Last time I blogged about how Clean Slate is about re-activating people and how unemployment and the welfare system itself actively switches people off. Since then I met Tom.

Actually, before I met Tom we had an in-house training day. I wanted to double-check everything I have been saying was reflected in all our offices' day to day experience. And I wanted to ensure our committed team - largely made up of former workless people themselves - had the best skills to do the job of re-activating people. So, we ran the day, breaking it down into listening skills, an introduction to our new Job Readiness MOT, and quality standards.

The first workshop was amusing. People paired up to discuss an event one of them held dear. A director, Carole, was describing her daughter's wedding that she'd effectively run. She went into the detail of the challenges, the hiccups, the stress of it all. Obviously slow on the uptake, I was shocked to see her counterpart looking around the room and then start rolling a fag. It didn't occur to me that this was his task in the role play and shame on me for thinking he'd do that. (Carole didn't let on but I swear she'd have been ready to tear him off a strip.)

So when I sat down to meet with Tom it was fresh in my mind that I wasn't there to talk to him but to listen. In particular, we needed to revamp his CV.
Tom speaks five languages fluently and two more passably. He's worked in security, translated for a legal firm, volunteered for Lambeth council, been homeless through relationship breakdown. It's easy to talk about the past. Like talking about the weather. Matter of fact. Can't be changed. But then we got down to reading between the lines.

It turned out the voluntary work was translating for patients and their families in hospitals and the legal work was with people seeking asylum. I imagined how terrifying hospitals must be if you can't speak the language - it's hard enough to know what's going on when we can. We discussed how rewarding Tom found it when families were so grateful to have not only access to information but an advocate. The legal work was with asylum seekers and it turns out Tom was as valuable supporting people who, understandably, feared authority and felt the need to fight for what they need. And we re-built a profile of who Tom is. His CV will be unique to him. He'll come alive in the eyes of employers and he'll be more likely to avoid the reject pile. What's more, Tom began to see himself afresh too.

As we talked and thrashed out how to take his perfectly adequate CV and turn it into a Clean Slate one, it became clearer to me what I wanted. We're called Clean Slate for a reason. It's not much help to job seekers to have them produce a resume; a simple list of where they've been, where they've worked (or not worked), what they've learnt (or not learnt). What they need, and what Clean Slate needs to take to employers and present the latent talent on our books, is a document that shines. It needs to say 'This is who I am', 'This is what I have to offer', and 'This is where I'm going'.

For some, conquering their demons is a positive. I worked with one young woman, Lizzie, who'd spent ten years on drugs since before leaving school. She believed she had nothing to offer employers and less to write up a CV. So we focussed on the future. Again, we're called Clean Slate for a reason. She talked about what gets her going and how hard she worked to turn her life around. She explored the skills she uses to volunteer at Narcotics Anonymous meetings. By the end of session, she's mapped out a CV that left no-one in any doubt what she had to offer. Including Lizzie.

We have a plan for making this the standard delivered in all our offices. More training. More job readiness programmes. More listening. We're ambitious and want to spread around the country so we have to systematise our approach. We're going to have to get good at it: Better than the growing ranks of the competition and good enough to keep re-activating those job seekers.

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.

Torch - Part 1 (Wasting Energy)

So I'm stood in front of the audience at the launch of the Bristol Power Coop. "Imagine I have in my hand a whacking great torch. It's a million candles bright. And I'm switching it on.

"And off.

"And on.

"And off."

Now imagine this torch is one unemployed person. All this latent energy. This potential. This untapped opportunity to light up the path ahead and illliminate the world around. Switched off.

Although the bulb's not shining, the longer the light is off the more the battery drains until there's barely the energy to create any light at all. Feeling unwanted. Then unable. Then unmotivated. Unemployment corrodes. It starts with the individual. Then families. Then communities. And that's where Clean Slate comes in.

