"How do you help solve unemployment in a city such as Hull, where for a time late last year there were 58 jobseekers for each post, the highest number of applicants chasing every vacancy in the country? The government's solution is the work programme, which David Cameron launched last summer, promising it would be "the biggest, boldest effort to get people off benefits and into work that this country has ever seen". With unemployment at a 17-year high, the pressure for it to succeed could not be greater." - M F

"Exuding kindness and energy, Amanda Knox-Holmes has meetings all day with clients from her 100-plus caseload. First she encourages Mary, 40, a vulnerable, troubled single mum with children in their late teens, to accept an unpaid, 12-week stint of work experience at a care home, as a possible first step towards getting a paid job with them. "You'd get 12 weeks' experience. You will serve food to the old people, you'll do a bit of cleaning, help do activities with the old people. This is an opportunity to gain social care experience," she says. Mary says she has personal experience of caring for old people, and is initially uncertain. "I could get a job out of it?" she asks. "Yes, if you pull the stops out, they will be taking people on," Amanda tells her, and she agrees to sign up." - M F