Dáil Question to the Minister for Social Protection

To ask the Minister for Social Protection the success rate on the pathways to works scheme since its establishment; and if she will make a statement on the matter.

Minister for Social Protection (Joan Burton T.D):

 As the Deputy will be aware, I launched the first INTREO office of the new employment and entitlements service of the Department, with An Taoiseach on 15 October 2012 in Sligo.   INTREO is the integrated employment activation and supports service model that this Government promised to deliver in the Programme for Government and in ‘Pathways to Work’.  

INTREO is the name for the new service model of the Department integrating the employment services and community programmes formerly of FÁS, and the Community Welfare Services (CWS) formerly of the HSE and the income support services provided by the Department itself.  

The integration of functions and the transformation of the way the Department delivers its services were always envisaged as a multi-annual and iterative process of transformation.  

Building upon the skills and processes in the enlarged Department, a new activation concept, the one-stop-shop has been developed and has been rolled out in four pilot offices, Sligo, King’s Inns Parnell Street, Arklow and Tallaght.     Service performance has improved in all of the offices mentioned. For example, claim processing time has reduced from up to 4 weeks to under 1 week. Waiting times for new claimants for group interviews and follow up one-to-one interviews are now also under one week.

Other offices in Ballymun, Kilkenny, Buncrana, Coolock, Finglas and Dundalk will go live before the end of the year.   INTREO will be then be rolled out to all the Department’s offices nationwide by the end of 2014, in a programme that is being carefully managed in a live operating environment.

INTREO’s one-stop-shop offices includes a single integrated decision-making team that integrates and streamlines the processes formerly undertaken by the different agencies now amalgamated into the Department.   Already clients are seeing the benefits of the integrated decisions process in terms of shorter decision times and in the reduced recourse to supplementary payments in offices where integrated decisions are in operation.  

On being awarded a claim, the client will also be asked to sign a ‘social contract’ with the Department.   The client acknowledges their responsibility to work to secure employment at the earliest possible opportunity, on the understanding that failure to adhere to those undertakings may result in the reduction or withdrawal of income support payments.

The most significant demands of the Pathways approach are:

i)       profiles of clients to inform the approach taken to activation

ii)     Early engagement with clients through group engagement sessions

iii)     One to one interviews with case managers

Progress under each of these headings is as follows:

(a)   The Profiling of all new claimants has been operating in the four pilot one-stop shop locations and is now also operating in all other DSP offices. The roll-out programme has been completed ahead of the December 2012 target.

With regard to the engagement/activation process generally:

(b)   The Department targeted to involve 30,000 clients in group engagements in 2012 and has had 48,500 clients involved in group engagements by the end of September.  

(c)   The Department committed to holding 97,500 initial one-to-one guidance interviews with clients by the end of September 2012 but almost 123,000 had been held by that date.   That figure doesn’t include the 109,000 follow-up meetings held by the end of September.

INTREO is also refocusing the Department’s relationship with employers.

The level of contact with employers at national and local level is already increasing. For example Springboard Recruitment fairs were held in conjunction with HEA in Dublin, Galway and Cork during September and a series of seven employer briefings were held over October and November.

The launch of INTREO marks a watershed in the way the Department responds to the needs of today’s Ireland.   INTREO puts the flesh on the Government’s policy initiatives to put Ireland back to work.