Foreword By Cllr Stephen Houghton CBE, Chair, National Worklessness Learning Forum Long-term unemployment or worklessness is one of the great evils of modern society. It blights individuals, their families, and communities, and costs the Exchequer significant amounts in benefits and lost revenue. Little wonder the current Government has made tackling the problem a major priority, with almost five million people now reliant on some form of working-age benefit. However, the solutions to the problem are not always clear. Worklessness tends to concentrate in places, and the context and causes differ from place to place – indeed from person to person. Previous one-size-fits-all, top-down solutions, whilst well intentioned, only reduced the problem at the margins. Large numbers of workless people have remained reliant on benefits despite one of the longest periods of economic growth the country has seen. So can the problem be tackled in this new post-recession era, when growth forecasts are at best modest and public expenditure is being reduced on a scale not seen since the 1970s?
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