what a farce and a con. your put on the new deal programme to get work experience via job placements, this means they sign you off unemployement and you spend 6 hours a day doing job search and various other activities, if your lucky enough to get a job placement and a job at the end of it then great, but in reality this rarley happens. you are given an extra £15.00 per week and if you use public transport for the week you get all bar the first £4.00 back which knocks the £15.00 down to £11.00. once you finish the program which can be from 13 to 26 weeks long you have to reclaim unemployement going through all the rigmarol and stress when your not off unemployement effectively, it just keeps the unemployement numbers down then to add insult to injury they totally mess everything up money doesnt go in the bank and you have to start all over again filling in form after form. surely it would be more benificial to open up the skill centres that used to be and teach new trades to the unemployed instead of paying private organisations who in my opinion couldnt give a stuff as long as they are paid. I think the government should buck their ideas up a bit and get things moving the skill centres used to do a great job in retraining and getting people employed.

I completely agree, new deal 25+ is a farce, i'm on new deal 25+ at the moment (5th week), our class is mixed with VSO's ( 18-24yr olds), weve been moved into a basement room with 2 ancient computers to share between 25 of us, and a pile of papers that are weeks old, plus some yellow pages from 3 years ago. I have asked for training, only to be told that no training is allowed for the 25+, ONLY for the 18 - 24yr olds. The job matchers ONLY seem to send people to charity shops, or places like 'Poundland', knowing that theres no possibility of employment at the end of your placement anyway, and the employers like poundland abuse this service ( free labour for 13 weeks? no wonder their profits are so high at the moment). So for 6 hrs a day, we sit in a cramped room basically waiting for the clock to reach the appropriate hometime, whilst feeling, bored + depressed. Lets be honest, you can only do so much jobsearching and the provided facilities for that are old and outdated. What I would really like is the opportunity to do some REAL training and improve the engineering skillset I already have, or even retrain for something completely different. I dont want to be out of work, I didnt shut all the engineering companies in birmingham, I want to work, and i'm afraid ND25+ doesnt help to achieve that at all.

I totally agree with u on this one im on one of the so called options but if u dnt attended ur kicked off i have also been forced to work for free for 13 weeks they say its to put on ur cv but it anint going to look good being employed for 13 weeks i know that the job centre want to keep numbers down but have these people actually looked at the jobs out there well lack of jobs. and there alot of people going on about the under 25 and over 50's but no one mentions the 25 plus

The worst part about this process is that the employers will never offer anyone a job as they are getting staff for free.......

I totally agree with everything that I have read in the letters posted about this new deal 25+! Have just been told that I have to attend one of these meetings to discuss how I am to move forward in the job hunt! Which may not be a bad thing .......if there is a decently paid job at the end of it. But with the incentive to the employers that they can have thier labour not only free but actually be given a grant to do so. Ok it would be invaluable to a small company or to a voluntary organisation.........but this is not the case!!!! multi national companies earning billions in profits each year are taking advantage of this scheme.

How is our economy going to drag itself out of this recession???

If these companies have room in thier organisations to take people on to work then pay the going rate!!!

If they don't have any vacancies...........don't take advantage!!!

How long will it be before they start to find reasons to sack thier regular PAID staff and take on a few more FREEBEE staff???

The people who make these decisions are also running our country............??!!