In July 2020, Rishi Sunak the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced the introduction of a scheme aimed at assisting up to 250,000 of the UK’s youth, on Universal Credit, to find meaningful paid work placements for a 6-month period.

The new “Kickstart Scheme,” administered by the Department of Works and Pensions (DWP), would provide funding for organisations to provide a minimum of 25 hours of work per week, plus a grant towards management and support costs, to a young person between the ages of 16 and 24.  The grant was announced at £1,500 plus the 25 hours per week of NMW/NLW and employers statutory contributions. An organisation could offer more hours and pay a higher wage, but the additional costs would fall to them.

The Scheme opened in September 2020 with an initial end date of 31st December 2021. Originally, you needed to have 30 Kickstart positions available or had to apply through a Gateway setup to collate smaller applications and submit them together, but this was amended at the end of January 2021 with these limits removed.

As part of the ‘contract’ between the employing organisation and the DWP, the Kickstart Placement would also be provided with future employability support in the form of training and mentoring in areas such as CV writing, interview skills, communication, and teamwork. Cost of providing the employability support would be admissible against the grant.

We are proud to be a part of this Scheme and have two placements who are gaining valuable experience with us, growing knowledge of how salary benchmarking is conducted and researching generalist HR topics. Additionally, we have been assisting small organisations with their applications with the DWP and in partnership with The Job Guru (as specialist recruitment organisation) provide an employability support package.

The journey has not always been smooth, not only for us but others who have been through the application process. If you were not a registered Company, then the chances of your application being accepted were small. Sole traders were advised to go through what is called ‘Gateway Plus,’ an organisation approved by the DWP to effectively employ the Kickstart Placement on behalf of the sole trader. Gateways and other applicants reported delays with approvals, or rejection without any information as to why.

In our case, once approved, the allocated local Job Centre Plus was not as expected, we also suspected that Job Coaches in the DWP were working towards a quota as some of the applicants did not seem to be suitably matched to the position. Fortunately, as the employing organisation, we were able to choose a suitable pool of candidates to interview and selected two great individuals to support. That said, I can report that improvements have been made, with the DWP reaching out and asking questions about applications, the Job Centre Plus staff engaging more and very recently the post approval stage being turned into a self-service system.

The announcement of the extension of the scheme has been welcomed by many commentators. However, the application window for new placements will be closed on 17th December 2021.

What about the number of placements or the percentage of those placements who continue into full-time employment?

What has been clear to me in my journey with the Scheme is the misunderstanding by organisations, especially small businesses about what the offer is. I have had queries from organisations asking how these new short-term apprenticeships work! I have been asked if it is just another intern position. It is hard to say no to that query, as effectively an internship is all about providing work experience in a specific profession. The main difference with internships is that they are aimed at graduates or those soon to graduate. Whereas the Kickstart Scheme is aimed at providing work experience to anyone under the age of 25, irrespective of education. The current internship format has many benefits but is often criticised because of lack of access, poor pay or even lack of pay.

So, could the Kickstart Scheme be replaced with a new formal Youth Internship Scheme aimed at the same age group but including all educational abilities, making it more inclusive?  Providing much needed experience along with future employability support, for those at risk of long-term unemployment.