WHILE the Covid-19 pandemic has impacted on so many things we used to take for granted, life must go on. For many, that means finding a new job or starting out on a first or different career path. If you’re a young person from a background without advantage or someone who missed out on learning opportunities at school because of childhood trauma, how do you get a break in life? Maybe you got off to a bad start when you were younger; how do you get on a better track? This much we know. Helping individuals develop personally doesn’t happen by punishing them with pernicious benefit sanctions. Treating people out of work with hostility and indignity is a broken policy from the Victorian era. And yet, this approach remains at the heart of the UK Government’s unemployment policy.