Easy Targets

The idiocy continues.  Just registered another client, Mr FW, who has worked continuously since 1963.  He has diabetes and can't walk very far.  He is 9 months off retirement.  After having a period of 12 months on the sick due to his disabilities, he has been declared fit for work and is expected to apply for 6 jobs a week, and look for jobs within a 90 mile radius. 

Our town is surrounded on 3 sides by the sea.  Is he supposed to go for a job in the Irish Sea??  He is another victim of the glorious box-ticking exercise the DWP/JobCentre Plus has become.  There is absolutely no way this man would ever be offered a job, because of his age and his ill health.  It is an example of the abject futility of Iain Duncan Smith's Benefit Reforms. I'd love for someone like IDS or Cameron to spend a day in here, seeing what people have to go through, and to see how organisations such as us, who are pinched to the limit with funding cuts, are expected to take up the slack from Government funded organisations.

Its going to be a long day.  

Claimant Commitment or Signing Your Own Death Warrant

The Government's new Claimant Commitment is being rolled out up here, and we are just seeing the first ramifications of this further change to Welfare policy. The Claimant Commitment is the Coalition Government's answer to the Job Seekers Agreement, something you have to sign up to when you make a new claim. Esther McVey (is she the worlds only Tory Scouser??) says:

"The Claimant Commitment marks the start of a redefinition of the relationship between the welfare state and claimants. In return for state support, we expect claimants to do all they can to meet their responsibilities to return to work. It also strengthens the ability of Job Centre Plus staff to support claimants back in to work at the earliest opportunity. Work coaches and job seekers will agree to regular specific tasks and training opportunities and the penalties claimants could face for failing to meet their responsibilities  to get in to work will be clearly spelt out"

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/jobseekers-to-start-signing-new-claimant-commitment-today

I have no idea how, in practice, the new Claimant Commitment helps Job Centre staff to support claimants back in to work at the earliest opportunity.  Its just a soundbite to try and make her appear credible.

Just imagine that you have been on some form of disability benefit for the last 15/20 years, you fail your ATOS assessment and your appeal and are put on to Job Seekers Allowance, and you are asked  to complete a Claimant Commitment. This "Commitment" spells out what you are going to do to look for work.  How do you know where to start? How do you know what you are capable of?  Once you sign on the dotted line, that's it, if you don't fulfill your obligations as per the Client Commitment, you can be sanctioned.  Once again, its just a massive buck-passing exercise by the Government.

And again, its agencies like ours that will pick up the fallout from these Governmental policies. We already have people coming to see us who say "I need to do a 30 hour job search, can I block book your computer?"  We have one PC.

Not Laughing

Tuesday 4th March

I rang the Outreach Centre today to speak to one of my colleagues, just to let her know about a conversation I’d had with a client earlier.

We discuss various things, then she tells me, (rather indignantly) that she registered a client this morning who had been referred to us from another provider (one who has a contract to deliver the Work Programme), and the reason that the client was referred to us is that the Work Programme provider (allegedly) told the client that they are unable to write a CV for him. They do not have the capacity/ability to do this, and the Outreach Centre is the best place to get CV’s done.

I am astounded.  An organisation who is given Government funding to help people back to work, is signposting its clients to us, to receive assistance with writing a CV??  I’ve been trying to get my head ‘round that one all morning…I would laugh at the absurdity of the situation, if there wasn't someone at the end of all this buck-passing trying to fulfil their Client Commitment, or Job Seekers Agreement, or whatever Government have decided to label it now.

9th January: Lets Play Pass The Parcel

9^th January

A client came to see me today, to register for help with writing a CV, and was referred by Job Centre Plus. We will call him Client S.  This is getting to be a recurring story: Client S has been on Incapacity Benefit for nearly 20 years and after failing his ATOS medical and also failing his appeal, he has now been moved on to Job Seekers Allowance (JSA) and is expected to do 30 hours a week job searching.  Here’s the crunch: he has severe photosensitive epilepsy, a condition so bad that I had to interview him in a darkened room.

