The welfare market: the role of the private sector in the delivery of benefits and employment services

Since the 1980s successive governments have transformed the traditional public sector bureaucracies that deliver benefits and employment services. This chapter assesses the role that private and third sector providers now play in the delivery of the Governments welfare to work strategy. It discusses the creation of a new welfare market where a core of prime contractors will deliver services directly or through other providers and be paid largely on the number of people they place in sustained employment. It reviews the evolution of the contracting regime that has been used to steer the work of these agencies and considers evidence on the impacts that such market delivery has had on the experience and prospects of participants. It reviews also evidence on the quasi market welfare to work delivery systems in the USA and Australia that British reforms are intended to emulate