Poll #1: What is your status in the partnership? Lead partner/ Not a lead partner

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2 I m Kate Heywood from Ecorys UK and I work on the BBO ESF Support contract, which BLF have put in place to provide specific support in handling the requirements of ESF. Ecorys is largely responsible for developing support materials, which you will find on our website bboesfsupport.com. If you miss anything this morning, you can view the recording of the webinar on our website later this week. You can also view webinars on document retention, actual costs, cross-cutting themes, and evaluation, by clicking on Resources and Webinars. Those of you who are familiar with webinars will know that you can contribute comments and questions via the chat facility. We will include any questions in a sheet of Q&As alongside the webinar on the website. Unlike previous webinars, we have explicitly suggested that lead partners invite staff from delivery organisations to join the webinar. This is because delivery partners will often be in the first line of participant eligibility checking, and will be responsible for recording evidence. Participant eligibility is also an area where inconsistencies between partners can cause significant issues. We thought therefore that it might be helpful to explain key requirements in more detail for everyone, and think particularly about how they can be managed in practice. Poll #1: What is your status in the partnership? Lead partner/ Not a lead partner 2

3 I m going to talk today about essential eligibility criteria which is specifically the criteria that determines whether a potential participant can be funded under BBO. I m not going to talk today about defining the various different groups of people you may have as targets within your project, which is a slightly different subject, and I m not going to try to cover evidencing of results today either that may well be the subject of a later webinar. 2

4 The definitions you should apply to distinguish between unemployed and economically inactive individuals are given here. There is a misperception that benefits can be used to determine whether individuals are unemployed or economically inactive. But benefits do not align perfectly to the definition in particular, you can only find out whether someone is not available or not seeking work by asking them. One question recently asked is whether receipt of ESA Support means that a potential participant is economically inactive, while ESA Work Related Activity Group means that a potential participant is unemployed (ie. jobseeking). This perfectly exemplifies the point. In fact, individuals in both groups may be seeking work, though neither are required to. You might assume that they are economically inactive because of the benefit they are on, but if they happen to be looking for a job, this would be wrong. Up until now, you could straightforwardly class all recipients of JSA as unemployed, as they are required to seek work as a condition of receiving their benefit. However, as people are being moved to Universal Credit this is becoming much less clear so again, the only way to determine which status is correct is by finding out whether the individual concerned is seeking work or not. Benefits MAY be used as supporting evidence of worklessness. You should ask whether a potential participant is in receipt of benefits as part of understanding their employment situation (and their needs), and ensure that they discuss with their 3

5 benefits adviser whether their participation in the project has any implications for the conditions of their benefit. 3

6 ESF follows the ONS definitions of employment status, which are given here in full. DWP does not specifically require you to use the reference week approach to deciding if someone is employed or not, but the BBO guidance states that someone working even one hour a week would be ineligible, and usually a question about the previous week would be enough to ascertain this. However, you should also find out if this is a normal week - if someone may have worked very irregularly in recent times, you need to be sure that they could not still be judged as employed. Likewise, if someone might simply be on leave, you will need to ask if they are under contract. People on zero hours contract are not eligible to take part in BBO, irrespective of how little work they may have received from them. 4

7 There has been some confusion about the wording of eligibility for young people it is given clearly in the ESF National Eligibility Rules, stating that 15 year olds are eligible for ESF, but only if it is used to prevent them becoming NEET. There is no upper age limit to ESF, though again the National Eligibility Rules give an expectation that all participants will sooner or later contribute to the economy by moving into employment, so you should document this intention from those who are nearing retirement age, and set appropriate goals. You should in general be aware that the suitability of a project for a specific participant is actually also an essential ESF eligibility criterion, so that auditors may query not only the right to work and employment status of individuals, but the appropriateness of the project for individuals in light of their circumstances for example, on BBO, full-time university students, though not technically ineligible, are unlikely to be appropriate participants for most project outlines. 5

8 This document appeared on ESIF webpage at the end of May I ve based most of the content of this webinar on it please read it in full. In it, there is an unambiguous directive to the England ESF managing authority from the Commission, about self-declaration being inadequate for so-called essential eligibility criteria, which for BBO are the criteria of being unemployed or economically inactive, and having the right to work in the UK. By contrast, there is also a directive that other characteristics some of which may be target groups for your project, and some of which may even be qualifying eligibility criteria need NOT be evidenced other than through a self-declaration. This includes disabilities and work-limiting conditions, homelessness, being an ex-offender, and others. This is why I am focusing today on ESSENTIAL eligibility because it needs to be treated rather differently, procedurally, to other characteristics. 6

9 Some questions you should ask about your procedures. It is not the job of participants to prove their eligibility, but the responsibility of project staff to check and let participants know if more is required. It s clear that the onerous task of form-filling and bringing in paperwork often requires a degree of relationship building before it can be approached, and a number of projects have said during Robustness sessions that they will not expect to receive evidence of eligibility even within the first few sessions. The DWP recommend obtaining eligibility evidence at the point of enrolment, and costs of supporting a participant cannot be claimed until evidence of eligibility is in place, so there is clearly a risk to supporting participants through a number of sessions before checks are carried out. First and foremost, you must have controls to hold back costs from your claims until you have, and have checked, the necessary evidence of eligibility. if you decide to carry out checks after costs have already been incurred, you should be clear within your partnership,, who will be liable for costs if the participant turns out to be ineligible. Question: If participants don t have a passport/birth certificate to demonstrate right to work, we have said that it is okay for the project to fund the expense of getting 7

