, in its role as Lead Accountable Body and as chair of the Local Employability Partnership, will have a key part to play in the delivery and design of employability programmes that utilise this funding. This expected increase in funding will complement and enhance existing strategies and programmes of work. The Scottish Government, in return for the increase in funding, expect an investment plan to be submitted and steps have already been taken to begin drafting proposals. Recommendations It is recommended that the Enterprise and Fair Work Committee: (1) Endorse the acceptance of increased funding for parental employment support; (2) Approve the development of a Parental Employment Investment Plan for 2023/24. The Plan for North Lanarkshire Priority Improve economic opportunities and outcomes Ambition statement (11) Increase economic opportunities for adults by understanding, identifying, and addressing the causes of poverty and deprivation and barriers to financial inclusion
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1. Background 1.1 Since March 2020, the Scottish Government has provided funding to local authority employability services, under its No One Left Behind policy, to support specific groups of unemployed and under employed parents into work as a contribution to the Council’s Child Poverty Action Plan. The Council designed and led Prospects for Parents, which offers a wraparound, individually tailored, support service to parents. Delivered with Routes to Work Ltd it works closely with the Council’s Tackling Poverty team and other public and third sector partners and has, until March 2023, supported 167 parents from specific target groups into work since April 2020 with direct costs of £409,048. 1.2 In March 2022 the Scottish Government published Best Start, Bright Futures, its Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan 2022-2026, which detailed a range of measures including a significant increase in its proposed investment in parental employment to address child poverty through increased funding in local employability services. Employability is a key pillar of the plan and builds on current interventions through the No One Left Behind approach to help ensure that work offers an effective and sustainable route out of poverty for families. It proposes that local authorities would act as the Lead Accountable Bodies for this investment on behalf of Local Employability Partnerships and that a collaborative approach to delivery of local investment is utilised. 1.3 In recent weeks the Scottish Government has indicated that this increased investment is to be delivered in 2023/24 with North Lanarkshire allocated £3.9 million to support parental employment programmes using the No One Left Behind principles, with projects to be delivered by March 2024. 2. Report 2.1 Investment Plan 2.1.1 The Scottish Government has indicated two key terms and conditions will be within the potential offer of grant of £3.9 million for parental employment support. These include: The submission of an Investment Plan which sets out proposals for delivery of services and support in 2023-24 that must take into account identification of local needs as evidenced by local statistical data. Funding is allocated to create a new co-ordination role within the Investment Plan to support the delivery of the employability commitments set out in the above plan and to drive alignment and integration with existing services and is a temporary role for the period of funding. Given the range of barriers parents may face to entering the labour market or increasing income from employment, eligibility criteria has been set at a high level. However, specific attention should be paid to the 6 priority family groups: • Lone Parents • Parents with a disability or families with a disabled child • Parents who have 3 or more children • Parents from a minority ethnic background • Parents who have a youngest child under one • Families with a young parent (under 25)
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Some parents may require support despite not neatly fitting into one of these groups. Therefore, individuals who are parents and not part of these priority family groups, but are unemployed, or on low- income would be eligible for support. In this context “Parent” should be taken to mean any adult residing in Scotland with responsibility for the care of children. For example, parents who do not live with their children permanently and kinship carers would also be eligible for support. 2.1.2 Delivering this level of investment in the period specified will require a step change and while there is a challenge in widening and deepening the level of provision at pace, it brings an opportunity to have a real impact on levels of parental employment in North Lanarkshire. Alongside this opportunity there are several local strategies, structures and factors which are already in place and will support the development of a comprehensive delivery plan for this investment. These include: (i) The Plan for North Lanarkshire – Programme of Work to 2028: The newly developed Programme of Work items; Resilient People - deliver whole family support locally, when families need it, in a way that addresses the impacts of poverty and reduces inequality. Brighter Futures - support and improve educational attainment, employment opportunities, entrepreneurship, and volunteering. (ii) Workforce for the Future Strategy: Building a skilled workforce for the future plays a significant part in delivering our ambition for North Lanarkshire. In economic terms, making sure that we have a skilled workforce will support a more sustainable place that will help the council and its partners to continue to grow its economy and create better opportunity for our residents and young people. (iii) Tackling Poverty Strategy: aligns and coordinates resources across the Council and partners to ensure effective delivery so that together we can achieve our shared ambition. In addition, the strategy encompasses the requirement of the Council to publish a Local Child Poverty Action Report for North Lanarkshire. (iv) Economic Regeneration Delivery Plan 2023-2028: The North Lanarkshire ERDP sets out a high-level framework for improving economic opportunities and outcomes for all. (v) North Lanarkshire Local Employability Partnership: with a membership drawn from the key employability stakeholders in North Lanarkshire this group supports a more aligned approach to employability support in North Lanarkshire, reflecting the need to shape coherent and inclusive employability and skills provision locally. (vi) North Lanarkshire Labour Market: The current context is North Lanarkshire has changed markedly in recent years with positive economic growth, low unemployment and increased average earnings all benefitting our residents and communities. Alongside this though, we also have increased levels of economic inactivity and labour and skills shortages being reported by employers and particularly in key sectors such as health and social care.
