Plan for Jobs Cross-cutting Evaluation Wave 1 and 2 synthesis report
The full report of the ‘Cross-Cutting Evaluation of Plan for Jobs’, a system-level evaluation of key elements of the DWP’s part of the Plan for Jobs package.
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Details
Research background
During the coronavirus pandemic the DWP launched – or provided extra places on – a range of employment support packages as part of the wider Plan for Jobs. This project is a synoptic evaluation of those offers, focusing especially on Job Entry Targeted Support (JETS), Job Finding Support (JFS), Kickstart, Sector-Based Work Academies (SWAPs), and the Youth Offer. The report includes some evidence on Restart, but did not sample Restart participants for its surveys.
This report evaluated general levels of satisfaction with support received, the wider support needs of participants and non-participants in Plan for Jobs offers, and how well referrals, customer journeys, and join-up with existing support worked.
While multiple Plan for Jobs offers are considered in this report, it is not of itself an in-depth process evaluation of each offer. Rather, it intended to help the Department learn lessons about how to implement complex support packages as a whole.
Contribution to the evidence base
The Department has published a Kickstart Scheme: process evaluation and The Evaluation of the Restart Scheme. Those projects are in-depth evaluations of specific programmes, whereas this report is a synoptic evaluation that looks at how elements of Plan for Jobs worked together with the wider support system.
Research value
The research focuses on a challenging period of time when the number of Universal Credit claimants had risen quickly and a large new number of support offers had been introduced to help people gain employment. It helped the Department to understand how well employment support was being delivered and provided assurance that levels of satisfaction with support were generally high.