Working Links (formally Working Links (Employment) Limited) was a British outsourcing subcontractor established in 2000 as a public, private and voluntary company that provided
welfare
Welfare may refer to:
Philosophy
*Well-being (happiness, prosperity, or flourishing) of a person or group
* Utility in utilitarianism
* Value in value theory
Economics
* Utility, a general term for individual well-being in economics and decision ...
services and help with
employability
Employability refers to the attributes of a person that make that person able to gain and maintain employment.
Overview
Employability is related to work and the ability to be employed, such as:
*The ability to gain initial employment; hence the ...
. It was acquired by the investment group Aurelius in June 2016.
Originally specialising in welfare-to-work, Working Links diversified into other areas of subcontracting of the public sector including the
Probation Service
Probation in criminal law is a period of supervision over an offender, ordered by the court often in lieu of incarceration. In some jurisdictions, the term ''probation'' applies only to community sentences (alternatives to incarceration), suc ...
. Their turnover grew from £63 million in 2006 to £123 million in 2012.
Despite having had £1 billion of contracts, Working Links went into administration in February 2019.
In 2012 company was the subject of fraud allegations made by its former chief auditor Eddie Hutchinson. Working Links denied the allegations, stating that they have "a zero-tolerance approach to fraud and rigorous processes in place to handle any suspected incidents of fraud or other misconduct." The
Department for Work and Pensions
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is a Departments of the Government of the United Kingdom, ministerial department of the Government of the United Kingdom. It is responsible for welfare spending, welfare, pensions and child maintenance ...
stated that the "allegations all relate to programmes run by the previous government" and that they have measures in place to prevent fraud.
History
Working Links was established in 2000 at the height of
New Labour
New Labour is the political philosophy that dominated the history of the British Labour Party from the mid-late 1990s to 2010 under the leadership of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. The term originated in a conference slogan first used by the ...
by the
Shareholder Executive,
Manpower
Human resources (HR) is the set of people who make up the workforce of an organization, business sector, industry, or economy. A narrower concept is human capital, the knowledge and skills which the individuals command. Similar terms include ...
, and
Ernst & Young Consulting. Ernst & Young Consulting merged with Gemini Consulting, a branch of
Cap Gemini
Capgemini SE is a French multinational information technology (IT) services and consulting company, headquartered in Paris, France.
History
Capgemini was founded by Serge Kampf in 1967 as an enterprise management and data processing company. Th ...
, to form Cap Gemini Ernst & Young. Cap Gemini Ernst & Young was renamed
Capgemini
Capgemini SE is a French Multinational corporation, multinational information technology (IT) services and consulting company, headquartered in Paris, France.
History
Capgemini was founded by Serge Kampf in 1967 as an enterprise management and d ...
in 2004. The charity
Mission Australia
Mission Australia is a national Christian charity that provides a range of community services throughout Australia. It has its roots in the Brisbane sector of The British and Foreign Bible Society’s sub-committee, The Colporteur Society (1869), ...
acquired a share of the company in 2006, rendering Working Links the first public, private and voluntary organisation in the UK.
European investment fir
Aureliusacquired Working Links for an undisclosed sum in June 2016.
It had contracts for welfare-to-work under New Labour's Employment Zones, Pathways to Work, Progress to Work,
New Deal
The New Deal was a series of wide-reaching economic, social, and political reforms enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States between 1933 and 1938, in response to the Great Depression in the United States, Great Depressi ...
, New Deal for Disabled People, Work Choice, ESF Family Support and the later
Flexible New Deal which was initially continued by the coalition, before being replaced by the
Work Programme
The Work Programme (WP) was a UK government Workfare in the United Kingdom, welfare-to-work programme introduced in Great Britain in June 2011. It was the flagship welfare-to-work scheme of the Cameron–Clegg coalition, 2010–2015 UK coalition g ...
, and the subsequent seven different welfare-to-work schemes of the early-2010s, all of which involved
workfare
Workfare is a governmental plan under which welfare recipients are required to accept public-service jobs or to participate in job training. Many countries around the world have adopted workfare (sometimes implemented as "work-first" policies) t ...
.
Of the seven schemes now four, Working Links was a subcontractor for them all and a 'Placement Provider' for workfare in several. The schemes being: the short-lived
community work placements (2014–15), the
Community Action Programme,
Mandatory Work Activity,
Work Experience
Work may refer to:
* Work (human activity), intentional activity people perform to support themselves, others, or the community
** Manual labour, physical work done by humans
** House work, housework, or homemaking
** Working animal, an ani ...
, the
Work Programme
The Work Programme (WP) was a UK government Workfare in the United Kingdom, welfare-to-work programme introduced in Great Britain in June 2011. It was the flagship welfare-to-work scheme of the Cameron–Clegg coalition, 2010–2015 UK coalition g ...
,
Sector Based Work Academies, and
Traineeships.
In 2011, Working Links won three contract package areas to deliver the
Coalition government
A coalition government, or coalition cabinet, is a government by political parties that enter into a power-sharing arrangement of the executive. Coalition governments usually occur when no single party has achieved an absolute majority after an ...
