Introducing A4e InsightA4e Insight is the consultancy arm of A4e delivering research and advisory services to international and UK public sector bodies, private sector businesses and financial investors. The A4e Insight team applies

commercial evaluation skills to assess policy, design implementation programmes and delivery models, and develop business plans and investment cases.

We focus on what works, not dogma or pre-conceived notions. We give clear advice and opinions based on evidence and the expertise of more than 3000 people with real, often front line, experience.

SnapshotA global community improving people’s lives

www.mya4e.com Improving People’s Lives

22 years ago, A4e was formed to help unemployed ex-steel workers in Sheffield develop new skills and find work in the emerging service economy. We helped them get back on their feet, and develop the confidence and skills to apply their talents in new jobs. It was difficult, we were in the midst of a deep recession, and there weren’t many jobs. This forced us to be creative, find new ways of doing things, and be utterly persistent in our pursuit of our goal – to improve the lives of all our customers.

Today, we are much bigger. In fact we are the biggest employment and welfare provider in the UK (over the page we’ve listed some handy stats). We also do many more things that help improve people’s lives, from social care to financial advice, working with offenders to helping people set up their own business. But the same creativity and

customer focus applies more than ever. Enterprising; optimistic; challenging; driven – these are the things that make A4e and have helped us become a global leader in front line public service delivery.

We hope this snapshot gives you a glimpse of the work we do and the impact we’ve had over the last few years.

Who we work with We work with government organisations at a local, regional and national level in the UK, including Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, as well as their overseas counterparts. For example, we work with:

• Department for Work and Pensions • Legal Services Commission• Financial Services Authority• Regional Development Agencies• Welsh Assembly Government• Department for Education and Learning

(Northern Ireland)• Primary Care Trusts & Local Health

Boards Reg• Local Authorities• Scottish Enterprise• Learning & Skills Council• Ministry of Justice• National Offender Management Service

Our Social Mission – supporting the FSIThe Foundation for Social Improvement (FSI) is a new, ambitious and innovative charity established to overcome social exclusion and improve lives by building and sharing knowledge within the Third Sector. As an international organisation it aims to help small to medium sized not-for-profit organisations become more effective, uniquely facilitating this work by networking their skills with the support of a donor community. Emma Harrison is the FSI’s founding Chairman of Trustees.

What we doA4e delivers front line public services. So we are not a big infrastructure, capital partner or IT provider. We focus on people facing services, right at the front line of delivery. Often our work with government is targeted at the socially and financially excluded; the marginalised and disenfranchised; people that have been left behind and no longer interact with or trust public services. For example, the very long term unemployed, people with poor health, offenders in prison, or people in the heart of the care system.

Much of our work is about empowerment; giving people more control and a choice and voice in their lives. For governments, we reduce costs, increase productivity and performance, drive quality, and manage supply and demand dynamics in public service markets.

What does all this mean in practice? To give you an idea, we:

• Manage large scale employment helping long term unemployed people and people with disabilities find and keep work

• Manage large training and skills programmes such as Apprenticeships to help equip young people and adults with new qualifications

• Deliver programmes that are specially designed for people furthest from the labour market, such as offenders, refugees, lone parents and people with disabilities

• Pilot new programmes that address gaps in public services, for example, Legal Aid funded telephone and face to face advice in areas such as welfare, employment, housing and family law.

• Deliver condition management, talking therapies and occupational health to help people improve their health and stay in work

• Help people take control of their social care budgets, working with local authorities to deliver Direct Payments

• Run very large programmes through ‘prime contracting’, where we work with supply chains of public, private and third sector organisations all involved in delivering better quality services

• Help young people that are at risk of exclusion from school learn in a different environment, helping them develop vocational and work related skills

This doesn’t capture half the things we do, but it hopefully gives you a sense of ‘what we’re about’.

Forward Thinking.insight

Where we workWe are operating in:

Australia, England, France, Germany, India, Israel,

Northern Ireland, Poland, Scotland, South Africa, Wales

Please go to mya4e.com to find out more about our work in each country.

Our global perspectiveOne of the aspects of our work that our partners say they attach real value to is our work across different countries, economies and labour markets. It enables us to import and export social policy, and transfer different ways of doing things. So for example, we are converting our UK prime contractor model and scaling it up to manage vocational training on a massive scale in India. We are exporting our enterprise and business start up work to Poland to assist in a large job creation initiative. We are importing back to the UK from Germany family focused employment programmes that help the whole family get back into work. Working globally also gives us all the usual big company benefits – economies of scale, attracting talented people, exciting career progression.

and even more...

• We deliver every major flagship DWP programme, including

Pathways to Work (five sub-regions); New Deal (17 sub-

regions); and Connect to Work (ten sub-regions)

• We are one of the largest suppliers of ESF funded employment

and skills programmes, helping people furthest removed from

the labour market

• We deliver front line public services from over 200 local,

community based delivery locations

• We are the largest supplier of DWP contracted

employment services

• In 2008 we helped almost 20,000 people into

meaningful work. Over the last 22 years, we have

helped over 1 million people in their journey back into

sustainable employment

• We place twice as many people into work as the

international industry average

• Over the last 3 years we have helped over 1000 Lone

Parents, over 13,000 people with a health condition

and over 9000 people from BME communities to get

back into employment

• We are the largest supplier of Prime Contractor services

on behalf of DWP and the Learning and Skills Council

• We are the largest supplier of Community Legal Advice Centres

• We have rescheduled more than £10m of debt and identified almost £5m of

unclaimed benefits for over 6,000 people through its money, debt and benefit

advice services

• We work in partnership with a supply chain of over 700 organisations from the

public, private and third sectors

• Since 2005, we have delivered over a million hours of learning and vocational

training to offenders and ex offenders, working with over 100,000 customers with

a conviction

• We are recognised as a global thought leader on welfare reform, particularly

driving productivity, performance and quality through Prime Contracting models

• Through the FSI we have donated services, training days, forums, workshops,

partnerships and donations of almost £1.5 million to over 300 charities

small charities

• We are the market leader in the delivery of Direct Payment Social Care/

Independent Living Services

• We are the largest provider of telephone based legal advice on behalf of the

Legal Services Commission

• We are the largest independent sector provider of offender learning in the UK

• Over the last 10 years we have helped over 20,000 new companies start up and grow through our business support and enterprise and entrepreneurship programmes• We directly employ over 3,100 people, with a further 5,000 jobs created in our supply chains

• We work with a network of over 100,000 employers, from large multi-nationals to thousands of small and medium sized companies, helping them recruit and train staff

• Over the last year we have helped almost 11,000 people gain a qualification in industries such as childcare, retail, construction and engineering• We operate in 11 countries across four continents delivering front line public services

• In 2008/09 our turnover was in excess of £150m

• Between ourselves and our supply chain, we operate in three quarters of the UK’s 100 most deprived communities• We are the largest provider of Money Guidance (generic financial advice) on behalf of the FSA

Key Facts

and more...

www.mya4e.com Improving People’s Lives