Poverty and social exclusion

Understanding welfare and worklessness intervention

About the Theme

One of the founding principles of CLES and indeed a key part of our charitable objectives is around fairness and social justice. Our key focus upon this agenda historically is through the lens of worklessness and deprivation. We are interested in welfare reform policy and what works in effectively tackling worklessness and associated poverty for a host of client groups. We are also interested in the roles and qualities of different organisations and bodies when it comes to employment and skills intervention. CLES is also interested in understanding how the Government’s new Work Programme will influence upon place and wider economic development considerations.

Relevant Research

Poverty and social exclusion is a theme which has historically run through the activities of both CLES and CLES Consulting. We have used the lessons learnt from consultancy work on a number of pieces of research including:

Making it work: analysing different ways of tackling worklessness

This research sought to draw upon historical policy and project examples to develop a typology of what works in tackling worklessness, ranging from outreach to training to brokerage interventions. The research also assessed some of the key strategic challenges in tackling worklessness together with proffering recommendations for the future.  

Tackling worklessness in Bristol in an age of austerity

As part of CLES activities during the European Year for Combating Poverty and Social Exclusion, we ran the Future City Game in Bristol. The focus of the Game was upon worklessness and particularly discussing new ideas to tackle worklessness. Players of the Game included worklessness strategists from Bristol City Council, employment brokers from the public and voluntary and community sectors, and local unemployed residents.

Future Activities

Tackling poverty and social exclusion is a key research theme for CLES in 2011. We are particularly interested in undertaking future research activities as part of this theme around:

• The impact of the Work Programme upon the workless;
• The impact of the Work Programme upon the voluntary and community sector;
• The values of the emerging welfare reform agenda.

If you are interested in contributing towards our research activities on tackling poverty and social exclusion please contact Matthew Jackson, Head of Research.