's new
Work Programme
The Work Programme (WP) was a UK government Workfare in the United Kingdom, welfare-to-work programme introduced in Great Britain in June 2011. It was the flagship welfare-to-work scheme of the Cameron–Clegg coalition, 2010–2015 UK coalition g ...
. This made Working Links the third largest Work Programme provider in the UK. The three contracts acquired were the South West, Wales and Scotland and, as of May 2012, received around £120 million a year from the DWP and various other governmental bodies.
14 February 2019 Message from Working Links staff 'As of today Working Links has entered administration – you may see this on the news. As a result of this all operations have been ceased with immediate effect.'
Shortly after this the company came back and now known as 'Links to Work'.
Work Programme
Working Links claimed to have had more than 62,000 unemployed claimants referred to i
62,000 people find a jobthrough the Work Programme
Working Links referred the most cases for financial sanctions (11,910) to be taken against welfare recipients amongst Work Programme suppliers between June 2011 and January 2012.
["David Cameron's back-to-work firms want benefits cut more often", ]The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...
, Daniel Boffey, 30 June 201
/ref>
Richard Whittell from Corporate Watch said the Work Programme appeared to be focused on slashing benefit rather than putting people into work. "These figures give the lie to the government's claims its welfare reforms are about helping people into work".
:"By the time it's finished, more people will have been sanctioned by the Work Programme than properly employed through it. Every month thousands of people are having their only source of income stopped and being pushed into hardship. Companies like Serco
Serco Group plc is a British multinational corporation, multinational military, defence, Healthcare, health, Space industry, space, private prison, justice, Human migration, migration, customer service, customer services, and transport company ...
, Working Links and G4S
G4S is a British multinational private security company headquartered in London, England. The company was set up in July 2004 when London-based Securicor amalgamated with Danish firm Group 4 Falck. The company offers a range of services, in ...
may not be very good at finding people suitable work, but they're dab hands at punishing them. The private firms say they make their referrals to job centres in line with government guidelines."
Despite being itself an outsourcing subcontractor, Working Links subcontracted its own contracts to companies such as Triage and Routes To Work in North Lanarkshire. The BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...
broadcast a documentary in which five former employees of Triage claimed that disabled and jobless people processed by the company were referred to as LTB's (Lying Thieving Bastards). A spokesman for Working Links said "We work with a number of subcontractors all of whom go through a stringent vetting and approval process. We take any allegations of poor practice seriously and will be looking into matters further."
Transforming Rehabilitation
In 2015, Working Links was awarded contracts to run three Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs) as part of the government's Transforming Rehabilitation reforms with the aim of cutting reoffending.
Under the reforms, probation services were split into two with the National Probation Service managing high risk offenders and CRCs managing low and medium risk offenders.
Working Links was responsible for the delivery of CRCs in Wales; Dorset, Devon and Cornwall; and Bristol, Gloucestershire, Somerset and Wiltshire.
CRC Service Rated as "Inadequate"
In November 2018, HM Inspectorate of Probation rated services of the Dorset, Devon and Cornwall CRC as "inadequate", the lowest possible rating. Before the report on this inspection was published, the Chief Inspector of Probation, Dame Glenys Stacey, advised the government that intervention was necessary, the first time she had taken this course of action.
Findings of the report includes:
* Staff were under-recording the number of riskier cases because of commercial pressures.
* The professional ethics of staff had been "compromised" because of financial imperatives.
* Workloads of some staff were "unconscionable".
* Sentence plans for offenders were being completed by staff, without them having met the offender.
In the report on the Dorset, Devon and Cornwall CRC, the Chief Inspector Dame Glenys Stacy wrote:"The professional ethos of probation has buckled under the strain of the commercial pressures put upon it here, and it must be restored urgently".
She added:"...effort is focused disproportionately on reducing the risk of any further contractual (financial) penalty. For some professional staff, workloads are unconscionable. Most seriously, we have found professional ethics compromised and immutable lines crossed because of business imperatives."
Allegations of fraud
In May 2011 a former auditor of Working Links claimed that the level of fraud at Working Links escalated to "a farcical situation" and was "endemic" but that he faced a "stonewall" from managers. Mr Hutchinson said he had encountered "a multi-billion-pound scandal", after working for Working Links and A4e in the welfare-to-work industry. Working Links said: "We firmly reject any assertion of widespread fraud within our business."["Liam Byrne: 'IDS has been asleep at the wheel over A4e", ''Telegraph'', 24 May 201]
/ref>
The Department for Work and Pensions ruled that all allegations had been investigated at the time an
no further action was needed
See also
* Transforming Rehabilitation
References
External links
Official Website
''For the record: Working Links'', Guardian 23 August 2009
''How Labour has radically changed employment services'', Guardian, 3 March 2010
''Auditors to tell MPs of fraud ignored at welfare-to-work firms'', Guardian, 21 May 2012
* ttps://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9286323/Welfare-to-work-fraud-scandal.html ''Welfare to work 'fraud scandal, Telegraph, 23 May 2012
''Profile: Working Links and A4e'', Telegraph 23 May 2012
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Companies based in Sheffield
Companies based in Middlesbrough
Welfare in the United Kingdom
Department for Work and Pensions
Workfare in the United Kingdom