Recommendation 5

The Department does not monitor properly how well employers are supporting Kickstart participants. The Department pays £1,500 per Kickstart participant to employers to fund set-up costs and employability support for Kickstart participants, which it hopes will make participants more employable in the future. However, it does not specify or offer detailed guidance or signposting on what employers should provide for this money and does not routinely collect data on what they actually do provide. Additionally, where employers are involved with the Kickstart Scheme through a Gateway, this funding goes directly to the Gateway and the Department has no visibility of how the money is distributed to employers, or how Gateways apply checks on employers they manage. The Department was interested in whether it could have given more leeway to allow gateways to hold back the £1,500 employability support payments until employers demonstrated it would be spent wisely, speaking about this in the context of the planned evaluation. The Department does investigate specific, potentially serious concerns that its staff or young people raise, and also has a team of Kickstart District Account Managers who discuss job quality and employability support with employers and Gateways. However, information from these discussions is not collated centrally, and the Department seemed to be overly reliant on anecdotes and to lack the tighter metrics and data to assure itself that that the scheme is working as intended. When the Department finds out that an employer is providing no employment support to a young person, or employment support that is not up to scratch, it is not clear that it is able to claw back the £1,500 it has given them to provide this support. Recommendation: The Department should set out clear and specific expectations from employers and Gateways to ensure that Kickstart participants get the experience and the employability support that they have been promised, and it 8 DWP Emplo