Problem addressed

Irish employment activation programmes and welfare payment schemes focus on assisting individuals over a defined period to gain work experience and secure paid jobs. However, people with disabilities, people with convictions who are in contact with the Probation Service, homeless people, those with a history of substance abuse, travellers and the long-term unemployed often struggle to compete with other job seekers on the labour market. New approaches to supporting the employment of disadvantaged individuals are needed, including an emphasis on job creation.

Innovative solution

The Community Services Programme (CSP) was initiated in 2006 by the Irish Government to help combat labour disadvantage and regenerate communities. The Community Services Programme is an innovative way of promoting long-term employment, in that it provides funding to service providers – rather than individuals – for them to pay the salary of specific categories of employees. By doing so, it supports the creation of sustainable employment opportunities for marginalised individuals, to facilitate their long-term integration into the labour force.   

The CSP provides a fixed annual co-funding contribution towards the costs of employing a manager and/or a specified number of full-time equivalent positions (FTEs). Eligible organisations are not-for-profit social enterprises or community businesses with sufficient capacity to undertake service delivery and staff management. This includes organisations delivering community services that target disadvantaged groups, community enterprises that employ people outside the labour force, and community halls and facilities, such as care homes and resource centres. To be eligible, 70% of all the CSP-supported staff must be drawn from disadvantaged groups, such as the long-term unemployed, people with disabilities, those with a history of substance abuse, homeless people, travellers, and people with convictions who are in contact with the Probation Service. In this way, the CSP incentivises organisations to recruit among their beneficiaries, and to include their beneficiaries as part of their governance teams.

The CSP provides funded organisations with a suite of business support to build and develop their capacity, including one-to-one support and collective support delivered at a regional and/or national level on sustainability issues, business planning and how to effectively support staff. The CSP monitors the overall performance of the supported organisations and appraises their business plans, which are scored on five appraisal categories: capacity, sustainability, value for money, need and strategic fit. Where needed, the CSP offers targeted support on financial and management issues to those that have sustainability issues. It also encourages the sharing of learning and best practices between service providers. Only a small percentage of service providers receive a low score during their performance assessments, as the support offered by the CSP aims to guarantee  successful overall performance.

The programme is managed by Pobal, a programme management and capacity-building organisation established in 1992 by the Irish Government (Department of Rural and Community Development) in agreement with the European Commission, to support communities and local agencies to achieve social inclusion and local development. Pobal collects personal data about the individuals in the CSP-supported roles, including demographics, their recent employment history and the category of work they are currently involved in. This information enables further research into the challenges vulnerable groups face when re-entering the work force, and can inform the design of better capacity-building measures for the CSP-funded organisations.

Key results and benefits

Since its creation in 2006, the CSP has contributed around EUR 650 million to over 500 community businesses. TheCSP supports the delivery of 400 different services every year with a contribution of approximately EUR 43 million. Funding has allowed community businesses to develop their social enterprise models and employ an additional 830 full- and part-time staff.

As of 2017, 87% of all employees came from a category in receipt of welfare benefits (such as Jobseeker’s Allowance, One Parent Payment, Disability Living Allowance), the majority of whom were women. Almost three quarters of the CSP-supported workers live in disadvantaged areas. The effectiveness and sustainability of the CSP results is evidenced in the high number of employees that find another job, despite their former long-term unemployment track record.

Potential for mainstreaming

The CSP is funded by the Irish government. In 2020, it allocated EUR 47 million to organisations. To increase the sustainability of results, a typical grant agreement or contract under the CSP is for a period of three years, and is renewed if the organisation is still solvent. The viability of the supported organisations is, in most cases, secured by the monitoring and business support activities mentioned above. In addition, the CSP is currently improving its system to track employees’ progression after they leave their CSP-supported role. This information is used to monitor whether the assigned CSP-supported jobs provide personal and/or career development in a sustainable, long-term way.

The CSP has potential for transferability as the model can easily be adapted to local community needs. An important success factor for transfer of the initiative is the substantial up-front public funding that is required. While this may be a barrier in the short-term, the CSP’s model has a range of long-term cost-saving benefits that are deemed to more than make up for initial start-up costs. 

The CSP has been recognised as a best practice by the Interreg Europe Project RaiSE, an initiative of the European Commission that brings together seven partners sharing best practices and learning on how to enhance the competitiveness of social enterprises through improved business support policies.