The role of preparatory VET in building a pathway from welfare to work

Informing Decisions - A Lunchtime Seminar Series presented by the Australian
Institute for Social Research, University of Adelaide.

The AISR is running a monthly series of Friday lunchtime seminars to share the findings of recent research projects. In each seminar insights from both researchers and practitioners will be presented in order to explore issues faced by different stakeholders and discuss ways forward.

Title of Seminar 2: The role of preparatory VET in building a pathway from welfare to work
(as per rescheduled from 30/05/2008)

Speakers: Dr Kate Barnett (Deputy Executive Director, Australian Institute for
Social Research)

and

Mr. Peter Begg (Educational Manager, Vocational
Preparation and Equity TAFESA Adelaide South)

Welfare-to-work policy requires certain groups of income security recipients to pursue pathways that lead to paid employment through work experience, training or community work. Parents of children over the age of six receiving Parenting Payment, long term unemployed people, mature age people on Newstart Allowance and people receiving Disability Support Pension are the groups targeted by this policy. The majority of people in these four groups have relatively low levels of formal education which means that the VET sector can play a critical role in increasing their employability.

The AISR received NCVER funding to explore the role that VET can play in assisting the transition from welfare to work.

In this seminar Dr Kate Barnett will speak about the aims, methodology and key findings to emerge from the research project. Peter Begg will add the practitioner insight by discussing some of the issues faced by TAFE students and staff in achieving the welfare to work transition. Peter played a key role in the research project through assisting the AISR to obtain a sample of vocational preparatory students from TAFE SA.