Meanwhile, back at the jobcentre…

Let’s go back to Stockport jobcentre, where I spoke at length recently with Pat, who was in her 40s.

Pat was manic: pacing and talking non-stop. She’d just been released from prison. Pat said that she was from Manchester, but been dropped at a halfway house of some description in Bredbury in Stockport:

“I don’t know where I am…I thought it was in Stockport, but it was in Bredbury. I was put there.”

Pat had to make a claim for Universal Credit at the jobcentre, but had no idea how to begin. She said that she didn’t have money for food.

I meet too many people in such situations at jobcentres: confused, clearly in need and reeling outside a jobcentre:

Said Pat (she was confused and spoke fast):

“I have to get… I usually have a [support] worker with me, but I’ve left it too late. She’s gone off now, because it is a bank holiday, yeah… I’m just come out of prison recently and … you get like £300, or whatever, but they… they dropped me here… I’m… from… Bredbury…

 

“I didn’t have… on my life, [I was] crying… come out [of prison] the day before. Everything was shut. I couldn’t get me doctor. I couldn’t get… I was sat in the stupid house where they put me… so finally my probation – they came and got me…I just got a ticket. I had to find [my] here [to the jobcentre]. I had nothing to get out with… in [prison] for 10 months…

 

“I get scared and I don’t want to walk around where I don’t know where I am…I thought it was in Stockport, but it was in Bredbury. I was put there. I’m from Manchester. I went into Manchester jobcentre, but they wouldn’t help me. They were saying – “Oh, because you’re living in Stockport…[we can’t help you in a Manchester jobcentre].

 

“It’s in like a bail house – a bail hostel in Bredbury. I’ve just come out of there. No bus ticket. No money and it was Easter when I got out. She [the support worker] did bring me a bag of food.

 

“I had to beg people. She [the support worker] did come up to me with a bus ticket, so I thought right – I’m just going to have to go and find it [Stockport jobcentre] It’s very hard for me, so I’m quite proud that I actually found it…

 

“What am I going to say [to staff at the jobcentre]? I’ve got a make a claim. Never done Universal Credit. I was on PIP and ESA when I went away, but obviously now I’m….it’s all changed… so it’s going to be Universal Credit now, so I think I make a claim and like [ask for] an advance payment [for food money] yeah… if it gets a bit difficult, I’ll come out and get you…”

 

Next up was Dennis, who was in his 50s.

Dennis was disabled. He was sitting in his wheelchair outside of the jobcentre.

Dennis said that he’d been moved from his one-bedroom first floor flat to a ground floor flat – he found the first floor flat too hard to get to.

Unfortunately, the ground floor flat had two bedrooms. That meant Dennis had to pay the bedroom tax for the “spare” room. He’d had one discretionary housing payment to cover the extra cost. That had finished. Now, Dennis was trying to work out what to do.

Dennis said:

“I was in one bedroom upstairs flat and I had to go [because of my disability]… they put me into a two bedroom [ground floor] flat. I’m now paying each fortnight for the bedroom tax. One of the bedrooms can’t be lived in…. so I’m paying for that.

“I was in the old place for about 30 years. I had to go to the ground floor flat…I still have to pay [the tax]… the reason for moving was the mobility.

“I’ve got a flat in Reddish. When I went to get the paperwork and all that – they’d given it to somebody else. It was the same street and same number. They got the names mixed up…”

 

And so on.

You get the picture. It’s chaos out here. Nothing makes sense. I keep meeting people at jobcentres who are just plain bewildered. On and on and on it goes.

It’s hard to see a time coming when Brexit is pushed aside and this mess is addressed.

Posting as usual should resume next week.

20 thoughts on “Meanwhile, back at the jobcentre…

  1. If Brexit IS ever pushed aside don’t expect someone like Boris to address this mess. On the one hand it’s hard to see how things can get any worse, but there’s no sign of things getting better anytime soon. Whoever gets the PM gig will be a Tory, and however they deal with Brexit the poor will get doubly shafted probably to the point where there’s none of us left because they’ll have killed us all off, and maybe that was the plan all along. Our only hope is a General Election and a Labour victory.

