No One Left Behind: user experience research

5. Conclusions and recommendations

This research has found high levels of satisfaction with No One Left Behind-funded employability support across Scotland. A majority of service users said they: found it easy to access the support they needed, when they needed it; were satisfied with the support they had received; and indicated that services were delivered in line with expected service standards and principles. However, while overall the findings were very positive, there were important differences in the experiences of disabled people, people from minority ethnic backgrounds, and parents. These differences, summarised below, have implications for the type of support offered, and how it is offered and provided to ensure equal access and outcomes for these groups.

Experiences of disabled service users

• Barriers: Disabled service users were more likely than those without a disability to face multiple barriers to accessing education, training or work, including both issues relating to physical and mental health and confidence, and to external factors, such as labour market conditions and employer attitudes. This reflects wider Labour Market statistics and Scottish Government No One Left Behind statistics, which show that disabled people face the greatest barriers to employment of any group analysed, with markedly lower job entry rates, longer times from starting to receive support to entering employment, and lower rates of sustained employment at 52 weeks.
• Finding out about support: Disabled service users were relatively more likely to hear about employability support through health professionals. They were also more likely to say they found support difficult to access, and that services had been difficult to contact or slow to respond, and did not offer support that suited their needs.
• Type of support accessed and unmet needs: Disabled services users were more likely than average to have received support with confidence building and health-related support, but also to say that they wanted more support with these areas. In addition, they were particularly likely to want more support with accessing education, training or apprenticeships; careers information and advice (with advice on benefits specifically a suggested area for improvement); and accessing volunteering or work placements. More flexible work opportunities in general was also a priority area for improvement for disabled people.
• Experiences of support: Disabled services users were less likely than average to agree services were flexible; tailored to their needs; or able to help them find other support they needed. Empathy, listening and adaptation to their needs were key to a positive experience, with ‘good relationships with staff’ particularly key to disabled people’s continued engagement with support. Staff sharing characteristics with service users (e.g. having experienced health difficulties or being neurodivergent) could help support this connection. Some disabled participants felt employability staff underestimated their abilities or aspirations.

Experiences of service users from minority ethnic backgrounds

• Barriers: Service users from minority ethnic backgrounds were less likely to say confidence and self-esteem or mental health issues were barriers to employment, education and training. It is impossible to draw definitive conclusions on the reasons for this. However, it is possible that it reflects cultural differences around reporting and seeking support for mental health and wellbeing issues, requiring culturally appropriate resources and responses.
• Finding out about support: Migrants to the UK may not be aware that employability support exists or that they are eligible to access it. Some uncertainty existed around how employability support offers interact with visa restrictions on entitlement to public funds.
• Type of support received and unmet needs: Service users from minority ethnic backgrounds were more likely than others to have received support with English skills, and less likely to have received support accessing education, training or apprenticeships. They were also more likely to want (more) support with careers information; volunteering or work placements; and English skills. Having access to ‘more jobs that match your skills’ was a key area for improvement among this group.
• Experiences of support: Overall, participants from minority ethnic backgrounds had positive views of support being provided in accordance with service standards. However, there were some mixed reflections on staff knowledge around supporting users whose qualifications and experience were gained outside the UK, and around understanding of visa conditions around work and benefits. Offering flexibility around meeting formats was important to some who spoke English as a second language (e.g. offering video calls, which enable auto-generated translation).

Experiences of service users who are parents

• Barriers: Childcare issues and money worries were key barriers to accessing education, training or work for parents, especially single parents. Frustrations with a lack of part-time and flexible working options were key motivations for seeking support.
• Finding out about support: Jobcentre was a key referral route for single parents, while social media was more important to parents’ awareness of employability services compared with non-parents. Parents were more likely than average to say they found it easy to access the right support when they needed it, however.
• Type of support accessed and unmet needs: Parents were, unsurprisingly, more likely than average to have received support to access childcare. However, only a small minority of parents said they had received help with childcare compared with the proportion saying childcare was a barrier. And parents, especially single parents and those with children with ASNs, indicated that they would like employability services to provide more support with childcare.
• Experiences of support: Parents were more likely than average to agree that services always treated them with dignity and respect, treated them as an individual, listened to them, and were flexible. Flexing support around childcare was particularly important for parents. This extended to onward referrals as well as immediate support (e.g. courses being able to flex around childcare commitments).

