The world is in commotion. The outbreak of Covid-19, with its lockdowns and social distancing constraints, has left millions of people facing the devastating prospect of unemployment.

During this commotion, many excellent charities have been helping people to look for lasting work. While capacity was stretched and funding was harder to come by, there was also an opportunity to help rebuild local ‘ecosystems’ and to make them work much better than before. With some good faith and imagination, we can continue to introduce more effective approaches to partnership working, which can lead to a reduction in unemployment and better outcomes for hard-pressed individuals and their families.

As we move forward, central and local government commissioners and charities need to find better ways to coordinate funding for employment, health and skills related support. In my view, the best way to deliver this would be through combined ‘Personal Employment Accounts’.

These are carefully managed arrangements, whereby a capped budget is allocated to an individual. With the help of a ‘key worker’, the individual can then use this budget to ‘buy’ the right services for them. These services would include counselling, travel fares, childcare, work clothes, or help with any other reasonable costs that are acting as barriers to work and learning.

However, employability isn’t delivered in isolation of other factors. A diverse range of services, including charities, need to be able to work flexibly and responsively together, to meet people’s and employers’ needs, especially during these complex and challenging times.

This could be enabled by comprehensively ‘mapping’ all of the existing providers of employment support in an area. This map would enable members of the ‘ecosystem’ to be identified and involved in improving and coordinating holistic support models.

Read the full article about addressing unemployment during COVID-19 by Mark Cosens at NPC.