Recommendation 4

Work coaches decide which young people will benefit most from Kickstart but the Department has no way of knowing if they refer the right people to employers. DWP Employment Support: Kickstart Scheme 7 The Kickstart Scheme is available to young people, who are on Universal Credit and whom a jobcentre work coach believes is at risk of long-term unemployment. The Department did not set firm rules to target the scheme, such as rules over how long someone has been receiving Universal Credit, or levels of educational qualifications, and instead relies on individual work coaches to decide based on their understanding of the claimants’ needs and circumstances. The National Audit Office has reported that this work coach discretion is central to the Department’s wider employment support offer, and whilst this person-centric approach is welcome the lack of structured monitoring of how work coaches are helping people towards work means the Department cannot know if it is providing a consistently high quality service to all claimants. The Department has completed only occasional, ad hoc analysis of Kickstart participants’ characteristics, such as their ethnicity or educational attainment to try to understand how the scheme has been targeted. Recommendations: The Department should use management information to monitor and manage how work coaches are deciding what support would work best for different claimants. The Department should also implement our previous recommendation, which it accepted, to publish a full evaluation of how well its work coaches provide employment support and how consistently they apply their judgement, by December 2022.