10 documents. They understand that if when registering someone for the project they are not eligible they would not be able to pay for the documents. However, if these costs are funded and then the participant is eligible but then does not engage any further would these costs become ineligible? The answer to that is probably No but an auditor would want to understand the reason for disengagement, to ensure there was not a fraudulent undertaking to attend the project in the first place so if there was a pattern of disengagements after receiving documents that have been paid for, this might result in recovery of funds. The Data Evidence Requirements document is particularly helpful in setting out a hierarchy of evidence checks to follow, for participant eligibility. The current participant entry form does not take account of this hierarchy of evidence checks, so you should refer to the Data Evidence Requirements when planning your project procedures. I m just going to explain it briefly here. 7

11 I will talk a bit more in a moment about what this actually means in terms of right to work and being unemployed or economically inactive. Projects must always request preferred evidence in the first instance. The lower tiers of the hierarchy must not come ahead of preferred evidence for reasons of convenience or simplicity, and auditors will be alert to any sign that the project is not following the hierarchy, for example by comparing practices against comparable projects. It s very important to know that this hierarchy does not mean that more potential participants should be turned away than if self-declaration were the preferred evidence. It means, though, that the judgement on eligibility must be made (and documented) on information and documents presented by potential participants, and the reasons given for not having any stronger evidence. ESF Support should only be refused when project staff are not convinced that an individual is eligible or (or does not have good reasons for not having any stronger evidence). 8

12 This list of supporting documents is less stringent than for employers, and seems lenient for those who remember in the last programme that full birth certificates had to be provided, and that an NI number would only suffice in combination with another document. Second tier: A referral or written confirmation is acceptable, provided an attempt has been made to obtain more robust evidence, and the reasons for not obtaining it are credible. The referrer should provide a written statement. It must be signed, dated, and at least contain: the name of the participant, the name of the project (preferably) and the eligibility criteria being confirmed (eg. right to work). 9

13 1 st tier documents very often impossible for economically inactive. At the moment, BLF are negotiating with DWP for acceptance of self-declaration for people who are economically inactive, but for the time being you will still need to seek written confirmation from another third party, and document the reasons if it cannot be given. The BBO guidance suggests that other benefits, such as Incapacity Allowance, would be suitable evidence of economic inactivity, but the ESF Data Evidence Requirements does not support this, so you will need to ask for confirmation from another third party such as a doctor, church, social services etc. 10

14 Third tier: Examples might be any letters from a statutory authority, documents which do not fully identify the individual, documents that are more than 12 months old, and so on. As for the second tier, there must be plausible reasons for not obtaining stronger evidence, and an explanation also provided as to why the alternative evidence is credible as evidence of eligibility. If you consider it to be sufficiently strong, you should inform the BLF so that it can be added to the preferred list. Fourth tier: Self-declaration consider whether an exception to the evidence requirement can be justified. If so, you must document: the reasons why the participant does not have any evidence, the attempt to collect the required evidence, and how you are satisfied with the reasons provided by the participant. Emphasis is on proving the case for the exception, rather than on the strength of the self-declaration in fact, there is no mention of it. 11

15 Poll #2: We will keep copies of eligibility evidence electronically only We will use mobile devices to copy eligibility evidence Question: Can we use a tablet or camera phone to copy original documents as the project worker may not have photocopy facilities when doing outreach work for example? Answer: I can t see any reason for this to be disallowed, but it does potentially pose an even higher degree of data protection challenges. If the project wants to pursue this, I would recommend they look into improving the security of devices in any way possible, and make a point of saving images to more secure servers at the office on a daily basis, wiping them from the phone. 12

16 Wording is given within the ESF Guidance on Document Retention Certification should take place in sight of the copy and the original : Difficulty in scanning an original and uploading it unseen, certifying by someone other than the person who saw the original, or certifying the copy at a later date. The most straightforward approach is the old-fashioned way: get a stamp made up with the declaration, print a photocopy, stamp and sign the certification straightaway. If maintaining an electronic copy only, the project will need to work out a method of attaching an electronic certification. Many PDF viewers (such as Adobe Acrobat) permit you to add a note and electronic signature. Alternatively, it may be sufficient to a confirmation to your administrator with the copy as an attachment, but this is likely to be a security issue again, unless you have some kind of a secure file transfer system. Apologies for not having solved this issue I would be very grateful for anyone exploring these issues to get in touch and let me know what you have found! 13

17 Eligibility rules section on participant eligibility including age, right to work, etc. Note that asylum seekers are not permitted to take part in BBO. Output and result indicator definitions guidance for ESF detailed definitions for output indicators including unemployed and economically inactive. ESF Data Evidence Requirements hierarchy of evidence of eligibility recommended to read in full Guidance on Document Retention includes guidance on electronic document retention and certification of copies. 14

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