Learning from 25 years of preventative interventions in Scotland

6. Fair Start Scotland (FSS)

Fair Start Scotland (FSS): Improving Employment Outcomes

FSS was a voluntary employability support service providing personalised support for disabled people and those at risk of becoming long term unemployed. The service supported individuals towards and into sustained employment through help and one-to-one support, tailored to an individual’s circumstances. Evaluation of FSS indicated that the service had a positive impact on the wellbeing of participants and improved labour market outcomes. Participants also felt that the service operated in line with its principles and values of providing a personalised service that treated people with dignity and respect.

Introduction

FSS was the Scottish Government’s first fully devolved employability service. The service was launched in April 2018 and closed to new referrals in March 2024. It will stop providing support to those currently enrolled in 2026-27. Learnings from FSS informed the next step of delivery of Scottish Government funded employability provision which is now commissioned through Local Employability Partnerships, under the No One Left Behind approach.

FSS is an example of a secondary preventative intervention as it is designed to prevent long term unemployment which is associated with a range of negative social, economic and health outcomes and can result in additional costs for public services.

FSS marked a major departure from previous UK Government employability programmes as it operated as a voluntary rather than mandatory basis. FSS is one of the first polices to arise from the extension of devolved powers as a result of the Scotland Act 2016.

Context

The 2016 Scotland Act devolved powers to the Scottish Parliament for employment support services for disabled people and people who were at risk of long term unemployment.

Prior to these powers being devolved the Scottish Government had been critical of the employability programmes run by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). Criticism related to the use of benefit sanctions for people refusing to participate in the Work Programme (the UK Government’s main welfare to work programme) and concerns over ‘creaming and parking’ (whereby services focus resources on easier-to-help individuals at the expense of those who are further from employment) which applied to both the Work Programme and Work Choice (the UK Governments disability employability programme).

Response

The Scottish Government was keen to take a different approach to employability service support and make the most of the further devolved powers granted within the 2016 Scotland Act.

FSS was designed to place fairness, dignity and respect at the centre of employability support and provide tailored and person-centred support to people who were furthest removed from the labour market.^[140] It also aimed to deliver higher quality, more extensive support for clients, and a more integrated and coherent system of support through providers.

FSS was developed following extensive consultation and based on a ‘Scottish Approach’ to employability which was underpinned by a number of principles as set out in Figure 1 below: ^[141]

A diagram which shows the six key principles underpinning the Scottish Approach to employability. These principles are: ‘A flexible, tailored, ‘whole person’ approach’; ‘Responsive to those with high needs’; ‘Designed and delivered in partnership’; ‘A drive towards real jobs’; ‘Designed nationally but adapted and delivered locally’; and ‘contracts should combine payment by job outcomes and progression towards work’.

Intervention

DWP contracts for both Work Programme and Work Choice expired on 31 March 2017, and devolved services commenced from 3 April 2017. In the first instance devolved services were delivered through transitional services but in April 2018 FSS was launched. Since its launch there have been 104,208 referrals to FSS up to March 2024.^[142] It aims to provide tailored and personalised support to people and the annual cost of the programme has fluctuated between £14m and £28m. The key elements of FSS, at the point it was initiated are set out below:

• Participation will be entirely voluntary;
• All participants can expect to receive in-depth action planning to ensure the support they receive is tailored for them and suits their individual needs and circumstances;
• The service will offer pre-work support of 12-18 months;
• The service will offer high quality in-work support for up to 12 months;
• Those who require specialist support to help them find work can expect to receive it;
• There will be national standards to ensure everyone is supported consistently across the nine geographic contract areas across Scotland;
• For disabled customers who require intensive support, Supported Employment (SE) and Individual Placement and Support (IPS) will be available.

The FSS service delivery model is based on evidence of what works in employability support and was developed in consultation with delivery partners, employability providers and the Scottish public.^[143]

Scottish Ministers have committed to a ‘test and learn’ approach to the long-term development and continuous improvement of devolved employability services and both the FSS service design and evaluation reflect this approach.

For example, in response to feedback on participants’ needs, starting from Year 4 of service delivery (April 2021) a change to the inclusion criteria for joining the FSS service was introduced to allow those who already took part in the service to rejoin the service if they still require support.

Eligibility and early entry groups

Potential participants must be in receipt of a reserved UK working age benefit unless they are disabled, and will be either:

• aged 18 years old and over, out of work and living in Scotland; or
• aged 16 or 17 years old and either disabled or in receipt of Employment and Support Allowance/Universal Credit (UC) (work-focussed interview group, work prep group or no work requirements).

The Service aims to support individuals who:

• have a disability or additional support need (with disability as defined in the Equality Act 2010).
• have been unemployed for a long time (those reaching 2 years on Job Seekers Allowance/ UC equivalent).

In addition certain groups are eligible for FSS from the first day^[144] of unemployment including lone parents, care experienced young people, people with a conviction, refugees, ethnic minorities, residents in the 15% most deprived Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD) areas and individuals who are unemployed with a health condition that is a barrier to work.^[145]

Monitoring and Evaluation

FSS has been evaluated since its introduction in 2018 and several research outputs have been published. Overall this constitutes a significant investment in evaluation. Key outputs include an implementation review^[146] relating to the early delivery of FSS in the first 6 months and subsequent evaluation reports for year one,^[147] year two,^[148] year three^[149] and year four and five^[150] as well as an economic evaluation of first three years of service delivery.

