Pathways to Work

Posted on February 23, 2012 at 03:14 PM

Today the Government launched Pathways to Work, a new streamlined service which will help jobseekers on their path to re-employment. Taking our current social welfare system from passive to active engagement, Pathways to Work crucially clears obstacles on the path to re-employment.

[Download Pathways to Work from our policy section.]

Amalgamating the services of the Department of Social Welfare, Community Welfare officers and FAS, Pathways to Work will offer job seekers a new 'one stop shop' employment office, covering not only benefit services but also offer a more constructive and focused facility in helping people back to work.

Initially available to new jobseekers, the service will be gradually rolled out across the country to all those on unemployment assistance, and aims to move 75,000 of those long-term unemployed into employment by 2015. Under Pathways to Work, job seekers will be invited to one to one meetings with employment specialists, which will focus on the jobseekers experience, education and background. This new integrated and responsive service will advise jobseekers on the right path for them - be it to a new course to upskill, re-train or to a new job. Through this new interactive service, Pathways to Work aims to reduce the average time spent on the live register from 21 months to 12 months by 2015.

Pathways to Work will also concentrate on establishing closer ties with local businesses and aim to be the first port of call for all job vacancies. Currently only 25% of local vacancies are filled by FAS, under this new initiative it is hoped that this could be increased to 40%.

Minister Burton at the launch of Pathways to Work

In return, job seekers will be asked to actively engage with this new service and work closely with the employment centres.

[Download Pathways to Work from our policy section.]

Pathways to Work represents another practical step by the Government to get Ireland working. Addressing the particular worrying problem of long-term unemployment and youth unemployment, Pathways to Work also makes the provision to offer an additional six months PRSI leave for employers taking on long-term unemployed.

Under Pathways to Work no unemployed person will be left to drift, instead every unemployed person's first day out of work will also be their first step on the pathway to work.

Minister's Burton's statement on the Pathways to Work is available to read in our media centre, and we have uploaded photographs from today's launch to Flickr, you can see them here.

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