Kickstart scheme for young jobseekers

[moody]

anyone know about this?

I'm keen to get some of my clients into work.

The scheme promises that the gov will pay employers to give young people upto 6 months employment paid with a variety of potential employers.

The thing is, my client group all live in supported housing, if they were to work the rent would be so hight it really wouldn't be worth their while in a financial sense.

What info is missing from all the blurb I've read is what about young peoples rent payments, with the gov still support people such as the young people i work with to gain experince whilst earning and be able to pay rent and other basic living expenses?

gov kickstart scheme - Google Search

www.google.com

 

[friendofdorothy]

I know my employer is taking on some people under this scheme and but I think they are going to be paid london living wage. Must check.

 

[scifisam]

anyone know about this?

I'm keen to get some of my clients into work.

The scheme promises that the gov will pay employers to give young people upto 6 months employment paid with a variety of potential employers.

The thing is, my client group all live in supported housing, if they were to work the rent would be so hight it really wouldn't be worth their while in a financial sense.

What info is missing from all the blurb I've read is what about young peoples rent payments, with the gov still support people such as the young people i work with to gain experince whilst earning and be able to pay rent and other basic living expenses?

gov kickstart scheme - Google Search

www.google.com

Wouldn't they still be eligible for housing benefit? It's not very likely that they'd be over the income limit for full HB.

 

[Puddy_Tat]

would it be housing benefit or housing element of universal clusterfuck?

i'm really too long out of the game to offer any detailed advice, but it used to be that you only got full housing benefit if your income was at the level of income support, but it wasn't an all or nothing thing, and in theory you should never have been worse off for being in work (although you'd not be much better off as your housing benefit got reduced as your wages went up)

the tories have said that you should never be worse off by taking a job - i don't know how true this is.

and when i did it (and for quite some time after) only the first 5 quid a week of wages was 'disregarded' - this figure having been set at a time when it was realistic to do a week's bus travel to work for five quid and have money left over.

if you know the wages on offer and the rent etc, it may be worth having a play with the benefits calculator here.

 

[scifisam]

would it be housing benefit or housing element of universal clusterfuck?

i'm really too long out of the game to offer any detailed advice, but it used to be that you only got full housing benefit if your income was at the level of income support, but it wasn't an all or nothing thing, and in theory you should never have been worse off for being in work (although you'd not be much better off as your housing benefit got reduced as your wages went up)

the tories have said that you should never be worse off by taking a job - i don't know how true this is.

and when i did it (and for quite some time after) only the first 5 quid a week of wages was 'disregarded' - this figure having been set at a time when it was realistic to do a week's bus travel to work for five quid and have money left over.

if you know the wages on offer and the rent etc, it may be worth having a play with the benefits calculator here.

I think supported housing is always HB - it's sort of social housing. And LHA wouldn't come close to covering it so it'd be a problem whether they were working or not.

I think the amounts for full HB depend on borough. In my borough it's just over £16k pa - part-time work on the living wage would be well under that.

 

[Shippou-Sensei]

They did this one before. Was a mess. At least it was in all the stories i heard about for the media sector.
Most small or medium size companies say it as a way to get an intern for free for a few months then would let them go once the money dried up.

 

[Puddy_Tat]

I think supported housing is always HB - it's sort of social housing

Ah. Yes.

I said I was a bit out of touch with it all.

And for that matter, something like this might still be treated as a change of circumstances not a new claim.

Most small or medium size companies say it as a way to get an intern for free for a few months then would let them go once the money dried up

That's always a danger with this sort of thing - I can remember the YTS being 'cheap labour for two years then sod off' in a lot of cases.

Depends whether it's real training for something useful that might look better on a future job application than just another 6 months on the dole...

 

[Shippou-Sensei]

That's always a danger with this sort of thing - I can remember the YTS being 'cheap labour for two years then sod off' in a lot of cases.

Depends whether it's real training for something useful that might look better on a future job application than just another 6 months on the dole...

Yeah. It sounds good and i think for any business that already has a culture of in house training I can see it working quite well. 6 months is a bit on the short side though for wanting proper business experience but I guess it is (probably) better than signing on in terms of your CV.

 

[Epona]

They did this one before. Was a mess. At least it was in all the stories i heard about for the media sector.
Most small or medium size companies say it as a way to get an intern for free for a few months then would let them go once the money dried up.

Basically this ^ someone gets work for a few months on benefits and is then let go, it gets them off the unemployment figures for a bit but there is no real incentive for anyone to actually hire them.

(If it turns out that I am wrong then I take it all back, but I don't trust this current government to be overseeing something that might in any way be fair)

 

[Shippou-Sensei]

A colleague of mine guessed what they hope to happen is that big companies like tesco would increase their hiring of NEETs and run more training schemes as they would mainly be hiring and training anyhow and they could do it on a scale that would make it cheaper.

 

[harpo]

They did this one before. Was a mess. At least it was in all the stories i heard about for the media sector.
Most small or medium size companies say it as a way to get an intern for free for a few months then would let them go once the money dried up.

Yeah the Future Job Fund.