Recommendations for improvement

The report also highlights a number of areas for improvement to ensure that all service users are consistently able to access personalised, tailored support that fully meets their needs. Service users’ own suggestions for improvement have been covered in the individual chapters of this report. This final chapter draws together further overarching suggestions, drawing on both suggestions made by service users themselves, and the researchers’ reflections on the findings. Some recommendations may require collaboration between organisations to address them. However, the organisation(s) that recommendations may be most relevant to in terms of action required is noted in brackets, as follows:

• Local Authorities (LAs)
• Local Employability Partnerships (LEPs)
• Service Providers (SPs)
• Scottish Government (SG).

Improving the accessibility of services

• Clarify and communicate eligibility for employability support (LAs, SPs). Service users who were recent immigrants to Scotland highlighted confusion about whether they were eligible for employability support, either at all, or for specific aspects of the support they were offered. They were also sometimes unaware this type of support existed. Providing greater clarity on eligibility, in combination with targeted messaging to new Scots about the availability of support, might improve accessibility for this group.
• Review registration processes to ensure they are accessible (LAs, LEPs). Disabled and neurodiverse participants raised some issues around how accessible registration forms are, in terms of both format and content. Reviewing and improving this would help remove barriers to support for these groups.
• Consider different awareness raising routes for different groups of service users (LEPs, SPs). Advertising services through health services may increase reach to disabled people; social media and posters in schools may work for parents; while targeting specific community groups working could help extend reach to people from minority ethnic backgrounds.

Enhancing what is offered to better meet service users’ needs

• Enhance sector-specific guidance and support (SG, LEPs). A key reason for service users feeling less satisfied with support was that it had not been specific to the job or sector they wanted to move into. Creating national or local resources or support on specific sectors, including training requirements and where to find further guidance, could help support staff to provide more tailored support.
• Review or provide guidance on transferability of qualifications and experience gained overseas (SG and national partners – for example, Skills Development Scotland, Qualifications Scotland). Participants who had moved to Scotland from outside the UK were looking for advice about how to translate their experience and qualifications to the UK job market. There may be a need to review the availability of up-to-date guidance for employability providers on supporting service users from outside the UK (for example, what types of issues they may encounter, what different visas allow, etc.), including where to look for more specific advice on qualifications and where they may need to upskill.
• Review local training provision (LEPs) to a) ensure there is appropriate accessible provision for those who need greater flexibility (e.g. to fit around childcare or other commitments) and b) that it offers an appropriate range of content for those at different stages of their employability journey (reflecting comments from service users that training offered can be too basic or generic for those looking to develop more specific job-related skills).
• Ensure that the range of services offered are clearly communicated from the outset (with reminders on an ongoing basis) (LEPs, SPs). This research found that service users do not always know exactly what they are looking for from services when they first contact them. Providing a full list or explanation of all the areas employability services can help with when service users first contact them may both help shape expectations and enable service users to get the most from support. This should include explaining (and reminding people at key points) what support is available at different points of the employability journey, including once they are in work but may be looking for support to help them progress or change jobs.

