Stewarding the Unemployed towards Success

The front page story in yesterday's Guardian (Unemployed bussed in to steward river pageant) and leading this morning's BBC London news may snowball to become another mess requiring the Government to consider a U-turn. It's claimed that unemployed people were coerced, under threat of losing benefits, to work as stewards at the Jubilee weekend and were forced to sleep rough and change into uniform in public, and had no access to toilets.

The story gave me goosebumps. Clean Slate is recruiting homeless people to work as stewards through this summer and beyond. And we work across Bristol, Bath and London. But we have nothing to do with the employer, Close Protection UK, or the Government’s Work Programme.

Clean Slate acknowledges our duty of care for the 40 plus stewards we're currently recruiting. In liaising with Green Stewards, who will take them on for paid work, we've covered ground like access to facilities, breaks and the usual entitlements employers must provide. Our candidates also did an unpaid NVQ weekend (ironically, taking people from London to the West Country) but Clean Slate ensured there was food, good accommodation and a tangible outcome that was more than the promise of paid work in future. What's more, there was no coercion at all. By contrast to the Jubilee weekend, our stewards found the weekend hugely beneficial as they became part of a team, overcame the challenges of a new environment and mixing with new colleagues, and learned about the job they would be doing. Working with Green Stewards and homelessness charities, in the wings to provide more pastoral support, we ensure there's a positive outcome for everyone.

For us, involving job seekers is about carrot more than stick, which is essentially ‘if you don’t prove what you have to offer, you’re unlikely to be offered work’. We have an honest partnership with job seekers about our needing them to do well. Our social enterprise is ostensibly a temp agency that recruits long-term unemployed people and places them in paid work with employers. We work in partnership with support agencies but our focus is on re-activating people who have been systematically switched off by their experience of unemployment. We look for the light switch and by focusing on all the potential they possess, and proving it to them by offering job ready people paid work, they become motivated and self-confident, ready to be part of the solution to their own unemployment.

Now I'm worried the flaws of a Government scheme, married with the drive for private sector profit, has sullied our own scheme to re-activate people, who are only too used to being treated without respect or dignity. It could pull the rug from underneath us. Our supporters, employer partners, funders and temporary workers now all need reassuring that we weren't involved in this weekend's debacle.

As seen in previous blogs, Clean Slate is opposed to mandatory work placements - forcing unemployed people to work for free or face losing their benefits. A day's productive work in a profit-making business must be paid for, otherwise it is state-sanctioned exploitation. Volunteering has a place for job seekers when it honestly provides training and valuable experience and, most of all, when it really is voluntary.

Having worked with people facing barriers to employment for the past 19 years - people who have been homeless, offenders, mentally ill, refugees or chronically socially excluded - I know how many can benefit from simple opportunities to get involved. They often jump at the chances and some will move on from there. But there has to be ethical guardianship in the mix to ensure this goodwill is not exploited.

Most unemployed people I speak to feel victimised by the state, stigmatised by the media and generally considered undeserving of benefits. They fear employers either won't be interested in them or will treat them badly. So it is totally counter-productive when a prospective employer like Close Protection UK drops the ball this way. Whichever agencies were supporting the volunteers also let them down.

This morning we'll be contacting all our stakeholders to distance ourselves from this appalling story. We will also write to all the job seekers on our books as Temp Workers to reassure them about our promise to look out for their wellbeing and how to blow the whistle if they feel they're being mistreated.

No doubt more details about, and repercussions from, the Jubilee story will emerge - good and bad - but Clean Slate must set out its ethical stall. While there are uncomfortably close similarities between this story and the opportunities we lay on for job seekers as stewards, we will always put the wellbeing of our workers first. We won't always get things right, and we have scant resources to be omnipotent, but we will never be part of mandatory work placements or leave people feeling exploited.

One Percent Inspiration (99 Percent Aspiration)

As always, I'm working on the big leap forward. The idea for 2012 is to focus on the biggest area of concern for me, in all I'm working on: The worsening crisis for young unemployed people and families.

My projects, Clean Slate and Quids in! magazine, have a raft of ideas and everyone can get involved: Everyone following on Twitter, on Facebook, through networks and across towns and cities in England, Wales and, soon, Scotland.

I'm not going to waste time here moaning about their plight in the face of rising unemployment, benefit cuts and a society that would rather cast blame than look at itself and wonder how we came to this. In any case, I want to get on with the job in hand: Inspiring people to find their own way out of the crap they're in.

