Shadow Cabinet minister impressed by visit to A4e’s family programme in Germany.

The Conservative work and pensions spokesman, Chris Grayling MP, came away with much ‘food for thought’ from a visit to Germany on 6 November after being shown A4e’s family welfare to work programme in Gelsenkirchen.

At the start of the day, Mr Grayling was given a full presentation by Herr Lipka, a senior official of the ARGE, the German employment service, on the government’s approach to helping long-term unemployed people back to work. Guided by A4e centre manager Achim Elsner, he then met A4e staff and clients involved in A4e’s ‘Family Futures’ programme which has been designed by the company to facilitate change for an entire family to a Work First lifestyle. The highly successful programme is helping to generate stronger family units by changing attitudes towards work collectively, enabling greater financial independence and producing role models for the future to overcome generational unemployment.

Chris Grayling described the visit as ‘eye opening’, saying that he had really understood the potential impact of the family programme. Sara McKee, A4e’s group commercial director who accompanied Mr Grayling on the visit, commented: “It is very encouraging that a British shadow cabinet minister has set aside a whole day abroad to explore how welfare to work programmes can be reformed to deliver more sustainable employment for clients. A4e believes that the next stage of reform should be towards holistically meeting the needs of families and we are now applying the experience that we have gathered in Germany to a pilot in South Wales.”

Find out more about A4e’s Family Futures programme on page 13 of our ‘Ending Poverty’ manifesto and read a mother and daughter case-study from Gelsenkirchen in our latest autumn edition of Blueprint (page 27):

www.a4e.co.uk/A4eManifesto.aspx
www.a4e.co.uk/Blueprint__A4es_Company_Magazine.aspx