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2.2 Proposed Investments 2.2.1 In anticipation of the grant offer being forthcoming an Investment Plan is being drafted based on experience of delivery of previous parental support programmes and recent discussion with key stakeholders and the Local Employability Partnership. The North Lanarkshire Investment Plan is being developed with three key factors in mind: (1) Reach - broad and intensive engagement is critical to ensure parents are provided with opportunities and ongoing work will be undertaken to ensure this is the case with existing Council services, other public sector organisations such as NHS Lanarkshire and with third sector organisations in our communities. (2) Service Provision – all services must be individually tailored to the needs of parents, aimed at increasing their earnings from employment and deliverable within the timescale of the grant offer. (3) Creating Opportunities – build on existing employer engagement activity to identify flexible progression opportunities for parents alongside the creation of new vacancies. 2.2.2 The overall programme has the draft title Working for Families and proposed investments are outlined in Appendix 1 and are not exhaustive. A number are evolutions of existing and effective initiatives which are either enhanced and/or increased in scale to meet the aims of this programme. Detailed costing and performance measures are being developed alongside compliance with Council financial regulations and Scottish Government grant eligibility criteria. 3. Measures of success 3.1 Parents in North Lanarkshire have increased access to support to secure employment and increase their earnings. 4. Supporting documentation 4.1 Appendix 1 Working for Families Investment Proposals March 2023 Janie O’Neill Chief Officer (Education - South)
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5. Impacts ( http://connect/report-template-guidance ) 5.1 Public Sector Equality Duty and Fairer Scotland Duty Does the report contain information that has an impact as a result of the Public Sector Equality Duty and/or Fairer Scotland Duty? Yes ☒ No ☒ If Yes, please provide a brief summary of the impact? Parental Employment is aimed at improving economic outcomes for residents of North Lanarkshire and play a role in reducing inequality. If Yes, has an assessment been carried out and published on the council’s website? https://www.northlanarkshire.gov.uk/your-community/equalities/equality- and-fairer-scotland-duty-impact-assessments Yes ☐ No ☒ 5.2 Financial impact Does the report contain any financial impacts? Yes ☒ No ☐ If Yes, have all relevant financial impacts have been discussed and agreed with Finance? Yes ☒ No ☐ If Yes, please provide a brief summary of the impact? Increased grant funding can be used to bolster existing employability staffing and infrastructure without increasing NLC core funding. 5.3 HR policy impact Does the report contain any HR policy or procedure impacts? Yes ☒ No ☐ If Yes, have all relevant HR impacts have been discussed and agreed with People Resources? Yes ☒ No ☐ If Yes, please provide a brief summary of the impact? As a condition of funding a new temporary post to co-ordinate its delivery is to be created (Working for Families Manager) until March 2024 – see section 2.1.1. 5.4 Legal impact Does the report contain any legal impacts (such as general legal matters, statutory considerations (including employment law considerations), or new legislation)? Yes ☐ No ☒ If Yes, have all relevant legal impacts have been discussed and agreed with Legal and Democratic? Yes ☐ No ☐ If Yes, please provide a brief summary of the impact? 5.5 Data protection impact Does the report / project / practice contain or involve the processing of personal data? Yes ☐ No ☒ If Yes, is the processing of this personal data likely to result in a high risk to the data subject? Yes ☐ No ☐ If Yes, has a Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) been carried out and e- mailed to dataprotection@northlan.gov.uk Yes ☐ No ☐
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5.6 Technology / Digital impact Does the report contain information that has an impact on either technology, digital transformation, service redesign / business change processes, data management, or connectivity / broadband / Wi-Fi? Yes ☐ No ☒ If Yes, please provide a brief summary of the impact? Where the impact identifies a requirement for significant technology change, has an assessment been carried out (or is scheduled to be carried out) by the Enterprise Architecture Governance Group (EAGG)? Yes ☐ No ☐ 5.7 Environmental / Carbon impact Does the report / project / practice contain information that has an impact on any environmental or carbon matters? Yes ☐ No ☒ If Yes, please provide a brief summary of the impact? 5.8 Communications impact Does the report contain any information that has an impact on the council’s communications activities? Yes ☒ No ☐ If Yes, please provide a brief summary of the impact? Programme to be developed with Corporate Communications. 5.9 Risk impact Is there a risk impact? Yes ☒ No ☐ If Yes, please provide a brief summary of the key risks and potential impacts, highlighting where the risk(s) are assessed and recorded (e.g. Corporate or Service or Project Risk Registers), and how they are managed? This new source of external funding will be covered by existing risks attached to grant funding for employability services. 5.10 Armed Forces Covenant Duty Does the report require to take due regard of the Armed Forces Covenant Duty (i.e. does it relate to healthcare, housing, or education services for in-Service or ex- Service personnel, or their families, or widow(er)s)? Yes ☒ No ☐ If Yes, please provide a brief summary of the provision which has been made to ensure there has been appropriate consideration of the particular needs of the Armed Forces community to make sure that they do not face disadvantage compared to other citizens in the provision of public services. Within all Council employability programmes veterans are immediately eligible for support alongside other priority groups.
