Well presumably these work schemes aren't going to be full time - since the main point of giving people job-seekers allowance is for them to spend time looking for work. 10 hours a week comunity service in return for the £50 state hand out seems reasonable for the long term unemployed. They'll still have plenty of time to apply for proper full time work and watch thier favorite daytime TV programs etc..
I was once on new deal when it was first created. The 'work for your benefit' was exactly that - 9am to 5pm, 5 days a week with a bunch of trakkie hooddies renovating a community centre and adjacent terraced house.
There was supposed to be a foreman who was in charge of the 'renovations' and showing us how to do stuff.
The reality was he checked us in in the morning and before we went home and the rest of the day he was absent. In the end myself and another lad papered and decorated the whole upstairs of the house whilst everyone else just messed about drilling holes in the bannisters and the walls.
Iirc you got an extra tenner a week/fortnight on top of your dole.
As luck would have it, one of the agencies I was registered with eventually offered me work as a trainee CAD tech (what I was looking to get my foot in the door) so I left that disaster area not a moment too soon.
I don't believe anything has changed overly much tbh. New deal and its derivatives were always a poorly disguised attempt to shrink the unemployment figures.
Don't even get me started on some of the 'business' partnerships that had government subsidies to 'train' job-seekers in useful skills... it was policy for these companies to get more money if they steered a 'customer' (as we were referred to) into one of the community projects/practical tasks, rather than offer to send you an a proper educational/training course for which they got paid a lesser subsidy by the government.
It's a shockingly bad state of affairs that when I had to attend a CV writing course, we filled out loads of questionnaires about skills and qualifications etc, which the business centres secretaries would type up for us and make them all shiny for potential employers... when they came back with the newly typed up CV I had to laugh; it was one solid block of prose, riddled with spelling mistakes and grammatical errors. I asked the bloke who was running the workshop for a red pen, then spent the next half hour correcting the mistakes and highlighting breaks and paragraphs etc.
Finally I showed him the result of two days of attending his mickey-mouse course and asked if he thought that what I held in my hand was acceptable as something to give to any potential employer.
He looked so crestfallen I almost felt sorry for him.
My only advice, regarding any dealings with the jobcentre/new deal/housing & council tax benefits offices, is this: if you can manage
not to have anything to do with any of them, don't. You will be better off for it.