I've been to a few events involving benefit claimants over the past year. Their stories are basically the same. They ask the same questions: Why is it Job Centres need doorstaff and why do they always ask what you're doing there? Why do I have to repeat the same personal details to a perfect stranger every time I come in, they're not something I'm proud of? Why am I invariably treated with suspicion as if the likelihood is that I'm cheating the system?

At one event in East London, claimants asked why Job Centres don't just strip claimants naked and be done with it.

At most of the events, the civil servants present said they were disappointed that individual had had a bad experience. At the launch of the European Year of Combating Poverty last year, DWP staff and a minister refuted these were universal experiences. Yet attendees were there from Wales, London, Norfolk and the South West with all the same stories. It would be a lie to call it a listening event.

So, the light goes off again.

Whenever I read another headline about benefit cheats and scroungers, I imagine another light going out. (I remember when I was at The Big Issue, one radio presenter described a colleague of mine as 'representative of the feckless and workshy' - showing just how much journalists know.) Then I see politicians doing the same.

Lodge this in your brain: Next time you hear someone berate the unemployed, imagine another light going out.

Don't get me wrong, the unemployed are not a unified group. There's no solidarity. They're no less likely to judge others on benefits than anyone else.They're switching the lights off too.

Nor is it true to say that all jobless people would readily work if they had the chance to. Some don't believe they could. Some can't. Some won't. Some just don't.

And even if they did, many would find themselves so much worse off that they'd be forced to quit. (Bear in mind that, for many, we're talking about £56 on top of the direct cost of rent and council tax each week. The cost to the State may be high but the value to the claimant is low. And the net value of work depends on how high those fixed costs are.) I know. It's tricky to follow. We can't expect journalists to follow that. Or politicians, it seems.

And off.

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.

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.

Blog 2 - No 10

People who know me know I’m not someone to crow about accolades. I’ll happily big up projects I work for and the difference they make but other things come less easily. But friends have persuaded me to get out here about the invitation I’ve received to 10 Downing Street to celebrate Social Enterprise Day with the Prime Minister and a large cohort of other leaders in the field.

And I’m looking for your help.

Most people might be single-mindedly thinking about what they could make of the opportunity. I’m mostly expecting either that I’ll get struck down by swine flu or some international disaster will put paid to the event altogether. I have form on the latter point.

At The Big Issue we spent the first year of my time in London planning its tenth anniversary. It became a focal point for each department in the organisation, pulling together after years without cohesion or much of a shared vision. I banked a lot on it. We lined up a series of three special editions, organised the launch of a Midlands edition and won the favour of news outlets both local and national. The BBC had promised a news segment every night of the week we reached double figures.

There was a real buzz but we feared something would screw it up. What was the killer headline we had to avoid? It was 2001 and the weekend before festivities, every member of staff was under instruction to pray for the good health of the Queen Mum, who’d just turned 101. In fact, we were so concerned, the Big Issue editor asked a respected news journalist whether there were whispers of her demise... which in turn launched a rumour there were fears for her health.

By the date of the anniversary, the Queen Mum was fine. September 10th went tremendously but, for obvious reasons, from the next day on, the rest of our celebrations were somewhat subdued.

So, canapés with Gordon...

While I’m assuming the worst about getting there, I’m not assuming for a moment I’ll have any kind of audience with the PM. But what if? Surely everyone in the room will want to make an impression even though it’s unfeasible any business can be done except between the entrepreneurs in the room. But what if?

How do you think I would make an impression? I’m imagining a 60 second window to reply, profoundly, to one of a number of killer questions. It’s a short list of possible enquiries: What do you do? How did Clean Slate come about? What is the single thing the Government could do to make the biggest impact on social enterprise?

The conversation is a fantasy scenario but I’m intrigued about what YOU think. I think I have the first two covered but what would transform the lot of those of us in business to make a difference? Or for that matter, to change the lives of the people we work with?

Answers on a postcard please, click COMMENT below. Lines close on the 18th November.

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.