Programme

Registration and Networking

Chair’s Opening Remarks:

Opening Keynote: Getting Britain working – Toward a single ‘Work Programme’

• Detailing plans to cut taxes on new jobs created by entrepreneurs, and to reduce business taxes and regulations

• Impact of 21st Century Welfare on moving people into work whilst withdrawing benefits at a single, more reasonable rate as people start to earn more money

• Reducing the scope for fraud and error by making the benefits system simpler
• Building a new British economic model with savings and business investment as the bedrock of prosperity
• Replacing back-to-work programmes, such as FND and Pathways to Work, with an integrated ‘Work Programme’
• Making the benefits system less complex by implementing long-term community projects for those unable to find work to help them get back into a working environment
• Understanding the three year ‘Get Britain Working’programme
• Providing ‘work pairings’ of sole traders with young people at risk of becoming ‘NEETs’.
• Proposing ‘differential pricing’ where providers earn more for helping those furthest from the labour market
• Support for more workplace apprenticeships, including a £2,000 bonus for each apprenticeship at a small or medium-sized enterprise (SME)
• Introducing a £60 million Business Skills Development Fund to promote non-apprenticeship skills that businesses need and employees want
• Getting the five million plus people living on benefits into work and out of poverty

Questions and Answers

Sponsor Presentation

Andrew Dutton, Executive Director, A4e (CONFIRMED)

Case Study: Birmingham Skills for Enterprise and Employability Network

• Offering graduates a diverse package of support to meet their needs and increase employment in Birmingham and the West Midlands region
• Providing a much-needed facility for business support and skills development
• Supporting incubator space, wage subsidy and consultancy support through the use of graduate skills advisers
• Partnering with the universities of Aston, Birmingham and Birmingham City to run new projects
• Facilitating partnerships between universities and businesses to create employment opportunities for students and graduates
• Comprehensive support for those who have a nascent business or viable business idea
• Utilising the Graduate Enterprise Skills programme which offers information, training and advice to graduates, new entrepreneurs, universities and businesses

Invitation extended to: Jack Glonek, Assistant Director of Investment, Enterprise and Employment, Birmingham City Council

Tackling the Unemployment Challenge with Skills for Growth

• Skills for Growth – One Year On
• Promoting skills for economic prosperity in modern Britain
• Effects of skills policy for the recovery and the growth of the UK economy
• Examining the effectiveness and efficiency of public spending on skilling
• Building a joint commitment on delivering the Skills Pledge across public services
• Helping to revitalise local communities and deliver sustainable skills required by workers and the economy over the long-term
• Determining what jobs would be created in the future and their necessary skills
• Creating skilled people for technology focused jobs
• Emphasising continuous professional development with a focus on employability skills such literacy, numeracy and communication
• Assessing the potential for the Skills Funding Agency and Young People’s Learning Agency
• Supporting the delivery of the Government ‘s Employment and Skills £1-1.5 billion budget
• Structuring a coherent programme that encompasses all schemes for business take-up in the automotive and steel sectors along with the six BIS schemes

The Role of the Private Sector in Increasing Employment Opportunities

• Measures designed to encourage businesses to create jobs
• Examples from integration programmes of how to work with private sector
• Improving job search facilities and safeguarding flexibility for businesses to adapt to labour market
• Changing the boundaries between public and private welfare
• Comparing risk associated with public and private sector procurement
• Infrastructure procurement: delivering value and strengthening long-term partnerships between private and public sector 
• Impact of private sector on increasing apprenticeships
• Launching the 10 key procurement for growth principles with Building Britain's Future: New Industry, New Jobs agenda
• Increasing the skills for regeneration of industries which have been hit hard during the recession

PresentationSponsored by BabcockEnterprise

Debbie Francis, Director, Employability and Careers, BabcockEnterprise(CONFIRMED)

Questions and Answers

Morning Coffee Break and Networking

Seminar Session I

Lunch Break and Networking

Seminar Session II

Afternoon Coffee Break and Networking

Encouraging and Facilitating Employment Opportunities for Individuals with Mental Health Problems and Learning Disabilities

• From diagnoses to workforce integration: helping  people with mental health and learning disabilities into meaningful and sustained employment
• Developing employment targets to get those with learning disabilities back to work
• Helping people with learning disabilities or mental health issues in their job search
• Bridging the gap between the disabling effect of mental health problems and gainful employment
• Preparing job focus  targets rather than general training and ongoing support at work
• Analysing vocational intervention and individual placement and support (IPS) as a cost-effective alternative on an individual level to prevocational training or sheltered work
• Ensuring people with learning disabilities are supported into full-time paid work
• Reshaping the Access to Work programme to ensure it better meets the needs of people with mental health conditions and learning disabilities
• Implementing Work Choice initiatives to get disabled people into work

Reducing Youth Unemployment by Expanding Apprenticeships

• Expanding apprenticeships to create new jobs to ensure this generation is not a lost generation
• Analysing  personalised national programmes 'Backing Young Britain’ and the ‘Future Jobs Fund’ in the context of various reports and studies seeking to identify barriers to employment and suggesting strategies for generating sustainable jobs
• Creating a new generation of Technical Schools with academy status to equip people with high-tech skills from the age of 14, and also provide young people with skills to achieve a low-carbon economy
• Reducing the proportion of 16 to 18 year-olds not in education, employment or training (NEET)
• Investing an extra £450m to extend the Future Jobs Fund while also supporting the Young Person's Guarantee which offers, until 2012, all under 24 year-olds six months work or training
• Tackling  youth unemployment, including the introduction of the diploma qualification in England and its emphasis on workplace skills
• Partnering with universities to take action to support local employers, students and individuals
• Focusing on youth apprenticeship as a learning system that prepares students for work by giving them a combination of classroom instruction and paid on-the-job training
• Engaging unemployment and anti-social behaviour in Redcar,  giving dozens of young people a fresh start in life

Partnership Working – Welfare to Work and the Potential for charities, voluntary and community groups and social enterprises

• The commitment in the Queen's speech to enhance the role of charities, voluntary groups and social enterprises in public services
• The Reform of the Commissioning Process to enable more sector organisations to offer innovative solutions to support people into employment
• Tackling barriers in the procurement process to help sector organisations to compete on a level playing field with organisations from the private and public sectors
• Plans to establish the Big Society Bank
• Diversifying supply by ensuring that smaller suppliers have access
• Working towards longer-term contracts

Panel Discussion: Looking Forward – Welfare to Work to 2020

• Latest updates about pilot initiatives set to start on October 2010
• Appraising employment opportunities in relation to the 2012 Olympics
• Latest changes in valuing employment and significance of quality framework on the workforce and sustainable employment
• Progress of Flexible New Deal and how it will affect long-term employment
• Local government’s role in the mobility of finding work and skill matching
• Understanding the importance of Local Employment Partnerships
• Effects of the global unemployment crisis
• Importance of health and well being for long term employment
• Improve worker well-being and workplace performance
• Impact of cuts to the Adult learning centres upon welfare and the disappointment that the jobs guarantee has not been extended to older workers
• Universities’ agendas and leaving universities with employability
• £35m enterprise fund to help university-launched businesses
• Risk and opportunities from the trade union perspective, and on partnerships for the Rapid Response Service with Jobcentre Plus, Local Authorities, partners and Regional Development Agencies
• Providing high-level assessments of current and future skill needs by the first National Skills Audit agenda
• Effectiveness of knowledge sharing between business and higher education
• Effects of the Regeneration and Renewal of the sectors which are hot by the recession to employment rates

Conference Close