Humansolutions Bulletin - May 7th 2024

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‘Facticity’ is the technical term for the things we cannot change, the things that are beyond our control. There will always be such things, and we have to get used to that. Some people have a problem because they tend to be defeatist. They accept things that they don’t need to accept – they fail to recognize that there are steps they could take to address their problems. However, the problem I am talking about here is the opposite of that. It refers to situations where people know there is nothing they can do, but they try to do it anyway. For example, someone who is interviewed for a job, but is unsuccessful may not be willing to let go…

Governments, regulators and investors are taking a much greater interest in what organisations are doing to combat modern slavery and the exploitation of people both within the workforce and within company supply chains. Modern slavery is considered a key element of environmental, social and governance (ESG) matters. It is an issue of interest to investors, policymakers and regulators, who are looking to boards to report externally on their policies and actions. This factsheet looks at HR’s role in tackling modern slavery, and the steps that can be taken to prevent it. Click here to read more

'Work first' is a core idea that underpins the UK's employment and welfare systems, and effective ‘work first’ orientated systems have long-term, paid employment as the primary goal for people interacting with them. This is the right objective, but with work entry rates for unemployed benefit claimants falling, health-related inactivity rising sharply and millions of people not claiming benefits locked out of support, urgent improvement is needed to reach it. For the unemployed, the Jobcentre has become a Universal Credit (UC) monitoring service rather than an employment service. By updating DWPs own figures, we estimate that the department now spends £350 million a year on monitoring claimants, the equivalent of over half of the annual spend on work coach salaries.…

The poet and broadcaster Lemn Sissay has accused ministers of ignoring “brilliant” recommendations to improve the “dysfunctional” children’s social care system in England because they are not vote winners. Sissay, whose bestselling memoir My Name Is Why was a reflection on his own childhood in care, said the government had “cherrypicked” from the 2022 MacAlister review, despite the report putting forward costed recommendations that would save money in the longer term. Click here to read more

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