The X Factor

I didn't expect to end the week feeling like Simon Cowell. After all, on Monday I had very little in the diary and was focussed on covering Carole, Clean Slate's Ops Director, getting our 3rd birthday plans underway and keeping an eye on the shop, so to speak.

By Monday afternoon, however, I was in discussions about how I could be the face of financial inclusion to promote Quids in!, our money management magazine for people on low incomes. We want to build on its 140,000 sales to develop new products to help people look after their dough and fend off approaches from loan sharks and high interest lenders. There are campaigns to be run, events to put together and a Quids in! Members Club on Facebook to get going. I even got myself on Twitter. Twice. One for each hat. (@ontheslate and @yourquids in, if you're interested.)

It sounds very earnest but it's starting to be fun. The challenge is making these worthy and frankly middle-class intentions of any interest to people at the wrong end of 'less well off'. It's no mean feat pulling off a genuinely tabloid magazine, especially when it's sold to managers in the public and third sectors. We tie ourselves in knots ticking the boxes of political correctness while keeping things earthy. The near naked bodies on our healthy saver postcards raised a few eyebrows too.

Tuesday I went through a contract with one of Clean Slate's workless Temp Workers, Ugo, who we're helping to become a professional artist. I ran through how we'd front the investment to pay for materials and his time, how we'd represent him to retailers and customers, and handle the in and outs of the enterprise while he grows it to a point where he can go it alone if he wants to. I realised we were talking about a kind of record deal. Right down to the haggling over how much of the split of profits goes to the artist or the investor.

It wasn't part of the week's plan but it was one of those opportunities that social enterprises can make happen when various things line up. I'd been catching up with Bath Abbey on progress since they'd raised the £20k for us, (now approaching £25k), when I casually asked if we should approach Ugo about producing some canvasses of the Abbey for sale to the congregation. That's a win win win: progress, employment through enterprise, and ongoing income to Ugo and Clean Slate.

By great chance, the variation on a screen print process that Ugo uses means he can reproduce the artworks and produce them to scale. And they look phenomenal. Last week, Clean Slate directors had an away day and we said our role was not to find workless people jobs but to match them to the right jobs. We're so on the right lines with Ugo. And with our new venture, Clean Slate TalentShop.

So, the canvasses hit shops next Tuesday. Well, they'll be on display and on sale at Bath Abbey (and via our website, if I can get the technology working). And then we'll wait and see if Ugo and Clean Slate prove we have the X Factor.

Praise Indeed!

The good people of Bath Abbey raised £20,000 for Clean Slate on Easter Sunday. I received a call on the Thursday before Easter to ask if I could link what we do to the Christian message and it didn't take long. Being 'Clean Slate', and all. So, I wrote down a few lines about putting the sins of the past behind and new beginnings, and handed over to the Rector. I didn't think any more of it until I got the phone call to say not only how much had been pledged but that it had been done in 90 seconds. What an endorsement.

Something chimed with the congregation louder than just the neat link between the Easter theme and how we give people the opportunity to put their past behind them and prove their worth through honest work.

Whatever our beliefs, we're not immune or removed from the world around us. A sense of impoverishment descended on us with the so-called 'Credit Crunch' way before hardship hit most people, except those affected by redundancies in the first wave. Now we know it's going to get harder, it's like waiting for the bomb to drop - only we know who it's going to hit first. What Clean Slate did was give people in Bath an opportunity to help us build the first air raid shelter. I won't glibly suggest there's something of the spirit of the blitz about it but there was an outpouring of goodwill that gave us an adrenaline boost like nothing else could. We have to channel that now to show we can provide the means for individuals to overcome unemployment and poverty.

We acted quickly: We've found an office and a coordinator to get us started part-time. We have three employers in Bath pledging us 14 placements of paid work for our Temp Workers there. And last week we uncovered the opportunity to pilot a project we've wanted to do since before we even started trading: Clean Slate TalentShop.

I'll come back to TalentShop but I wanted to place a marker against this support in pockets of our community. We're all affected by the recession and many of those lucky enough to have more protection against the ill effects have empathy towards those who do not.

Clean Slate's job is to galvanise this support and turn it into opportunity. We can also utilise it to strengthen our voice when it comes to where public spending gets cut. We have to ensure the will of the public, and their belief in second chances and the power of individuals to help themselves, is reflected in Government policy.

The Real Hustings

Yesterday I was invited to follow in the footsteps of Oliver Cromwell, Emmeline Pankhurst, and Winston Churchill, quite literally, as part of an event by the Speakers Corner Trust. The People's Hustings took place on College Green and invited community groups to tell the politicians what change is needed before allowing them to take the stage to do their electioneering.

I only had two asks on this occasion: invest in workless people and deconstruct the benefits trap. I must have been speaking Japanese. There was no response to my points from any of the 5 candidates who took part in the event.

Is this rocket science?

Last year, Clean Slate opened a centre to help job seekers from one of Bristol's most disadvantaged wards. I figured - and this betrays even my prejudices, and I've worked with unemployed people for the past 18 years - that we'd have to drag people in kicking and screaming. But even while we were still measuring up, with just the shop front in place advertising that we would be "Working With You Towards Employment", people starting coming in looking for help finding work.

Once up and running, Sue, a woman who'd spent the previous 20 years raising a family told me she'd been on a Job Centre Plus programme for 13 weeks and still didn't have a CV. She hadn't even known what she wanted to do but once she'd sat down with a Clean Slate worker, she said, and talked about the skills she'd used in bringing up her children, she realised she'd make an excellent carer. Sue felt she'd done her time with kids but set about, there and then, looking for work caring for older people. Once she knew what she wanted to do, the CV followed quickly and it took only two sessions with our staff to leave with one fully completed.

By contrast, I've heard that the Department of Work and Pensions desribe unemployed people as "stock". It's easier to dehumanise people and treat them as a single entity when it comes to policy. But in Clean Slate's experience, it's the opposite that works on the ground.

Numerous job seekers have come to us complaining they're sick of being assumed to be benefits cheats. They don't blame the press, they don't expect any better. But they do resent the fact that that's how they're made to feel by Job Centre staff. They feel demeaned, depressed and unworthy of any opportunities to get themselves off the breadline.

Clean Slate is not interested in being yet another sausage machine, churning people through a one size fits all system. Nor are we interested in skimming the cream, helping those needing least help, so we can grab the juiciest financial kick backs from Job Centre Plus. We believe the best hope for overcoming unemployment and worklessness starts and ends with each individual, so we start there. It's far more rewarding when people like Sue, who have been deactivated by the unemployment system, get switched back on.

So, is it rocket science? Absolutely not. How we make this vital work pay is a harder question. Especially when those who are clamouring for our votes cannot comprehend how a personalised service can be delivered to a mass of 3 million people.