  2. I think the problem runs deeper than Universal Credit, the entire role and existence of Jobcentres needs to be reassessed. The problem began nearly 40 years ago when newly introduced Jobcentres were then merged in effect with the old Unemployment Offices, advertising available job vacancies and helping people to find work became inextricably linked with the provision of Social Security. There’s an interesting article about that below (though it states that Jobcentres appeared in the 1970s, which I don’t recall being the case, it was the early 80s in my town) :

    http://theconversation.com/search/result?sg=a6980917-d1de-412a-a70e-900c1a52dedd&sp=1&sr=1&url=%2Fwhy-are-britains-jobcentres-disappearing-91290

  3. If a person on benefits needs a one bedroom place because of disability then if they are given a two or three bedroom place the landlord should pay the difference themselves whether the council or housing association

    • You’d have thought so. If they can find people as being “intentionally homeless” then why not “unintentionally housed” ?

      • That’d be far too humane and sensible Trev! It’s wot Kate sez, claimants should be heavily I involved in framing the system. But I think that hell would have to freeze over before any politicians would relinquish control.

        • I’ve just been looking at articles on the net, and there are plenty of them, many within the last 4 or 5 years critical of the Jobcentre and calling for reform, though most of them are coming from the angle of youth unemployment and I haven’t seen anything much about the way in which older people are being treated by the Jobcentre.

          https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/apr/18/creative-plan-employment-arts-change-jobcentre-culture

          https://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/oct/07/politicians-bullying-young-workless-people-into-jobs

          https://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jul/29/unemployed-jobcentre-failed-young-people

          https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/23/jobcentres-dont-work-employment-letting-young-people-down

          • As an ‘older person’ I feel that the ageism that we know exists is downplayed, yet the Jobcentre I attend is hosting a jobsfair next week aimed at the over 50s, which kind of confirms that older workers do have problems finding work. I’m not saying that younger people aren’t discriminated against, as I know that they are, and there have been specific problems with younger workers for over 40 years now, as attested by government schemes aimed at reducing youth unemployment, such as the YOPS scheme of the late 70s brought in by the Callaghan government. .

            The biggest problem with Jobcentres is that they aren’t doing the job they were set up to do any more. I think the Jobcentre moniker dates from about 1976 and they were in their first decade at least completely separate from the Unemployment Benefit system, as anyone could register as looking for work; it was only obligatory to register for those who claimed Unemployment Benefit, (it was one of the conditions). I think it was a deliberate separation, and the Jobcentre was conceived as a place that was welcoming where jobs could be found, (and the staff would find jobs for registered workers) and also as a place offering comprehensive career advice and advising about opportunities for training.

            My own experience was very positive, and by and large most of those working in Jobcentres went the extra mile to assist their clients. But there was at the time considerable resources devoted to high quality training and retraining facilities where a real effort was made to involve government, business and the trade unions in evolving policy in this respect. It was a world away from what we face today.

            I can understand why and how JCP+ is criticised, and in large measure it does fail to do what it says on the tin. Not so very long ago you could walk into a Jobcentre safe in the knowledge that you’d find jobs advertised there, and not so long previous to that, genuine training opportunities on offer. Now there are no jobs to be found in a Jobcentre, and all advice on training is merely to re-direct enquirers to outside agencies so hollowed out due to ideological austerity that what they offer is farcical, and the training offered basically dumbed down and worthless. I recently looked on one of the advice sites for training opportunities offered at no cost, and one of the recommendations were the free courses offered by the OU. They were fine as far as they went, but there was no real system of accreditation, and the academic standard so dumbed down that an Advanced course wouldn’t have challenged me at all. I’m no slouch intellectually, (and no genius either) and I’m not slamming the courses, (many were actually very interesting) but I do expect things that are called Advanced courses to at least offer something of a challenge, and the main gripe I had about the level of the courses offered was that they were no where near even first year undergraduate level, which isn’t actually saying a lot.

