Evaluation of Kent County Council’s Kent New Opportunities to Work (‘Kent NOW’) programme

Kent New Opportunities to Work (Kent NOW) has been developed by Kent County Council (KCC) to deliver the Second Local Public Service Agreement (LPSA2) target 8.2, to return 250 long-term Incapacity Benefit (IB) claimants to sustained (13+ weeks) employment. This report presents a qualitative evaluation of the programme, comprising interviews with service providers at three intervention sites, service users and others working with the same client group. The evaluation aims:

? To provide a rich description of the interventions deployed in Folkestone, Maidstone and North Kent;

? To reveal the experiences of the service users and staff who use or provide these interventions;

? To uncover possible explanations for the limited success of the interventions in achieving the LPSA2 target;

? In light of the above, to discover alternative perceptions of ‘success’;

? To identify which aspects of each programme are performing most effectively and why; and

? To provide recommendations regarding the future direction of future interventions with this client group.

An overwhelming message from this evaluation is that Kent NOW is working within a

very difficult environment, considering: the client group; the lack of prior knowledge of

the client group, not just within Kent NOW, but throughout government, in light of the

novelty of policy and action in this area; strategic and managerial difficulties; and the

political environment. These factors have been shown to have impacted upon the ability

of the interventions to achieve their goals to an extent that should not be

underestimated. Lessons learnt from the Kent NOW programme can be taken forward

and applied in future interventions with this client group. In this sense, the authors

consider the Kent NOW programme to be successful, exposing the many barriers to

returning long-term IB claimants to work. This evaluation has, in turn, highlighted the

ways in which future interventions may overcome these barriers, increasing the

likelihood of their future success.