Upskilling Unemployed Adults : The Organisation, Profiling and Targeting of Training Provision - The Netherlands

Re-integration activities in the Netherlands are decentralised to a large extent to labour market regions and municipalities. Both PES and the municipalities are responsible for the re-integration activities of unemployed, and cater for different groups: PES work with those who receive UB or disability benefits and the municipalities work with those who receive social assistance or are in sheltered work places. Re-integration instruments are tailored to the needs and capabilities of the benefit recipient, and the best match is not always schooling. Schooling is often only a small part of the re-integration activities of both municipalities and PES.PES and municipalities cooperate within the framework of 35 labour market regions, which jointly cover the whole of the Netherlands. Within these labour market regions PES and the municipalities may cooperate to provide services to jobseekers and employers, and PES and municipalities may shape this cooperation according to their own ideas and needs. Yet, the landscape of income and re-integration provision has changed considerably over the past years, involving decentralisation of services to the municipality level, shrinking budgets for income and re-integration provisions and developing integral policies and implementation. On the one hand this means that municipalities have developed larger and more complex tasks, while also needing to support a differentiated group with less funds. This may further endanger the role of re-integration support and schooling. Although schooling is expensive, this has lock-in effects, and is not always a best match for those who want to re-integrate into the labour market. However, the scarce evaluation studies show that schooling improves job finding chances in the long-run. Yet, other types of re-integration activities generate good results as well. This may depend on a good match between the individual needs and the type of re-integration instrument offered