My Workfare Proposal

I am pleased to see that the work experience scheme will now carry no penalties for dropping out of it, if the government can be believed and trusted.  There still needs to be tweaks to the scheme and maybe these can follow in the coming months.
I do believe the original scheme was good and potentially, gave hope to many youngsters where there was no realistic hope.  Where the government went wrong was in trying to gain support from their friends in the big businesses, not just national concerns, but mega-sized international businesses.  These companies don't care about the size of the unemployment queues.  Whether people are unemployed or not they still have to eat and spend money; their only interest is in getting their supplies, and their labour, at the best possible price, and free labour is very profitable.  I did hear anecdotal evidence that Tesco were replacing paid staff, when they left, with unpaid 'staff'.  This is immoral and wrong by any measurement.
The original plan was that this work experience would be done within the public sector (councils, hospitals, police, ambulance services, fire brigade, nationalised industries) not private businesses.  I recall also discussions taking place about the viability of setting up a volunteer 'army' along the lines of the Salvation Army and the 'peace corps' in USA.  I consider this would be a very equitable system, rather than the one of persecution that we are currently in, and there is more than enough openings for 'work experience' or 'training & retraining' for ALL the unemployed, not just the ( and not the prejudiced system of excluding anyone over 50) youngsters and without the need to lay off fully employed staff.
Whatever type of system of  'workfare'  is adopted it must be clear upon both the rights and responsibilities of those taking part in the scheme.  The interests of the participating public bodies must be secure and safeguarded.
This would also be an extremely easy system to setup.
All the public bodies could now have all the staff they require and staff all the projects that have been put on hold due to lack of funding for manpower.
The benefits?  Clean streets, well tended parks, more regular street cleaning, more parking enforcement, well staffed town halls; extra hospital porters, doctors and nurses, more hospital administrative staff; catering staff for canteens which were cut due to budget cuts, more special police officers, traffic wardens, administrative staff in police stations, more paramedics and patient transport staff.  This has not of course included all the charity shops that need staff, all the various voluntary organisations that are always short staffed in so many fields.
There is so much scope for so much good, and it is an opportunity that would cost nothing to implement; if the government lets it go to waste it will not be addressed for another 20 years.  Wasteful unemployment can be a thing of the past.