The Abbott government needs to focus on individuals and what is going on in their lives, rather than forcing them into intensive job searching, if it is to fix long-term unemployment, one of the country's biggest providers of community services says.
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Ahead of the first round table on the McClure welfare review, Anglicare will release a study into what works to get disadvantaged job-seekers into employment.
The paper, prepared by the Australian Centre for Community Services Research at Flinders University, says job-seekers' individual aspirations need to be identified, as well as their life circumstances.
It argues that policies such as work for the dole, ''earn or learn'' and intensive job-seeking ignore social disadvantage.
''It assumes a level playing field, whereby all unemployed people can obtain work if they are incentivised to do so.''
The paper reports success with broader capacity-building around work, including depression management, communication, fitness, relationships, cooking, budgeting and computing skills.
Anglicare's acting executive director, Roland Manderson, said the government's welfare review, due to report by October, needed to help job-seekers to be in control.
''In the end it's about respecting human beings,'' he said.
While the McClure review had talked about providing individual support for job-seekers, ''it needs to get real in terms of what that means in resources''.
In the budget, the government announced it would make unemployed people under 30 wait for six months to get the dole, while the McClure review paper, released late last month, talks about giving the income support system a ''stronger employment focus''.
The jobless rate is 5.8 per cent, with youth unemployment 12.5 per cent. Almost 19 per cent of unemployed people have been without a job for 12 months or more.
On Friday, the government will begin its round table consultations into the McClure review, which will involve two separate meetings with representatives of community, business and welfare groups. This is ahead of two round tables in Sydney on July 15.
