The Community Services Programme (CSP) provides financial support to community companies that provide revenue generating services of a social inclusion nature. Many of these companies are also funded from other sources and generate revenue from the public use of their facilities and services.
A total of 404 service providers are supported under the CSP to provide local social, economic and environmental services through the application of a social enterprise model of delivery.
The CSP aims to create sustainable jobs for those most distant from the labour market, in particular, for those who are long-term unemployed and from specific target groups. It provides a co-funding contribution to service providers to employ a manager and/or full-time equivalents (FTEs) to help deliver the objectives of the community service. The focus here is on service delivery to disadvantaged communities and target groups. Employees are recruited from the labour market subject to the service provider meeting certain programme requirements.
The CSP enables the creation of paid employment positions and is not a welfare payment, or an add-on to a welfare payment. This approach sets the programme apart from other public funding sources and reflects the social enterprise ethos of the programme.
The Department encourages service providers to use the CSP contribution to recruit staff on a full-time basis to prevent a scenario whereby the Department is contributing to the cost of employment of an individual and also making a payment to that same individual via Jobseekers Allowance. Services which have joined the CSP since 2015 are required to ensure that their CSP funded employees work a minimum of 30 hours across 4 days each week and additional FTEs allocated to any service in the programme must also adhere to this requirement.
I hope this clarifies the matter for the Deputy.