 

[scifisam]

I'm looking into it for my daughter (or, if not her, one of her friends), from the applicant's side, so thanks for starting this thread!

There are disadvantages, of course, but six months is not a bad amount of time really, and it's actually paid at at least minimum wage, rather than unemployment benefit plus a top-up, so it's - surprisingly - better than some of the previous schemes.

Some of my daughter's friends really don't have much, if any, paid work experience because, in London, they're competing with hundreds of adults who have experience and references, and they just can't get off the ground. I could see this actually helping them.

 

[moody]

my clients live in a hostel, supported housing, the rent is roughly £280 a week which of course the lha or uc picks ups depending on age (16-25)

we've done some rough maths and some one who wanted to work 37.5 at NMW would only be £40-60 pw better off than their neighbours who are just smoking all day.

I'm really into trying any opportunity to get these guys motivated and this looked like a good idea initially but i think the guys will face the same financial barrier as gaining full time employment whilst living in the hostel.

I will check will the job centre as they seem to be fronting the push, to see if there is any additional support. £2B of funding was announced so hopefully something should be in place.

there was quite a few dodgy looking links/sites on the google for 'employers' to apply for grants to fund placements, some even had 'free workers/labour' in the headers....

*I really hope the cash just doesn't get funnelled away

 

[muscovyduck]

my clients live in a hostel, supported housing, the rent is roughly £280 a week which of course the lha or uc picks ups depending on age (16-25)

we've done some rough maths and some one who wanted to work 37.5 at NMW would only be £40-60 pw better off than their neighbours who are just smoking all day.

I'm really into trying any opportunity to get these guys motivated and this looked like a good idea initially but i think the guys will face the same financial barrier as gaining full time employment whilst living in the hostel.

I will check will the job centre as they seem to be fronting the push, to see if there is any additional support. £2B of funding was announced so hopefully something should be in place.

there was quite a few dodgy looking links/sites on the google for 'employers' to apply for grants to fund placements, some even had 'free workers/labour' in the headers....

*I really hope the cash just doesn't get funnelled away

Yeah unfortunately I don't think it's a scheme that's got the best interests of the unemployed person / worker in mind, we looked into it at work and it just seems like another way for the government to squirrel money away to random businesses like a lot of the corona grants.

Another option might be encouraging them to learn a skill and see if there's any funding or support for that instead. Like graphic design or sewing or photography or something they can figure out for themselves and learn from books and a bit of guidance here and there. Some of them might already recognise the least risky way to improve their lives without fucking up their entitlement to benefits is to take a semi-informal route and learn a skill at home but not know how to go about it.

 

[moonsi til]

I work in the NHS & saw this in our comms with info if I recall is for aged 18-24 who are at risk of long term unemployment. I have signed up my team as we are a specialised team so if we can make it work it could be a good stepping stone. They do 25 hrs & are paid miminmum wage, I don't know how it works with HB. They will have monthly reviews, are given a laptop , smart phone & help with future applications. I interviewed last week & have a potential person.

 

[StoneRoad]

They did this one before. Was a mess. At least it was in all the stories i heard about for the media sector.
Most small or medium size companies say it as a way to get an intern for free for a few months then would let them go once the money dried up.

Actually, I've been involved with several schemes like this ...

Yes, I agree, the schemes act to subsidise the employment / training but in small companies, the costs of training vs productivity (& correcting the cock-ups) are very finely balanced and all help is - usually - gratefully received ...

One was the "Engineering Heritage Skills Initiative" - it was rather specific to "my" industry ... but of our batch of trainees [they were paid using a bursary scheme] one still works for me and although at least two of the others would have been offered jobs, they went elsewhere (and one is currently involved with restoring the "Notre Dame" ! and another is a self-employed artisan blacksmith, having moved away for family reasons).
I would conclude that we all gained from this particular scheme.

 

[scifisam]

my clients live in a hostel, supported housing, the rent is roughly £280 a week which of course the lha or uc picks ups depending on age (16-25)

we've done some rough maths and some one who wanted to work 37.5 at NMW would only be £40-60 pw better off than their neighbours who are just smoking all day.

I'm really into trying any opportunity to get these guys motivated and this looked like a good idea initially but i think the guys will face the same financial barrier as gaining full time employment whilst living in the hostel.

I will check will the job centre as they seem to be fronting the push, to see if there is any additional support. £2B of funding was announced so hopefully something should be in place.

there was quite a few dodgy looking links/sites on the google for 'employers' to apply for grants to fund placements, some even had 'free workers/labour' in the headers....

*I really hope the cash just doesn't get funnelled away

Does it improve if you work it out at 25 hours pw? That's what this scheme is for.

The thing is, the scheme is for young people who have little or no work experience. The odds of them getting a job that pays above minimum wage aren't very high, so it's not like this would mean them getting paid less. But at the moment, the odds of them getting a job at all (unless they have some family contacts to lean on or something) are pretty much zero.

(I would have thought your clients were on HB rather than LHA/the housing element of UC, because neither of them would come close to covering that rate of rent, but if you're supporting them you'd know better than me).