Not denigrating anyone who gets off their backside and tries to improve their CV.
I've dealt with Bootstrap from an employers perspective, and I wasn't all that impressed. I think that they are basically a company that has jumped on the charity bandwagon which enables them to get funding from jobcentre+ and local government. The 'not for profit' tag is a smokescreen since they probably balance the books by asking for an appropriate level of funding. They have over 100 employees with pensions on an average of £11 an hour.
Their record of securing actual jobs for people is pretty poor. What they are good at is securing free training, unpaid work placements or college courses for people, all of which is out there for joe public to access without going via Bootstrap, and should be offered by the job centre anyway.
Basically everyone is paying through the nose, firstly and quite rightly they are supporting those thrown out of work while they try to get another job, but..... secondly they are funding this company via central government and thirdly they are funding it through local government.
I'm struck by a thought, in 2013 the unemployed of Blackburn will probably have to pay 20% of their council tax, I guess this means that they are, in effect, funding the wages of the people that ask them to work for nothing or find them free training from their weekly pittance. You couldn't make this up
