Around 350 charity organisations have signed up to boycott the community work placement part of the government’s workfare programme, including 13 councils and a selection of homelessness charities.
According to Inside Housing:
The Keep Volunteering Voluntary campaign has said that 345 organisations have agreed to boycott the programme, including Your Homes Newcastle Youth Voice, Shelter, Shelter Cymru and Swansea Young Single Homeless Project.
Union Unite has also signed up and, through its Unite Against Workfare campaign, has already secured agreements from several councils that they will not take workfare placements. These councils have said they will also encourage contractors to do the same.
The 13 councils that have signed up at present are: Barking and Dagenham, Brent, Burnley, Edinburgh, Ipswich, Islington, Lambeth, Norwich, South Tyneside, St Helens, Sunderland, Thurrock and Wakefield.
The scheme is part of the government’s help to work programme under which participants must either sign on at a Jobcentre every day, take up a training course or carry out a six-month, 30-hour-a-week placement.
The KVV said opposition to the scheme may have led to the community work placement element being delayed. The help to work scheme was launched on 28 April, and these placements should have already begun, according to the campaign.
A spokesperson for the Department for Work and Pensions said: ‘Referrals to the placements have begun and the placements will begin shortly. There has been no delay. Charities are under no obligation to be in the scheme, but those who are recognise the benefits of it.’