A Better Beginning: Easing the cost of childcare
This paper proposes an entirely new policy - a National Childcare Contribution Scheme – to help parents manage the high costs of childcare over a number of years.
Welfare reform
The Parent Trap: Illustrating the growing costs of childcare
High-quality, affordable formal childcare is critical for children's development and parental employment, bringing significant ...
Will the Work Programme Work?
In this paper, the SMF examines the viability of WP by forecasting the likely performance of the providers during the first three years, based on the actual performance achieved under the Flexible New Deal (FND), Labour's welfare to work scheme and the forerunner to WP.
Vicious Cycles: Sustained employment and welfare reform for the next decade
This report uses data from two previous recessions and the latest Ernst & Young ITEM Club economic growth forecasts to estimate what might happen to claimant count unemployment and the number of long-term unemployed in particular. SMF analysis suggests that the claimant count will peak at over 2.7 million in 2011-12, while the number of long-term unemployed people (those without work for more than one year) will rise to a peak of around 1.1 million by 2012. While in recent years long-term unemployment has been a minor part of total unemployment, this is set to change radically with important implications for how policy should respond.
The jobs crisis and what to do about it
This report uses data from two previous recessions and the latest Ernst & Young ITEM Club economic growth forecasts to estimate what might happen to claimant count unemployment and the number of long-term unemployed in particular.
Shifting Responsibilities, Sharing Costs: The Mental Health Challenge for Welfare Reform
This study explores the significance of mental ill health for UK businesses and society, the benefits of remaining in employment for those with mental health conditions and the barriers to doing so. It argues that employers should be encouraged to take on responsibility for the provision of appropriate support and advocates a range of mechanisms which the government should explore to offer effective incentives.
Flexible New Deal: Making it Work
From October 2009, various New Deal programmes, the cornerstone of the government’s active labour market policies since 1997, will be replaced by the Flexible New Deal (FND). The new programme will aim to find more effective ways to help more than 200,000 long-term unemployed people into work each year. Under FND, after 12 months of unemployment, claimants will be referred to private or third sector contractors, which will be paid by results to find them work. This new approach represents a radical shift in mainstream employment services. With up to £2 billion of contracts to be allocated over the next five years, and with the prospect of much more to come, it will be important to get the policy right. In this report, the authors examine how likely the implementation of FND will be to succeed in four key areas: cost-effective commissioning; helping all jobseekers; preventing ‘revolving door’ employment; and stimulating innovation in welfare-to-work provision. In each area, FND in practice promises not to be as effective as it could or should be. The authors argue that this is the result of a failure to design the programme in a way that aligns incentives between contractors and government. The authors describe practical approaches to resolve the tensions between procurer and contractor. In doing so, they suggest the blueprint for a 21st century a welfare-to-work programme that offers the step-change in performance that the government seeks.
Angloflexicurity: A safety net for the UK workers
Despite the sustained success of the British labour market, workers feel increasingly insecure. This is partly due to the increased financial consequences of losing employment today.
Better But Cheaper? Reforming the Child Trust Fund
The Child Trust Fund, tax-incentivised universal children's savings accounts launched in 2002, was arguably the most innovative social policy implemented under the post-1997 Labour governments. The objectives of the Child Trust Fund range widely across savings policy, financial engagement and asset-based welfare, and are not able for seeking to change the behaviour of both children and their parents. However, the Child Trust Fund today is at a crossroads: it is not achieving its aims as well as was hoped, and it is no longer affordable in its current state.
Delivering Full Employment: From the New Deal to personal employment accounts
Published just before the long awaited Pensions Commission report on the future of pensions, the SMF working group’s report, What if? A UK model for compulsory pensions, explores how pension compulsion might have been best implemented in order to meet the challenges facing the UK pension system. The SMF working group proposed a three-tier pension system consisting of: a citizen’s pension, providing a flat-rate, non-contributory state pension based o¬n residency; a new second tier, based on compulsory saving into a private fund to ensure comfort in retirement; and a third tier, providing a revitalised voluntary system that allows for flexibility in private savings.
