Guidance

Specialist Employability Support background information note

Updated 25 November 2020

Introduction

This note contains:

• an explanation of the Specialist Employability Support (SES) programme and its aims, including detail on providers that deliver the programme nationally in England, Scotland and Wales
• a description of the process and support provided on the SES programme
• the methodology used to compile the data used in the official statistics

What was Specialist Employability Support?

SES provided contracted employment provision for disabled people with the highest support needs. SES was introduced in September 2015, and complemented the support available through Work Choice and Work Programme.

Both of these programmes have now ended with support provided by the Work and Health Programme for disabled people who expect to find work within 12 months, or through the Intensive Personalised Employment Support programme for disabled people with complex barriers to work, and who work coaches consider to be more than 12 months from the labour market.

SES was intended for customers whose barriers to work meant they were unable to access the support they needed through other provision.

SES was the first contracted provision specifically aimed and offered nationally for this customer group and succeeded funding providing support through 9 Residential Training Colleges.

The SES programme was delivered by contracted providers funded by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). SES main provision referrals were contracted to end between April 2017 and June 2017 with delivery ending August 2017. However, the department negotiated and agreed with all 6 providers to extend referrals to August 2017, and then with 5 of the then 6 providers to extend referrals to October 2018, with delivery of support until December 2018 – February 2019. The department then negotiated with providers to enable referrals up to November 2019, with delivery of support ending in August 2020. Given the effects of COVID-19, and that the programme delivery would naturally end in January 2021, the department worked with Providers to agree an earlier end date.

Participation in the SES programme was entirely voluntary and not dependant on claiming any working age income related benefit. Three (originally 4) providers offered national pan disability support and two providers offered specialist sensory support nationally (one specialist sensory provider also offered pan provision for a short period in 2016 to meet demand).

Pan-disability providers were expected to meet the needs of all participants, including providing specialist support for people with sensory impairments and disability groups with the lowest employment rates in other disabilities and characteristics, such as people with Autism Spectrum Disorder, mental health conditions, learning disabilities, or other hidden impairments.

Sensory Impairment providers are expected to meet the specific support needs of people with visual or hearing impairments where the sensory impairment presented the key barrier to progress back into work.

Prior to the extension from September 2017, there were 2 strands of SES provision:

• SES Start Back (SESSB) – a shorter term provision, lasting up to 6 months, to help disabled people prepare for other larger scale provision (DWP or non-DWP) or in appropriate cases, move directly into employment

• SES Main Provision (SESMP) – intensive, end-to-end employability provision, lasting up to 12 months on average, focused on movement into work – this is for customers whose employment needs are complex and likely to take more than 2 to 3 months to resolve, and are therefore currently prevented from benefitting from other provision or starting work

From the September 2017 extension, Start Back provision was not included separately but providers offered the support that was originally provided in Start Back through Main Provision. This is because providers wanted more time to work with individuals than Start Back allowed. Start Back was included to establish if a shorter intense support offer was beneficial for specific customer group. However, feedback from participants and providers demonstrated that the period of support limited opportunity to prepare participants for work and therefore Start Back was removed from the provision.

The Specialist Employability Support process

Referrals to SES were made by Jobcentre Plus Work Coaches. Work Coaches ensure that only eligible and suitable disabled people are referred to the programme.

Providers were required to offer a detailed needs assessment for each participant upon start on the programme. Work focused Individual Support Plans had to be developed for each participant, and support had to be offered to participants in line with their Individual Support Plans and job goals.

Providers prioritised and tailored their provision to meet the employment needs of the individual and prepare participants for more mainstream provision: either through DWP (such as the Work and Health Programme) or non-DWP.

The support Providers were expected to provide for participants on the programme included the following. This list was not exhaustive:

• help to look ahead to job search and doing the job, and advising on work solutions to facilitate effective performance
• help identifying appropriate networks, charities, advocates etc. to help meet specific employment needs
• work-related independence skills, for example, mobility training, use of assistive technology, arranging work placements or work experience where appropriate
• appropriate medical support throughout the programme, including both physical and mental health support, counselling and mentoring
• helping establish work solutions and providing advice on managing a disability in the workplace; and Advice on engaging in the workplace
• offering of more in-depth personal development programmes tailored to the particular needs of disabled people – these could include programmes such as interview skills and confidence building
• using links with employers local to the individual to arrange work experience, work placements, work experience, in-house experience or work/job shadowing
• working with and acquiring funding if required from social services, healthcare providers, local authorities and the Skills Funding Agency so that where individuals face additional non-disability-related barriers to work such as housing issues, addiction problems, debt and/or long-term unemployment, that can be tackled in a holistic manner – this should enable them to provide a holistic service including, where appropriate, health support (for example, CBT/IAPT), skills training (for example, NVQs) and solutions to social problems (for example, addiction therapy)
• where appropriate, the provider must liaise with Jobcentre Plus, including the Disability Employment Adviser, to assist the individual in gaining any support available through Access to Work

SES provision was flexible in length (on average, up to 12 months, but this was not a cut-off point and by exception SES could be delivered for longer), depending on the individual’s needs, to prepare the individual for work.

Once a participant worked at least 16 hours a week for 13 weeks with no breaks in employment (or, in the case of a self-employed participant, they had traded independently for at least 13 weeks) and not claimed working age income-related benefits (with the exception of Universal Credit) throughout or at the end of the 13 weeks, then it was counted as a Short Job Outcome. The employment period, from which the outcomes were claimed, must have started prior to the end of the SES tracking period.

