Getting personal with welfare
By guest author Anthony Painter
One of the most intriguing recent developments in political discourse is a new focus on human behaviour. Whether we need a nudge or persuasion, to be told what is good or bad, right or wrong, politics is entering the realm of the human. How do you get people who are behaving one way to act in a diametrically opposed fashion?
That question underpins Work And Pensions Secretary James Purnell’s Welfare Green Paper, which draws on successful American policies to oblige the long-term unemployed to work in the community, amongst other ‘nudge’ style measures. Purnell has been more articulate and proactive than almost any of his colleagues in countering the threat of a resurgent Conservative party. The Green Paper, published today, marks a step change in the development of the kind of active welfare policy that can push people in the direction of their better angels.
Purnell still has some bad habits hanging over from his time as a policy wonk - even if ‘conditionality’ is in the Oxford English Dictionary, it should be in no front line politician’s lexicon - but his political instinct is more than sound. This is an enormous step towards completing the active system of welfare long promised by New Labour. Purnell deserves enormous credit for responding to Cameron’s march onto the ground of social justice with wise policy as well as astute politics.
It’s sorely needed. Even with the sound policies that have been pursued up until now - tax credits, the minimum wage, and the New Deal - the employment rate has only increased by a little more than a percentage point since 1998, and whole communities are still blighted by worklessness. Some communities, horrifically, have workless rates in excess of 50 per cent; inner city wards have rates in excess of 40 per cent with alarming regularity.
Bravely, Purnell has set a goal of an 80 per cent employment rate. Even if the current economic downturn does not begin to seriously impact employment (and there are some signs that it may be doing so) that is rightly a challenging target. An educated guess would be that the reforms will be successful in removing some of the lower hanging fruit from welfare and into work. The task will very quickly become infinitely more complex.
To reach that 80 per cent, there will have to be a combination of a very fair economic wind and a further intensification of active welfare. The new welfare approach introduces a further element of personal attention to the system. But when two-thirds of Job Seekers’ Allowance claimants make repeat claims, it is clear we need to go further.
Welfare is only part of the picture. Childcare, mental health services, transport, skills, self-confidence, lifestyle and a whole host of other factors impact the ability of individual to work. A new personalised approach needs to be adopted on top of the Purnell reforms if an individual’s situation is to be properly understood. Our journey through the NHS is navigated by a GP. There must be an equivalent figure in the world of welfare and work.
Imagine a system where individuals are treated as individuals, where they are pushed and, if necessary, sanctioned, but where support is geared to their individual needs by someone with whom they have a long-standing relationship built on trust and respect. Isn’t that the real insight on human behaviour? We respond in different ways but we ultimately respond better to people than systems? Incentives are all well and good but only the personal is not perverse. Active welfare is where we have been heading. Personalised welfare must come soon after.
Anthony Painter blogs at www.anthonypainter.co.uk
If the government delivers welfare reform that is both sane and sensible and which doesnt stigmatise certain groups of disabled people , and further if this government is serious about reform rather than penny pinching this will be a step forward. However I suspect that they will make a mess of this reform and will end up paying large amounts of compensation to people they have falsely labeled as work shy.
Posted by: Bishop Swine | Monday, 21 July 2008 at 09:15 PM
At last someone who is speaking sense! Thank you Anthony! I am 54 and have had Parkinson's disease for 10 years during which time I have continued to work part-time while bringing up a daughter (not alone - I am married) and comitted a lot of time to voluntary work for the PDS. I would sorely like to have someone to discuss the whole area of early retirement on ill health and life thereafter but who is there to talk to? I was given today a leaflet from the Pensions Servce called "Are you over 50?" Lots of interesting information including information for carers - but is there anything for people such as me?? No way!! It is as if there were some kind of conspitacy to remove all mention of ill health retirement fromt th ebooks! To plan my future I need to know if I can claim Incapacity Benefit or such like in order to get my NI paid so that I might have a chance to receive a full pension.But so far I have drawn blank. I would if eligible receive an enhanced occupational pension from my work - but here's th erub! I would need to convince an independent doctor that I could not do any work until 65 to get the highest amount - but if I got that would I then be having to go through another medical just to get NI paid??!! I am all for helping people back to or into work whne they want to especially those who are disabled but not with a progressive conditiona or where temporarily disabled by depression, nd discouraging reliance on benefits by those who could work, but what about those leaving work? I feel like a piggy-in-the-middle between DDA/IB (both ostensibly there to help me but with hidden traps) and the new push for individual choice over health and social care!! To treat people as individuals is indeed the only way. Not everyone is the same. There are 15 million people in this country with a long-term condiiton, apparently 10m with a long-term neurological condiiton (not all of those of working age of course)5.4m claim to have a work-limiting disability, 50% of whom are working! The other 50% are unemployed - yet someone says only 0.9m are genuine claimants of IB. I reckonthese figures don't match up! Are there any stats from DWP? So I reckon people should be more tolerant and realise there are a lot of people out there struggling with all kinds of health problems many of whom are struggling to do thei rbest. An individual approach is the only way - and maybe Frank Field's idea to hav eone unemployment benefit and everything for the disabled in the DLA.
Posted by: Alison | Monday, 21 July 2008 at 10:01 PM
A individual approach is the ideal in mental health care but ask any schizophrenic how many changes of CPN they have had in the last two years. These are people with major illnesses. They will induce massive stress on staff and increase the turnover rate. It's not like depression that's easy to fake, like the medication is fun! - people with severe mental illness and a history of relapse are not going to follow directions very well; are they to be sanctioned, sectioned or what? Isn't this morally repugnant like scalding a blind man for not seeing?
Posted by: kevin | Tuesday, 22 July 2008 at 10:03 AM
What is needed is someone in power - anyone - to stop the scandal of bribing people to vote for them by throwing free money in the form of child benefit and maternity pay at those who don't need it - those rich, property-owning classes who are bigger spongers and parasites than anyone on the dole or incapacity benefit. Cherie Blair got maternity pay at a rate of £2,000 a week, plus child benefit for five kids. Why?
But then, bribes get votes and to win in our bribery/democracy system any party needs the women's vote and the family/middle income vote - so the bribery goes on and on and on.
It's easy to pick on those on the dole getting 50 quid a week instead of taking benefits from sponging greedy selfish families who own property and have loads of money but who still get these universal 'benefits' - or 'bribes' as they should be more accurately called.
So - let's Means test all benefit; abolish child benefit and maternity 'pay' (ie benefit); pay according to need - so abolish all universal benefits for those who own property and have large incomes and savings. What not fair about that?
Posted by: WhoAreTheRealSpongers? | Tuesday, 22 July 2008 at 04:48 PM