Welfare Reform Team Evaluation of European Social Fund pilot project 2014-2015

People on JSA who have not found work in 6 months are routinely referred to the
Work Programme by JCP and come off the JSA count. This also takes these people
out of scope for the purposes of our project and further reducing the pool of
candidates available to the project.
The high cost of local housing has made Oxford the least affordable place to live in
the UK with the average house price some 16 times the average earnings of people
living in the city. This has had a knock on effect on the cost of private rented
accommodation, with many residents relocating out of the city to find cheaper
accommodation, reducing the number of people claiming housing benefit in Oxford
and in turn the number of potential candidates to the project.
Customer confidence
In addition to the data required for management information reporting, caseworkers
also asked participants four questions around the key themes of the project and
participants assessed their own relative confidence in each on a scale of 1 – 5, from
1 being very unconfident to 5 being very confident.
The questions were:
1) Is the customer confident they will find work/ more work in next 3 months?
2) Is the customer confident with money management and budgeting?
3) Does the customer feel they can manage monthly payments?
4) Is the customer confident with information technology? Including internet
access, Microsoft Office and online job search?
5
4
5. Very Confident
4. Fairly Confident
3. 50/50
2. Not Confident
1. Very Unconfident
3
2
1
Find Work Financial Mgmt Manage
Payments
Level of Confidence
Participants’ Confidence around key themes
IT/Internet
45