Acting ACEVO CEO Peter Kyle has written an open letter to Iain Duncan Smith MP regarding the Government’s announcements on youth unemployment.

Kyle was concerned about the dismissive nature of Duncan Smith's comments about the Future Jobs Scheme.

Duncan Smith described the scheme as a situation that "created only jobs in the public sector," and Kyle expresses his worry that this is a great disservice to the hundreds of sector organisations who supported thousands of potentially vulnerable people via the scheme.

The letter reads in full:

Dear Secretary of State,

After listening to your appearance on Radio 4’s Today programme [Thursday] morning, I thought it worth dropping you a quick note. I was concerned by the following comment:

“The Future Jobs Scheme created only jobs in the public sector and once the money ended those poor young people crashed out of work straight away”

I urge you in future when speaking about the Future Jobs Scheme to acknowledge the vital role of the voluntary sector and to avoid giving the impression that it was solely a scheme aimed at the public sector.

This would be a great disservice to the hundreds of organisations who supported thousands of potentially vulnerable people via the scheme. I realise that your own commitment to voluntary action means that a diservice of this kind is the last thing you would want to perpetuate.

In truth, the Future Jobs Fund enabled the placement of long-term unemployed young people in both the voluntary and local government sector’s. I cannot comment on the effectiveness of placements into the public sector, but I can for the voluntary sector which responded with alacrity.

The sector was involved in developing the policy, organised into consortia to ensure widespread distribution of placements, and relished the opportunity to use the initiative to offer a rich, challenging, and educative experience.

And, of course, such placements into the voluntary sector not only tackled the challenge of youth unemployment and skills development, but also contributed towards positive social change as a result of the extra capacity enabled within voluntary organisations.

The scale of the voluntary sector response was also considerable. One consortia alone, 3SC, which was established from within the charitable sector in order to deliver placements, supported over 5,600 youngsters into work.

As you know we do not have any comprehensive evaluation of just how many of the 6 month placements were either extended at no cost to the tax payer, or how many were converted into full-time jobs, but my members do have considerable anecdotal evidence that both occurred in abundance.

I realise that the Future Jobs Scheme is a political ‘hot potato’. However, I feel obliged to point out that within the voluntary sector it has been widely perceived as a success in delivering vital vocational skills to potentially vulnerable people whilst unlocking potential within non-governmental organisations.

This does not mean that the scheme, or successor schemes, cannot be made more efficient or effective as patently with cooperation between government and the other sectors we could make improvements based on our experience.

Yours sincerely,

Dr Peter Kyle
Acting CEO
ACEVO

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