ABSTRACT
Within three weeks of his announcement the Manpower Services Commission (MSC) had introduced its Job Creation Programme (JCP) and thus ‘the work creation scheme’ was launched ‘to alleviate the worst effects of the highest level of unemployment since the war’. This chapter examines the ‘new kind’ of ‘opportunities’ offered by JCP, to assess the nature of the ‘general stock of skills’ supposedly promoted by its existence and to identify in what way it helped ‘those who have achieved little or nothing at school or in more traditional forms of provision.’ The OPDP sprang from an early response to the introduction of JCP taken by a voluntary organisation based in a city in the north west of England. The work of the OPDP centred upon the redecoration of homes in the Oldfield neighbourhood.