And maybe they don't consider themselves to be in the poo. A good friend of mine told me yesterday about her 16-year old stepson who's finished school and is happy now to stay out until four, sleep in until midday and let his mother keep him for at least another couple of years. Luckily, his Dad has other ideas. He recognises that once people, whatever their age, stop moving forward, they fall backwards. Opportunities close and they make do with a life where they don't reach their potential.

For many families, unemployment affects the kids, mums, dads and grandparents too. They're not necessarily the passive victims of unemployment that maybe that statement suggests, but they'll soon be the unwilling recipients of cuts to welfare payments that, when everyone in a household is affected, are gonna hurt. Economically, the balance may tip in favour of family members finding work but it's going to take more than starving people to break the culture of dependency, defeated (and self-defeating) attitudes, and the fact that there are fewer jobs.

Quids in! magazine already offers money management advice to people in social housing. We work closely with social landlords and the last issue reached over 160,000 households. We plan to launch in Scotland in March. We want to attend as many community events as we can, distributing Quids in! and new easy-to-read publications (designed like Take a Break, not your typical advice guides) on how to make ends meet as times get tougher. Which they will. Anyone who could use these publications with the people they work with can get involved. Contact me at jeff@cleanslateltd.co.uk

I'm working on new magazine titles for young people. We (ie, anyone who wants to combat youth disaffection and unemployment) need to engage 14-19 year olds on their terms. Commercial media do this everyday. It will be a challenge to be socially responsible when young people's interests might lie in shoot-em-up gaming, rap music and getting as much as possible in life for free, but these are our ways into their world view. I want to engage and inspire young people to aspire to more. If what we saw on the streets last year was anything to do with our society promising they could have it all and then failing to deliver, we can reposition that promise - they can have it but they have to work for it. If we can't make that point in Olympic year, we never will.

I'm developing a new service for schools. I don't believe they're set up to help students for whom the academic route is a non-starter. Our work with those furthest from the labour market translates directly by engaging with people's strengths and interests, raising their aspirations, and setting short and long-term goals and establishing realistic expectations about the real world and how its down to the individual to make things happen. Interested? Drop me a line.

Youth unemployment now tops one million in the UK. Job Centre Plus is not fit for the purpose of preparing job seekers for employment, its policing role is counter-productive in this, and the dehumanising experience of signing on is universal, something I've heard reported in EVERY project where I meet unemployed people. The possibility of an entire generation going to waste, as employers and the under-25s themselves buy into the myth that they're unemployable, is now too big a risk to leave to Government.

I'm calling on employers in London, the West of England and South Wales to stand up and be counted. I'm not asking them to take on risk, incur undue costs or cope with miles of red tape but I am asking them to take a small leap of faith by using Clean Slate as a temp agency, where they can 'try before they buy' for recruiting permanent staff or offer a few paid hours a week for Temp Workers that need to prove themselves and acclimatise to the world of work. (See www.cleanslateltd.co.uk)

The ideas are there. But we need to hook up with employers, teachers, parents and commissioners with a shared vision for doing something practical to tackle youth disaffection and the unemployment that's damaging families. Sign up to follow our progress. Get behind us on Twitter and Retweet. Get in touch to make the ideas above a reality.

Torch - part 2 (Generating Energy)

I met Shirley when she came to help me out about a year ago. I was hosting a visit from a homelessness charity from the Midlands. I hadn't had a chance to talk to her beforehand, so I was taking a bit of a gamble but what she said blew me away:

"I turned up at the Clean Slate office after 13 weeks on a job centre programme. I didn't even have a CV. And I had no idea what I wanted to do. I explained to the worker there that I've got no skills and no experience, I've been raising a family for 20 years.

"They said 'Are you kidding? 20 years raising a family? You have loads to offer.' And within two sessions I realised I had so many transferable skills and I set my sights on working in the care sector. Not working with kids, mind," Shirley had a proper Bristolian brogue. "I'm going to work with older people. And my CV proves it."

That's one light re-lit.

Clean Slate's job is to reactivate. To find the 'on' switch for all those systematically de-activated not only by unemployment itself but the systems and mechanisms supposedly designed to support them. We help them find their worth. You don't have to dig very deep. It's not rocket science. It's all there. As readily available as the weather.

So, I'm stood in front of a group of people already excited about Bristol becoming a net exporter of energy by harnessing the elements. I'm stood on the stage brandishing an imaginary torch. And the room is wondering where this is going.

The battery may be flat but it's not dead. Clean Slate helps the light flicker on. Then we need to charge it up.

