Illustrative · Kestrel Pathways is a constructed operator, not a real provider. Its shape, scale and contract mix are drawn from how the UK employability sector actually works, and every figure is indicative unless it carries a source.
Actor two
The provider, from the chair to the board
Roles, never named people. What each one is accountable for, what it genuinely controls, and what it can see of the cost its decisions create.
The scale runs from the adviser sitting opposite the participant to the board that signs the bid. Every level is doing something reasonable with what it can see. The pattern worth watching is not competence, it is the steady trade of sight for control as the levels rise.
Chapter 1 · The scale
The roles, and what each can see
Read down the column marked sees and then down the one marked controls. The inversion is the whole argument of this study, and it is not a criticism of any individual in it.
Front line
Sees the whole person and controls almost nothing about the offer.
A caseload of between seventy and a hundred and forty people, their plans, their appointments and the evidence trail for every one of them.
Front line · clinical adjacent Health and wellbeing specialistParticipants whose barrier is primarily health, and the interface with services the provider does not control.
Front line · demand side Employer engagement adviserRelationships with employers, vacancies that are real, and the promise that a placed candidate will not embarrass the relationship.
Office
Sees the caseload in aggregate, and individuals only when they escalate.
Six to ten advisers, their performance, their caseload quality and their wellbeing, which are frequently in tension.
Office Site managerThe site number, the lease, the safeguarding log and the audit file.
Contract and region
Sees a dashboard, a monthly exception report and the commissioner.
Performance across twenty to forty sites and the relationship with the commissioner regional team.
Region · data Performance and MI leadThe numbers that go to the commissioner, and their defensibility eighteen months later.
Region · assurance Compliance and auditEvidence integrity, and the consequences when a claim cannot be substantiated.
Group
Sees money in full and the conversation almost not at all.
Contract margin, delivery, and the promise made in the bid.
Group Bid and growth directorWinning the next contract, at a price and a volume the company can deliver.
Board Chair and non-executivesThe company to its owners, and the appointment of the chief executive.
Chapter 2 · The unexamined
The two decisions nobody audits
The first is allocation: which adviser gets which referral. It is made by a team leader in a few minutes, weekly, with no recorded rationale, and it probably determines more outcomes than any other single decision in the company. Nobody reviews it, because it does not look like a decision.
The second is definition: what counts as an engagement, a start, an outcome. It is made by the performance function for perfectly good audit reasons, and it silently sets what two thousand people spend their days optimising. In most providers it is written down once, at mobilisation, by people under time pressure, and then never revisited.