The West Dunbartonshire Council Working4U service brings together the Employability Service, Advice Service and Community Learning and Development service.
It was established to improve the quality of lives of West Dunbartonshire residents by assisting them to overcome barriers to social and economic inclusion.
The revised Working4U structure contains 62 (FTE) posts and has a significantly reduced management team in place with one manager, two coordinators and eight team leaders.
The integrated service is built around supporting people with debt issues and maximise income, to support them to address skills deficits, and to address issues that prevent them from accessing employment and training opportunities.
This represents a shift to a more integrated support service that ensures joined up access for residents, avoids duplication of effort, and secures better outcomes.
The approach is consistent with the Council’s aim of achieving efficiencies by focusing efforts on maintaining ‘frontline’ positive outcomes and at the same time achieving necessary savings. The new Working4U service was expected to contribute towards these efficiency savings by reducing expenditure over a two-year period to June 2016.
The changes introduced over the past two years reflected areas where service demands are already experiencing change.
For example, within W4U money in 2013-14 the service represented at 405 appeals. In 2015-16 this number reduced by 70% to 125. In the first quarter of 2016-17 there were 27 appeals and this lower figure of appeals is anticipated to continue for the foreseeable future.
However, some new areas of work have emerged to replace the appeal volume including “mandatory reconsideration”, but the technical and resource requirements of this work is lower than with previous appeals.
West Dunbartonshire Councillor Martin Rooney 