The programme of FSS evaluation activities included regular phone surveys with FSS participants. The phone surveys looked into experiences of taking part in the service, whether the service had been delivered as intended and the outcomes associated with taking part. To date the evaluation has consisted of four survey ‘waves’. From the Wave 2 survey onwards the survey had a longitudinal element, meaning that a proportion of the earlier cohorts were recontacted in the subsequent wave. Figure 1 below shows which respondents were surveyed over the four survey waves.

Source: Scottish Government (2023) Fair Start Scotland - evaluation report 5: participant phone survey - years 4 and 5 - November 2023

In 2021, an independent economic evaluation^[151] of the delivery and outcomes of FSS was commissioned looking at the first three years of operation. The three broad objectives for the economic evaluation were to understand:

• The value for money of the service by comparing costs and benefits
• The value for money of the service by employing wider measures such as unit costs
• The wider social impact of the service, including wellbeing and inclusive growth.

In addition to the evaluation activities discussed above the Scottish Government also collects and publishes quarterly statistics for FSS including information on the socio-demographic characteristics of those who took part in FSS and employment outcomes for service participants.

Key Findings

a) Improved outcomes

The most recent quarterly statistical publication from February 2025^[152] shows that there have been 70,513 starts to FSS since April 2018, including 6,999 re-joins which were possible from April 2021.^[153] Overall, there have been 26,565 job starts since FSS launched. For job starts where enough time has passed in pre-employment support and for outcomes to be achieved, 38% have entered employment, 28% have sustained employment for 3 months, 23% have sustained employment for 6 months and 18% have sustained employment for 12 months. Of the 11,537 job starts (those where enough time has passed in pre-employment support and for outcomes to be achieved), 78% went on to reach at least 12 months employment.

Overall, findings from the latest survey wave (Wave 4) of the evaluation demonstrate broadly positive results for participants. Of those survey participants who were in-work at the time of the survey, the majority (74 per cent) reported earnings that indicated they were earning at least the National Living Wage rate, with 30 per cent reporting earnings that indicated that they were earning at least the level of the Real Living Wage.

Almost three in five (57 per cent) of participants in the 2021-22 cohort who had worked within the last week had a permanent employment contract, while less than one in five (18 per cent) had a temporary contract.

Overall satisfaction with the support received from FSS has remained consistently high across all waves. For example, 72 per cent of participants agreed that participating in FSS had a positive impact on their wellbeing. Of the 2021-22 cohort, 93 per cent felt they were treated with dignity and respect.

FSS support also helped build participants’ motivation to find work. The majority of the 2021-22 cohort who were not working (or working less than 16 hours per week) at the time of the survey wanted to return to work (86 per cent) and almost two-thirds (64 per cent) reported that their motivation to find work had increased since receiving FSS support.

b) Economic analysis

Analysis conducted by Alma Economics using the DWP Social Cost Benefit Analysis (SCBA) model, found that the program has had a net positive economic impact, with societal, fiscal, and participant benefits outweighing the costs, thus offering good value for money.

The results of the cost-benefit analysis estimated that for every £1 spent on the service, the estimated benefits are £3.60 from society’s perspective, £1.60 from a public finance perspective, and £2.60 from the perspective of participants. These measures take into account not just the financial benefits of the service, but also improved wellbeing for those who moved into employment and the benefits from redistribution in favour of those with the lowest incomes.^[154]

The economic evaluation concludes that: “Conducting direct comparisons between Fair Start Scotland and other employment programmes is difficult given differences in design, target groups, scope of operation and evaluation methodologies. Therefore, conclusions need to be drawn carefully. Overall, Fair Start Scotland performs well in comparison with other programmes, achieving relatively similar results across key performance metrics. In terms of value for money, while the costs compared to the benefits were slightly higher for Fair Start Scotland than for other programmes, this can be attributed to its voluntary nature, the type of participant it aims to help, and its narrower scope and timescale in comparison to UK-wide programmes.”

Learning and Next Steps

The Evaluation of FSS suggests that the programme has had some success in improving outcomes, and has an overall benefit to society, public finances and for participants. However, because of the lack of a control group it is difficult to fully quantify the impact of FSS. Given the differences in design, delivery and approach to measuring outcomes it is also not possible to make direct comparisons with the previous DWP delivered schemes that FSS replaced.

Building on the past four waves of phone survey evaluations with service participants, the Scottish Government is planning to undertake a fifth wave of a phone survey evaluation. This evaluation will look into the experiences and outcomes associated in taking part for the final cohort of FSS participants including those who joined in the period of 12 months before the service closed for new referrals in April 2024.

FSS had a ‘payments by results model’ whereby ‘fees’ (paid to employability support providers) are higher for achieving sustained employment outcomes for people with greater support needs who are further from the labour market. This graduated incentive system has been designed to attempt to overcome issues associated with service providers concentrating efforts on those people who are more likely to find and sustain employment. However, the evaluation found that there was ‘room for improvement’ in relation to supporting those further from the labour market.^[155]

It is important to recognise the significant challenges associated with supporting some of the most vulnerable people in society into sustainable employment outcomes. However, evaluation outputs, over the last six years show that a large proportion of people participating in FSS have achieved positive and sustainable employment outcomes and that FSS is overwhelming viewed in a positive light by participants. Furthermore, the vast majority of participants feel they are treated with dignity and respect.

FSS closed to new referrals at the end of 2023-24 however continues to deliver support to those who have already started on the service and will finish in 2026-27. Once the period of support concludes for those who joined the service prior to April 2024, the service will end. Disabled people and those at risk of long term unemployment are now supported through No One Left Behind.