From an employers’ viewpoint, who is going to employ this man? He can’t work inside because of his medical condition, so unless some kindly employer decides to re-fit all the lighting in their workplace, he isn’t going to get a nice job sitting at a nice desk. Outside would be even more problematical. Imagine if he had a seizure and hit his head? Can you imagine the Employers Liability insurance to cover this? Have the Government never heard of Corporate Manslaughter?? It beggars belief…

We have neither the capacity nor the facilities to deal with clients with complex medical issues, and yet the DWP are signposting people like Client S to organisations such as us, to deliver one-to-one support. How are we supposed to write CV’s for people who have not worked for 20-odd years, and have a patchy recollection of their employment history prior to their illness? Do the DWP expect us to be able to assist the client with their 30 hour Job Search? The ultimate end of these governmental welfare reforms is passing the buck, passing people from one agency to another so they can tick the box and discount the client from their figures.

 I have started keeping a log of the number of people that are being referred to us that have previously been on long term Disability/Incapacity benefits.  There will be a prize for the advisor who has the client that has been out of work for the longest length of time. Not.

It's Another World Out There...

We'll Start At The Beginning 

I have been working in this job for 18 months, as a manager for an Employment Support project, and during those long 18 months, I have seen things go from bad to worse for those people who are unfortunate enough to be out of work.

I am sick and tired of reading about benefit scroungers and unemployed and disabled people in the mass media, which aims to vilify and victimise the most vulnerable members of society and portray them as lazy, workshy scroungers who take the food out of the mouths of "honest, hard-working tax payers".  Being in a position to see this first-hand, I thought I would write a blog (anonymously of course, to protect the identities of the people I work with and to stop me from being sacked!) so that people can see exactly what goes on, and what people’s lives are like.  A real picture, not some half-baked made-up piece in a Tory tabloid rag, whose only aim is to divide and conquer, and take the eyes of the populace off what is really going on. 

Stories about unemployment and benefits polarise opinion, people in receipt of benefits are either “scroungers” or “vulnerable” and whilst I have learnt that the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive, it is always right to bear in mind that at the bottom of it all, these people are human beings, and as such are inclined to greed, folly and stupidity as well as generosity, prudence and good sense as much as the rest of humanity.

About Me

 I am a woman in my mid-forties, and have worked in an educational/employment capacity for some years, so I didn’t think that I would find this job such an eye-opener as it has been; I’d worked in Customer Service for several years previously, so there’s not a lot that surprises me when dealing with people.

My background is working-class, I was bought up in a council house, part of a large family that survived on benefits, so I didn’t come in to this role from some idealistic, middle-class liberal position; I generally take the view of “There but for the Grace of God Go I…” I was lucky enough to be intelligent(ish) and fairly articulate, so I went to University; not everyone has the same aspirations or access to the same options, and sadly, as you begin to realise after a while, some people are pretty much destined to fail from the start.

The Job

I manage an outreach centre for unemployed people in a large town in the North-West of England.  We aim to provide help and support to those people who are seeking work, by helping them write CV’s and covering letters, we also have facilities such as PC’s which our clients use for job searches/job applications. Town B, where we are situated, has high levels of unemployment, especially amongst 16 -24 year olds, and massive levels of people in receipt of sickness benefit (or what is left of sickness benefit).  Child poverty is high, and the town overall is ranked in the Top 20 most deprived towns in England.  That’s one chart rundown you won’t be hearing of a Sunday afternoon…

The unemployment picture is somewhat skewed as we have two very large employers in Town B, who employ people with very specific skills, and thus command high wages.  At the bottom end, however, are huge swathes of the population who have very limited, or no skills, and as such, are unable to secure the type of jobs that demand a very specific skill set.  These people made up the majority of our client base.

Then along comes the Coalition Government’s Welfare Reforms in their catchily entitled policy: Simplifying the Welfare System and Masking Sure Work Pays. You can read it here: https://www.gov.uk/government/policies/simplifying-the-welfare-system-and-making-sure-work-pays

Iain Duncan Smith, Esther McVey and "Lord" Freud, a rogues gallery if I ever saw one, are the authors of this policy and the effect that it has had on people has been devastating.  This is just my viewpoint, but as someone who works every day with unemployed people, I can see the consequences of the "reforms" first hand. George "Gideon" Osborne tells us that the economy is booming and unemployment is down.  Up here it ain't...