Launched in February 2018 and developed through the Liverpool City Region Devolution Agreement, the £4.5m Households into Work (HiW) pilot is a significant labour activation programme for the Liverpool City Region. HiW is a collaboration between the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority, six Local Authorities and Department for Work and Pensions.
The programme was designed to address the systemic issues associated with long term and entrenched worklessness that has resulted in generations of the same household being unable to enter the labour market or sustain work. Its focus is on households where more than one adult is unemployed and in receipt of benefits, rather than more traditional employment programmes that target individuals for support.
HiW drew together learning from the household focus used by the Troubled Families programme, the case worker utilised by Working Well in Greater Manchester and the personal budget used by Liverpool City Region’s Youth Employment Gateway initiative.
The team of 24 Employment Advocates worked with Households to find tailored solutions to address the sometimes-multiple longstanding barriers to accessing the labour market.
In September 2018 the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority (LCRCA) commissioned the University of Liverpool’s Heseltine Institute for Public Policy, Practice and Place to undertake an interim evaluation of the HiW Pilot.
Our initial round of field work took place in the spring of 2019 and to track outcomes our intention was to reengage with the Households on the programme a year later. This timeframe coincided with the first of the United Kingdom’s national lockdowns because of this our telephone interviews with Households included reflections on their experience of living through the lockdown and thoughts about being able to secure work in an exceptionally challenging labour market.
These reflections and wider public service learning points from our research are included within the final evaluation report.
In November 2019 we presented the findings of our initial research to an invited audience of policy makers and practitioners at the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy annual devolution agreement monitoring and evaluation workshop.
BEIS presentation
The University of Manchester Inclusive Growth Analysis Unit hosted one of the first major UK academic conferences on inclusive growth. During the conference we presented our paper on Emerging Policy and Practice, Liverpool City Region Households into Work.
Emerging Policy and Practice presentation
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A perspective of Households into Work, in light of the COVID-19 pandemic
In this blog paper, we consider some of the initial impacts the COVID-19 pandemic may have on economically vulnerable residents of the Liverpool City Region.
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