We do this by providing people with paid work. Just a few hours a week, placed with employers through our temp agency or working directly for us delivering leaflets or packing condoms into sexual health kits, for example. It starts the motors stirring. Even rough sleepers and current drug users come away thinking: 'So I CAN work'. Our temps who we've placed soon want more hours, even if they lose out on their benefits. The guys (gender non-specific) using our walk-in centres get focussed, motivated and active in job search.

Lights go on.

And on.

And stay on.

"Can we directly link how we reactivate and re-energise job seekers to the vision of you environmentalists?" I ask.

What if our temps are delivering easy to read publications to people on low incomes (and everyone else for that matter) on ways to reduce utility bills? What if they spread the word in their own communities? What if we train up 50 job seekers in the skills required to help households install low energy products? What if they're available to do the lugging and hauling to get the solar panels to the rooves? What if some have the technical skills to fit the kit?

Lights go on across Bristol.

In communities. Within families. Within people.

On the Contrary

My brother invited me to a corporate do for a major pharmaceutical sales company. I expected it to be the antithesis of the events I've been used to in the past 15+ years; campaigning launches, charity AGMs and social enterprise conferences, by and large. And it was a departure in many respects, mainly on account of the budget, but it turns out drugs reps are human too and the conversations were not so radically different. I realised how, whoever I'm talking to, whatever their background, I'm playing devil's advocate.

I got chatting to the first guy I met, Pete, after getting picked up. He was a really friendly bloke and we were just making small talk about their business and then my line of work. I explained how we were a business, looking to make our own money to reinvest, but aiming to make a real impact on the lives of unemployed and financially excluded people.

'We're in a similar business, then.' Pete said, enthusiastically.

It was my brother who filled the surprised silence with a surprised 'Really?'.

'Yeah. We save lives. That's our business.'

'But you could hardly say we're not for profit. Not in any way. Everything is about profit.' Whatever approach my brother takes to his obviously highly effective sales pitch, diplomacy and toeing the line are clearly not his style.

At this point, I should point out that we'd been flown to Italy for a weekend-long, all expenses paid, awards trip to the high flyers (best sellers) in the company. We were on route from Pisa airport to the 4- or 5-star hotel on the coast. This is also as good a point as any to mention that Pete, we later realised, was the host of the whole event. So, here I was set up in opposition to everything the company stood for - not something I'd intended but with hindsight maybe it was inevitable.

(One Christmas a few years back when I worked at The Big Issue, the family was talking about jobs. My mum was working for Boots when it suddenly occurred to me what a rounded group of careers we'd chosen. I pointed out that when it comes to testing and marketing new drugs: One tested them, one sold them, and I campaigned against them.' More recently, in diabetic older age, my dad's joined the party and seems to have started taking his fair share of them.)

So, at the Gala dinner on Saturday night my brother and I were particularly proud that we'd got a mention in Pete's speech as he defended how the company 'looks after patients first, then the profits follow'. We congratulated ourselves for making an impact at least, ('raising his profile', my brother called it), and then decided that if all else fails, Clean Slate should at least be able to help my brother find a new job.

It was probably a bit ill-advised after all the free booze but we decided to call Pete over. I wanted to set the story straight. I'm not anti-profit - far from it. Chasing it makes social enterprises dynamic, responsive and good value. It's just we don't pass it onto individuals or splash out tens or hundreds of thousands on events like this one.

In fact, when I'm out with public sector managers, it's normally me extolling the virtues of chasing a surplus, business performance disciplines and staff engagement. These are all things that this Italian jaunt was about - although I did point out to my brother that their drugs might save lives, but could maybe save more lives if they didn't spend quite so much on reward trips, bonuses and share dividends. (Few social enterprises also have to disguise the business they work in for fear of violent reprisals from activists, although The Big Issue did receive some very threatening letters from animal rights groups.)

I'm always seen to be on the other side of the fence. I quite like that position but it disguises the pragmatism of social enterprise and how much it shares with both corporate business and the public and not-for-profit sectors. It raises the bar and, as I said, people in big business are human too and if you sew the slightest seed of doubt (if only about perception), sometimes it can lead to Nescafe or Cadbury's Fair Trade coffee or chocolate.

Not sure there will ever be a drugs company that will satisfy everyone's interpretation of ethical or even social enterprise but the weekend got me thinking. My brother and I also acknowledged that private sector companies of all types could apply this rather US-interpretation of social business; waste disposal (public health and sanitation), book publishers (literacy) and even, god help us, the banks (wealth creation - if you have any money in the first place, at least). So, for the time being, I'm happy to offer the voice of dissent.

Careful What You Wish For

Now the pressure's on. That saying 'Be careful what you wish for because it might come true' is constantly in my mind. Clean Slate has, to an extent, being playing the long game, and just maybe it's going to come off. But all at once.

