[Jon T]

Speaking as someone that used to a) be an unemployed person on a back to work program, and b) as a supervisor of the same program, this has good and bad points.

The supervision element of this is vital to get right, people that are in supervisory positions overseeing litter picking and garden work etc with this client group are not equpped to deal with un-employed people, it's a different kind of supervision requiring not just supervisory skills, but a range of extra skills that you wouldn't normally use with paid employees. Using myself as a case in point, these skills can be gained if you're of the right disposition, so i'm not posting this as a negative or a positive.

As the the distinction between able bodied and the disabled, if JSA/ESA etc are to be replace with a single benefit then i'm not sure there will be any seperation at all, it'll just be a "you've been claiming for x number of months, you're going to do this". Also even if a seperation is achieved, more and more legitimately disabled people are being judged capable of work.

Even withstanding this, if I had been unemployed for the length of time that meant i'd be madce to one of these activities I wouldn't really have a problem with it, however, where is the office based option to all this? I am not capable of manual work, my balance and co-ordination is sufficiently bad to make me a danger to myself and others, infact i'd say my lack of balance possibly excludes me under health and safety. I would be happy to take part, and have done in the past, in unpaid office based work for charities and community groups etc.

In summary, what is being proposed is not a bad idea in itself, but the implementation may be, options need to inserted in to any scheme of this nature to cater for people that are not capable of manual work, but are capable of office based duties.

Also, if charities are going to take on some of this "work provision" then the government has to work out how to pay for it. I was talking to a director/trustee of one such charity the other day, whoose main area is co-ordinating volunteering in the local area, they has seroius misgivings surrounding their ability to provide such a proposed scheme, as according to the meetings that they have attended so far, there will no extra or very little funding/financial incentives for any extra resources to run these schemes.