Vanesa Fuertes

Extending working lives: age management in SMEs

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present a study of age management in small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) in the UK.Design/methodology/approach – Qualitative data collection and exploratory research with six SMEs comprising of: initial interviews with representatives from the SMEs; action research activities designed to raise awareness of age management issues and age discrimination legislation; and follow‐up interviews to ascertain if awareness raising activities resulted in any changes, or planned changes, in policy, practice and attitudes towards older workers.Findings – Good practice in age management can be found in SMEs, but was not found to be part of a systematic strategy. Negative practices and attitudes towards older workers are observed, with positive and negative age stereotypes coexisting. Negative stereotypes displayed can undermine the perceived economic value of older workers. There may be a gap between policy and practice, but awareness raising campaigns that reach employer...

Personalized activation policies for the long-term unemployed: the role of local governance in the UK

In Chapter 5 on the UK, Vanesa Fuertes and Ronald McQuaid study how coordinated activation policies, which have been a core part of the UK welfare state since at least the 1990s, are implemented locally. Although service coordination is officially acknowledged as a necessary requirement for supporting people with complex problems into employment, the authors perceive a number of barriers to service coordination in three local case studies (Cardiff, Edinburgh, and Newcastle) and at street level (in one Work Programme provider organization). Thus, marketization seems to have increased fragmentation among service providers, not only because some local public agencies are wary of letting Work Programme participants benefit from specialized public services but also because Work Programme sub-contractors (among them many NGOs) are receiving fewer referrals than expected. However, Fuertes and McQuaid conclude that local and devolved government discretion can result in an increased coordination of employment and social services in places, especially when it comes to services provided outside of the Work Programme.

Getting disadvantaged parents into employment: The working for families fund in Scotland

Between 2004 and 2008, the Scottish Governments Working for Families Fund (WFF) in Scotland offered support to parents seeking to move into, within or towards employment, education or training. Focused on disadvantaged parents, the programme had registered a total of over 25,000 clients by April 2008, with 66 per cent of these having achieved a significant outcome during the life of the programme. In this paper, we examine the policy background from which the WFF programme emerged. The paper outlines key features of the programme that are distinct from other programmes (particularly the New Deal for Lone Parents) as well as setting out the key outcomes of the programme. The paper identifies some lessons concerning how WFF operated, and, finally, it outlines the key conclusions.

Local worlds of coordinated activation policy

In Chapter 11 on local worlds of coordinated activation in Europe, Katharina Zimmermann, Vanesa Fuertes and Patrizia Aurich-Beerheide shed light on the role of the local level as a generic actor in the organization of activation. The authors apply a standardized fuzzy-set analysis to implementation patterns in all 18 local entities studied for the research underlying this book, focusing on the local coordination of policy areas, administrative levels and stakeholders relevant for activation. Zimmermann, Fuertes and Aurich-Beerheide find no explicitly local patterns of implementation in the area of activation policies that transcend the boundaries of nation states. However and instead, they find three country clusters that do not correspond with established welfare state or activation regime typologies: ‘coherent coordination’, ‘partial coordination’ and ‘stakeholder coordination’. This seems a highly interesting starting point for more research on the mechanisms shaping the coordination and implementation of activation in different policy and governance contexts.