Enhancing how services are delivered to ensure they reflect service standards

• Ensure consistency and timeliness of support (SPs). Gaps in communication, or delays in responding to requests for support, caused frustration for service users and could lead to disengagement. Ensuring that there are sufficient staff to meet service user needs in a timely manner, as well as setting, communicating, and meeting clear expectations around turnaround times, would help reduce this risk.
• Ensure clarity around ending support and how people can access further support if their goals change (SPs). Service users were not always clear whether they were still receiving support, while having to restart support from scratch after a break due to a change in circumstances (such as a health issue) could be demotivating. Ensuring that parameters around when and how support will end are communicated clearly at the outset, and in advance of a case being ‘closed’, should help address this. As noted above, ensuring that service users are aware of further support options once they are in work would also improve the ability of services to help people move into sustainable, better paid work.
• Flexing around changes in service users’ circumstances (SPs). One in ten service users who had disengaged from support said this was due to a change in their own circumstances. Ideally, support should enable people to continue to engage on a flexible basis, fitting around such changes. Considering how support can be adapted to changes in life circumstances, or at the very least how to ensure the ‘door is left open’, is important in terms of supporting those who may be more likely to disengage because of unforeseen circumstances, including disabled people and parents.
• Ensure staff are trained in supporting people with disabilities and neurodiversity (SG to ensure consistent skills are developed nationally, working with LEPs around local provision, and SPs ensuring their own staff are appropriately trained). Tailoring support to disabled people means adapting to their specific needs. While there were examples where service users felt this had been done well, there were also examples where they felt staff had not accommodated their requirements. Providing regular training on best practice in supporting disabled service users and service users who are neurodiverse could help address this.

Consider developing service ‘pathways’ for different groups (SG to develop national pathways, LEPs to tailor as appropriate for local areas). These ‘pathways’ could be used by both service providers, to ensure they have offered all the relevant support and information someone might benefit from, and by service users, to understand their options and ensure they are not missing out on support that would be helpful to them.

• Actively increase opportunities for services users to provide feedback on support (SPs collecting feedback, LEPs using this feedback for inform local planning and commissioning). Half of respondents had not been asked for feedback on services prior to taking part in this research. Regular anonymous surveys (potentially issued by the local authority centrally, rather than by individual services, to provide greater assurances of confidentiality), ‘suggestion boxes’ (virtual and physical), and asking service users directly what could be improved on a regular basis could help to address this gap. Providing ‘You said – we did’ feedback to service users on how this feedback has shaped improvements would help demonstrate that their feedback is taken seriously. In addition, a lived experience panel consulted for this research suggested that services could involve those who have been through the service already both in talking to services providers about how they found it, and sharing their experiences with those new to support.

Tackling wider barriers to employment

The suggestions above are all issues that could be addressed by local authorities, LEPs and service providers, working in partnership with the Scottish Government and others where appropriate, as part of enhancing local employability support. However, some of the challenges raised in this research reflect wider structural barriers that go beyond employability support itself. These include employer and wider public attitudes to disability, which can impact significantly on disabled people’s ability to access sustainable work, the availability of support to address mental and physical health issues, lack of suitable childcare options, and the application of Home Office rules around immigration. While these involve issues that go beyond the content and delivery of employability support, addressing these challenges may nonetheless be critical to achieving the ultimate aims of No One Left Behind.

Recommendations for monitoring and further research

The findings in this report also highlight a number of areas where monitoring could be strengthened and where further research might be needed to support improvements to employability services. These include:

• Additions to the national Data Reporting Template. ‘Low confidence and self-esteem’ was the most commonly mentioned barrier that people felt was making it difficult for them to access work, education or training when they first contacted support, but is not currently captured in the routine monitoring statistics collected by services and collated nationally by the Scottish Government. Similarly, ‘worries about money’ was a commonly mentioned barrier, not currently included in the Template. The data collected on barriers can shape understanding of what services should focus on, so it is important that data is accurately capturing the most common barriers.
• Further qualitative research to explore disabled people’s employability experiences in more detail. This research confirms findings from No One Left Behind and other Labour Market statistics, that disabled people are arguably the group facing the biggest barriers around employment. It identifies a number of recommendations for how to improve support for disabled people in general. However, as discussed in the introduction to this report, although the sample enabled analysis of overall differences in disabled people’s experience of employability support, both the survey and the qualitative sample were insufficiently large to examine the experiences of different groups of disabled people in detail. Given this, there is a case for further research focusing on exploring the diversity within disabled people’s experience in more depth – for example, looking at the experiences of people with particular conditions or impairments (for example, mental health conditions, neurological conditions, mobility impairments), as well as comparing the experiences of disabled people in different areas of Scotland (for example, urban and rural). Discussions of the research findings with lived experience panels including disabled people highlighted understanding diversity of disabled people’s experience as crucial to improving services’ ability to tailor support to individual needs.