Ethnic minority outreach: an evaluation

Abstract

The EMO pilot started in April 2002.As part of New Deal Next Phase, it was designed to be implemented through a range of projects located within communities, and to work with local Jobcentres and other providers or agencies to respond to a diverse range of needs through various provisions.In summary, these have been designated as:• outreach based provision (approach 1);• employer focused provision (approach 2); and• positive action training (approach 3).Projects were invited to design and submit bids which would address different aspects or combinations of these approaches, and to specify the ethnic minority groups which they anticipated working with.PSI's evaluation covered the first two years of EMO, and involved quantitative analysis of MI data on participants and employers, and qualitative depth interviews with participants, providers and other stakeholders.Twenty EMO providers were sampled for the qualitative research.Interviews with project managers were carried out in early autumn 2002, winter 2002 and winter 2003.The evaluation included 148 initial depth interviews with clients, chosen to be representative of the range of people using the provision.Interviews with other stakeholders included front-line Jobcentre Plus staff, employers, and referral agencies.For the five projects using Approach 2 methods, 271 employers were recorded on the database to March 2004.These were typically small businesses (50 employees or less).Projects developed a working relationship with 53 per cent of employers and remained in contact with 88 per cent of these.For more than half the employers, data on employment take-up was missing.Where recorded, 26 per cent of employers had taken on an EMO client.For the 18 projects using Approach 1 and/or Approach 3 methods 3,962 participants were recorded on the database.58 per cent were Asian or Asian British, 44 per cent Indian and 24 per cent Black or Black British.Data on benefit status, qualifications Summary There were some issues common to almost all EMO providers.These included capacity issues, implementation problems and issues relating to the administration and management of the pilot.Many of these have now been addressed, but some affected delivery for most of the initial two years.Approach 1 and 3 providers were anxious to continue working with people furthest from the labour market, but needed additional outcome measures to make this financially viable.Approach 2 providers felt that they needed links with clients, in order to attract employers.Those providing diversity and consultancy training, without a client base, found it harder to recruit employers, and this provision also sat oddly within a mainly customer-facing pilot. SummaryFollowing the Department for Work and Pension's (DWP) call for projects to bid for EMO, 52 proposals were funded to start providing EMO in April 2002.Projects were asked to select a series of targets or outcomes to reach each year, by which their 'success' was measured.These were relatively standardised in comparison to the

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 23 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.