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APPENDIX 1 Working for Families Investment Proposals March 2023 Number Investment Activity Description Delivery 1 Prospects for Parents Dedicated case worker support allocated to parents on mainstream employability programmes and previous clients of these programmes who are in employment and looking to increase their earnings. Existing provision delivered via Employability Services and Routes to Work Ltd. 2 Place based support targeting economic inactivity with a major focus on parents (Co- funded with UK Shared Prosperity Funding) Place based employability support for economically inactive residents of North Lanarkshire with intensive and wrap-around support to move those furthest from the labour market closer to mainstream provision and employment, supplemented by additional and/or specialist life and basic skills. Key lessons from the approach utilised within the UK CRF Airdrie Central Community Engagement Project will be drawn upon to ensure the project has an impact. These are the use of peer mentors, life coaches and financial wellbeing advice to engage and move people toward better economic, health and social outcomes that match their individual needs and promote increased community cohesion. The project would also draw on the lessons of the Action Lone Parents project delivered in North Lanarkshire from 2013-2016 which used this community-based approach in targeting lone parents. There is already a commitment to a UK Shared Prosperity Fund project to address economic inactivity in 2023/24 and this additional investment would target economically inactive parents. Partners will include Employability Services/ Routes to Work Ltd/ Tackling Poverty Team/ Community Learning & Development/ Third Sector providers 3 Employer Recruitment Incentive (ERI) Financial Incentive for private sector employers that create vacancies for eligible parents based on current Scottish Government Employability Services
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guidelines of 50% of Real Living Wage for at least 6 months. 4 Parental Inclusion New programme based on recent study of the BAME communities in North Lanarkshire and their needs including employment. Rather than treating BAME as a homogeneous group there will be specific programmes of support targeted at those groups most prevalent in North Lanarkshire and who all have varied employability needs and barriers. These communities are the: - Polish - Congolese - Syrian - Black African and Caribbean - Indian Sub-continent - Chinese - BAME groups not identified above New approach based on findings of study to address employment needs of parents in these communities either through grants process with local representative groups or employment of representatives from these communities. 5 Parental Work Placement Programme Placing parents into at least 6-month paid work placements in public and third sector jobs including NLC and NHS Lanarkshire. Infrastructure support to NHS Lanarkshire to deal with support for all placements and recruitment of eligible parents. This has been piloted in the last year for long term unemployed residents over 25 years of age and has been effective both in NHS and NLC in terms of clients securing employment. Eligible for parents with prolonged unemployment, economic inactivity, or precarious employment i.e., not fair work, zero hours, short term contracts. Employability Services (Working for Families team)
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6 Tackling Poverty 3.5 x dedicated financial inclusion advisors for all parental support programmes across North Lanarkshire. Based on previous allocation of advisor time 3 fte staff would be allocated across the programmes with 0.5 allocated to any work with Disabled Parents. Tackling Poverty targeted engagement programmes to increase referrals for parental employment support to providers. Tackling Poverty Team 7 Childcare Childcare costs for parents engaged on programme All delivery agents. 8 Grants Programmes Challenge Fund for providers to test new innovation whole system/person approaches to support parents and family units – aimed primarily at third sector providers. Grants to employers to support in work progressions (This could incorporate bespoke packages of support to employers such as ERI’s upskilling/re-skilling support, In Work Mentoring Costs, paid work placements etc) Self Employed – Start Up grants to support parents with new start- up businesses – identify how existing Business Gateway provision could be enhanced. Employability Services (Working for Families team) Employability Services and partners. Employability Services/ Enterprise Team 9 Childminding Start up support Start-up grants to childminders from eligible parental groups to cover fees and adaptations to home. Employability Services and partners.
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10 Working for Families team Includes the role specified by the Scottish Government as a condition of funding and provides capacity to effectively manage increased investment and its delivery. 1 x Working for Families Manager 1 x Employability Development Officer 1 x Data Collection staff 1 x finance/admin staff 1 x engagement assistant Working for Families team 11 Marketing & Branding A comprehensive and coherent campaign to highlight this investment and its delivery by the Council will be required to support its delivery. Corporate Communications