There's still only a core team of three - soon to be three and a half, courtesy of the Bath Abbey money. But last Thursday a commission was confirmed for us to start a schools outreach programme, employing, training and supporting an ex-homeless person as a public speaker to up to 5,000 15 and 16 year olds. And Friday, a call came in from a key employer confirming their Board's approval to help us create 10 paid work placements for our Temp Workers across their business. The heat is on.

So, the idea remains to place so-called unemployable people into paid work with mainstream employers. We act as a temp agency. We match unemployed people, based on their interests, strengths and job goals, with the placements available. But unlike Reed and Manpower, we act as an extra pair of hands overseeing the placement, supporting supervisors through hiccups that may inevitably come up and providing training and development opportunities behind the scene. Of course, there's a mark up between the workers pay and the charge we make per hour but that won't be money for nothing. The premium will be well-earned but there's no doubt we're asking employers to take a leap of faith.

When I worked at The Big Issue, we found most new readers of the magazine bought it originally out of support both for the vendor and the organisation. Even my own mother said: 'But once you look inside, it's actually quite good, isn't it!' The hope is that Clean Slate will open doors the same way.

When we say 'mainstream employers', a lot of our contacts breathe a sigh of relief thinking we mean 'private sector'. But it's the public and third sector we're looking to first - they're still employers. (Public sector bodies are often the largest in local areas.) So we've had an in principle 'yes' from one local authority, a housing association and a local faith-based organisation. Between them pledging 14 placements. Now we have to convert these pledges to action.
I'm imagining each of those placements bringing their own challenges but with Clean Slate in the background each individual gets two managers. Sounds intensive but when people have been set adrift with only the Job Centre for support and guidance, there's potentially a whole lot of work to be done before workers feel trusted and trusting, confident and competent. And that will apply to many of our customers too, when it comes to getting the best out of workless people.

In theory, if each placement enjoys the full support of two managers and two organisations, and if the Temp Worker can find the wherewithal to make all that support work for them, the hourly rate will be justified in spades. Our small team should find itself complemented by the efforts of our workforce of Temp Workers - some 40-50 strong. And added to by the staff teams at each of our customers workplaces. So, rather than feel daunted by the opportunities, we should soon be able to feel less like a unit of three and a half and more like a team of dozens.

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.

Good Vibrations

It seemed like a good idea at the time. It is a good idea. But sometimes you have to be careful what you wish for.

What we’re wishing for is two or three employers to take on a couple of unemployed people. This has been a long time in the planning. Six years or more during which we’ve piloted one business that employs people who are homeless, in recovery, ex-offenders or just long-time out of work. We’ve raised the funding, written the plan, done the research. In that order. Arse upwards. It’s what social entrepreneurs call ‘organic’.

Anyway, the research meant we could prove that we knew what we were talking about. We gathered responses from people with so-called workless backgrounds in the Bath area. We know about their job aspirations. And we know what is holding them back. (Download the report, Aspiring to More, at http://www.cleanslateltd.co.uk)

Our big idea is to be a temp agency for unemployable people. So we need to know what employers think. Would they ever in a million years take someone on with a history of offending, homelessness or drug misuse? Or in what circumstances? We really believe many jobless people will step up to the mark once the opportunity is placed before them.

The feedback was encouraging and a couple of possible employers emerged and, slightly greedy for more, we asked those contacts to ask their contacts.

It was difficult to tell whether one email response was apologetic, sympathetic but frustrated or a simple ‘no’. It was a shame because warehouse work is probably a good place to start for some of our guys. And it would be great to have our first employer placement in the hard-nosed, no-nonsense private sector. Someone to stand on a pedestal and sing our praises. But the UK Sex Toy Superstore?

It’s not what I imagined.

Luckily or unluckily, the ‘no’ was still a ‘no’. It turns out that not only would they not want to take someone on with a criminal record, they were still smarting after their own robbery a year ago. ‘Thieves create a buzz’ was the headline after burglars swiped ‘six boxes of used sex toys’. I know, I know, that’s too much information but the salient point I wanted to make is that it goes to show that employers are already contending with the issues that some of our Temp Workers will have. This one may not be the best example but how many businesses already unwittingly employ ex-offenders, problem drinkers, and staff with mental health problems. Why does it seem like such a leap to knowingly take someone on with any of those issues, especially if it’s confronted and dealt with?

Still, I think we got off lightly. The sex toy warehouse might not have been the most advantageous first placement. But still, I can’t help feeling we got told where to stick it.