Once the participant had worked at least 16 hours per week (either employment or self-employment) for a total of at least 26 weeks out of 30 weeks, had no breaks in employment of more than 4 weeks and had not claimed working age income-related benefits (with the exception of Universal Credit) throughout or at the end of the 26 qualifying weeks, then it was counted as a Sustained Job Outcome.

Contracts and providers

SES was delivered by Prime providers nationally across England, Scotland and Wales. Prime Providers could sub-contract with a range of other specialist or niche providers to support disabled people who were eligible and suitable for the programme.

There were originally 6 providers delivering SES but only 5 were extended from September 2017.

Four (then 3) offered PAN disability support:

• Kennedy Scott
• Remploy
• Steps to Employment (until August 2017)
• Shaw Trust

Two offered specialist sensory support:

• Doncaster Deaf Trust
• Royal National College for the Blind

About the Statistics

The SES statistics were an annual series of official experimental statistics containing:

• referrals and starts to the programme
• job outcomes obtained by participants on the programme by the type of job outcome: short and sustained
• cohort analysis showing the proportion of starts that achieve a job outcome over time – these proportions are known as job outcome rates and are provided by type of job outcome
• breakdown of starts and job outcome rates by benefit type and employment history
• Provider level performance showing the number of job outcomes achieved compared to the number expected – this shows the number of job outcomes achieved by each provider from the start of the programme to date expressed as a percentage of the business case expectations. Business case expectations are 30% and 18% of starts leading to a short job outcome and a sustained job outcome respectively. These expectations are combined with monthly starts for each provider and profile of how long it can take to achieve a job outcome to produce the expected number of job outcomes

Where can I get the statistics?

These statistics are available on the Specialist Employability Statistics collection page which also provides the latest release timetable and related information.

Publication dates

This 2020 publication is the last in the series of experimental statistics that have been published annually.

Revisions policy

In accordance with UK Statistics Authority’s Code of Practice for Statistics, statistics within this publication adhere to DWP’s statistics revisions policy, which explains how we will make revisions and inform users of our statistics when they occur.

Every effort has been made to ensure that the quality of these statistics is of the highest standard. However, it may be necessary to revise the statistics in subsequent publications when more complete data becomes available

Retrospection refers to the time period allowed for additional or updated information to be incorporated into DWP’s data systems. Data relating to SES referrals, starts and job outcomes may be corrected, resubmitted or submitted sometime after the actual events occurred. This means that the data presented in each release is subject to some retrospection, and figures may be revised in subsequent releases.

Rounding and suppression policy

To reduce the risk of inferring the identity of a claimant from these statistics, values are rounded to the nearest ten. Values less than 10, when rounded, are suppressed. Therefore, totals may not equal the sum of the individual cells.

Caution is required in the interpretation and comparison of these figures where starts are less than 500. We welcome feedback on this policy.

Methodology and source of the statistics

Information on referrals, starts and job outcomes is obtained from the Provider Referrals and Payments System (PRaP), with job outcomes recorded using the date that providers receive a payment. This in then merged with the DWP’s National Benefit Database to identify any benefits received by individuals four weeks prior to their Specialist Employability Support referral date. This is also merged with earnings data, described below, to identify the proportion of days that were spent in employment in the 2 years prior to starting SES.

The cohort analysis provides the proportion of starts that have achieved a job outcome, both in total and within 18 months for short and sustained job outcomes. The cohort analysis using the 18-month cut-off is used to ensure a fair comparison between cohorts of starts and is used in the statistical publication for this reason. In this analysis, more recent cohorts, where participants that have not yet had 18 months to achieve a job outcome, are not included. The total proportion of starts that have achieved a job outcome is also provided in the tables but should not be used to make comparisons over time.

The employment history of participants is taken from the Work and Pensions Longitudinal Study (WPLS). Historically, WPLS captured details of employment start and end dates taken from P45 and P46 forms submitted by employers. Beginning in April 2013, the P45/P46 reporting system was phased out in favour of the Real Time Information (RTI) system, which requires employers to submit information to HMRC each time an employee is paid.

RTI offers substantial improvements to the P45/P46 system in terms of data coverage, since employers must now provide information on all their employees if even one employee of the company is paid above the Lower Earnings Limit. This improvement has filtered through into the WPLS dataset used in these statistics, which is now populated using information extracted from the RTI system. There are issues with missing start and end dates however, and sole traders are not captured.

Status of the statistics

Experimental statistics

These statistics have been developed using guidelines set out by the UK Statistics Authority, while they undergo evaluation they are labelled as an experimental statistics series, which means it is not assessed as a National Statistic. All official statistics should comply with all aspects of the Code of Practice for Official Statistics. Statistics are awarded National Statistics status following an assessment by the Office for Statistics Regulation.

The Office for Statistics Regulation considers whether the statistics meet the highest standards of Code compliance, including the value they add to public decisions and debate. National Statistics status means that official statistics meet the highest standards of trustworthiness, quality and public value.

Quality statement

The statistics have undergone internal quality assurance.

Feedback

We welcome feedback.

We would welcome any feedback you might have, and would also be particularly interested in knowing how you make use of these data to inform your work and any changes or additions you would like us to consider to improve the way we produce our statistics.

Contact details for the responsible analyst are:

Emine Deviren
Caxton House
Tothill Street
London
SW1H 9NA

Email: emine.deviren@dwp.gov.uk