Cost Effectiveness of Employment Support

Year of Publication: 
2014
Type: 

This NDTi report looks at the effectiveness of commissioning of supported employment services. It finds significant variability in the cost of employment support services and costs per job outcome achieved that cannot be explained by factors such as complexity of people’s disability or size of service. The study therefore concludes that variable cost and outcomes is primarily explained by one or both of the service model being used and the strategic organisational actions taken.

In a time of tight public finances, the study shows existing investment in employment support could be used to deliver much higher numbers of new or retained jobs for disabled people at significantly lower average costs than is being achieved presently.

BASE would advise caution when reading the headline figures within this report. NDTi define job outcomes as new jobs and jobs maintained. This will clearly skew the overall costs that are identified in the report. The report also confuses job retention with job maintenance. There are large gaps in the data collected so we have no way of knowing the proportion of jobs which are over 16 hours per week and how many might be only a couple of hours per week.

A paper is attached below outlining our concerns about the report.

http://www.ndti.org.uk/major-projects/current/employment-support-for-dis...