Evaluation Context and The Challenges

The Scottish Government’s No One Left Behind Strategy has an overall vision to deliver an employability system that tackles inequalities in Scotland’s labour market and creates a responsive and aligned approach that helps people of all ages who face the greatest barriers to progress towards, into and to sustain work. Aligning and integrating employability funding is regarded as integral in achieving this and in addressing the many issues faced by the sector in the last two decades.

The Centre for Civic Innovation’s Employability Re-Design Report 2024 for Glasgow, provides a consolidated representation of the broad range of challenges faced which have impacted on services’ capacity and/or ability to provide truly person-centred support.

The challenges related to the integration and alignment of funding are:

· Funding uncertainty

· Varied funding models and monitoring approaches

· Competition and duplication across delivery

· An inability to properly analyse performance and understand the impact of employability funding