The charity sector doesn’t seem to have much to say about the government’s new “workfare” scheme, announced last week, that will see 6,000 unemployed 18 to 24-year-olds required to work unpaid for 30 hours a week.
However, like it or not, it is the sector’s problem. The terms “voluntary organisation” and “charity” were being bandied about liberally by the government during the launch. They’re giving a pretty clear impression that they plan for many or most of these placements to be in the voluntary sector.
Time will tell whether most placements are with charities, or whether they are actually in Tesco and Poundland, and the government is just borrowing a little of the halo effect around the sector.
Time will also tell on the government’s promise that every placement will be of genuine benefit to the community, as it has promised. I don’t hold out much hope.
In short, even if charities don’t get involved in “workfare”, they will have to think about how it affects the sector’s reputation.
Actually providing workfare placements – as a number of the big fundraising organisations still do – may need even more thought.
It certainly offers cheap labour and it may actually even help the person who gets a placement, but it also strongly associates the organisation with a controversial policy, which a lot of the sector’s natural supporters – and the sector’s beneficiaries – are quite strongly opposed to.
There are also many organisations in the sector that are opposed to it, because they feel it has a negative effect on their own beneficiaries – those suffering from mental health issues, from long-term illness, and from learning disabilities, young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. The highest-profile of these opponentsis Oxfam, which has said it will not support unpaid work placements for people threatened with the loss of benefits, in any of its shops, because it feels that it harms its own beneficiaries – those in poverty.
There are many who feel it humiliates and stigmatises the poor, and there is a strong possibility that those who get involved risk some reputational damage.