The New Deal: great expectations - The main New Deal programme has just reached its second anniversary, and our regular update on employers' experiences of the Government's welfare-to-work measures takes stock of our research findings over this period. Successive extensions of the initiative mean that virtually every disadvantaged group of unemployed people is now covered by a variant of the New Deal. But all of them share an emphasis on employers' voluntary participation, offering New Deal trainees work experience and training. Many employers have been encouraged by government publicity to become involved, often as much through altruism as other considerations. But the numbers of trainees, and their quality, have fallen below expectations. However, the Government is now responding to such concerns and is to make greater efforts to prepare trainees before they transfer to the workplace.