Emma Harrison speaks to the Guardian about Flexible New Deal
When the Flexible New Deal (FND) offices open on 5 October many of the longterm unemployed people who are obliged to attend this radically-revised job search programme may be surprised to find themselves ushered into a welcoming cafe. Instead of the traditional interview rooms and classrooms where jobless people have until now been taught how to compose a CV and search the local papers for job opportunities, those signed up for the new programme in one of the 40 centres run by the welfare-to-work company A4e will be greeted by an adviser over a cup of coffee... Emma Harrison is under no illusions about the scale of the challenge. Sitting on a friendly interview sofa inside a mocked-up FNDoffice (complete with pretend cafe), which is being used to train the 800 new advisers the company has hired to run the scheme, she says: "If you are coming on FND,it means that other interventions in the past year have not worked. You will find there will be multiple issues. That person might come with a lot of aggression, or exceptionally low self-esteem and no confidence. Unless the adviser deals with that first, then pretty much everything else we do is wasted."