            As Kate said earlier, any fair system HAS to involve those who will be using the service – and it’s a it of a puzzle as to why people like us aren’t being consulted over a system that is supposedly set up to help us. Usually when services are set up, those running them are falling over themselves to find out how the service users perceive the ‘product’. This isn’t so with the services offered by the DWP through JCP+. They know what they’re offering is crap, as recently confirmed by the recent PR campaign that fooled no-one.

            Above all, its’ such a tragic waste of people. It’s too often forgotten that a country’s most important, vital natural resource is its people. Strangely so few countries seem to have really learned that.

  4. And another thing about the Jobcentre is why is it such an hostile environment, why all the confrontation, fear, intimidation? A dead giveaway is the amount of security personnel, all those G4S guards hanging about doing fuck all. If the Jobcentre was such a great place that genuinely helps people, as the DWP maintains, then why the need for such excessive security? They have more security guards than Banks, and more security than I’ve ever seen in any bar or nightclub. In the old Dole Office in the 1970s there were no security guards at all. It’s not quite oh so Rosie as the DWP makes out, and if they weren’t such cunts who treat people like shit then they surely wouldn’t need to have security guards now would they? Same reason IDS needs armed bodyguards, because people are just queuing up to have a pop at such a wonderfully generous, almost Saintly, philanthropic benefactor as he.

  5. Dole offices, no, most of those places were grim, but generally not threatening places. Some places did however have security screens separating staff and claimants.

    I well remember the dole office in Carmarthen in the early 80s, (not that I visited that often after the first six months of my claim as I was eligible for a postal claim, because it was a whole seven miles away from the dole office!) where the dole office was a rather bare room with a counter. It might not have been swish, but the people were pleasant enough, and there was usually no hassle there. However the one big shock was the arrival of the Peace Convoy, a load of soap dodgers (on their way to Ireland, I think, though I don’t think Ireland was particularly thrilled). Anyway, it seems that many of them were entitled to make a claim, and they attended the dole office, and things evidently got a little bit excited. The result was that one signing on day I arrived at the building, and it was immediately noticeable that there were a few changes. For one, there was actually a queue in the corridor outside the dole office, and that there were police there keeping order, keeping everyone in line, literally. The second obvious difference was that the previously open counter in the dole office now had a makeshift ‘screen’ between staff and claimants – a timber and chain-link fence barrier nailed on to the counter and reaching to the ceiling.

    Whether the police presence and the ‘security screen’ were a huge overreaction, I don’t know, (however the local press had been hyping up the progress of the Peace Convoy for some time, and it’s the kind of thing that local press loves when they exist in an area where all too often where the most exciting reporting is the obituaries section or the price of ewes at the local mart) but it’s something that has stayed in my mind. The security fence was soon taken down once all the panic had died down and the Peace Convoy had departed, and normal service was resumed, with the manager of the dole office allegedly returning to his habit of warning the local moonlighters about the fraud investigators being in town.

    • The old Dole Office I remember in the late 70s – early 80s was a grim place, only small, bare floor no carpet, fag ends all over the floor as you could smoke in the queue in those days, and just a long wooden counter with no screen, and queues were defined by handwritten signs dangling from a water pipe above, tied on with string, denoting what queue it was e.g. “B1” etc. and one for Personal Issue that was spelled wrong i.e. “Personnel Issue” ! There were no jobs displayed on cards at that time either. You had to queue right down the side of the building, sometimes for an hour, before you got in the door, then another 15 – 20 mins. to get to the counter and you were out again in 5 mins. The place was jam packed. And no security. Oh and it was weekly signing in those days, and you got paid weekly too, which was much better.

  6. It seems that at least some in the Civil Service think that Philip Alston’s report isn’t bad:

  7. Policy in Practice, an influential Think Tank organisation, is still helping the Government to flog the dead horse that is Universal Credit:

    https://policyinpractice.co.uk/universal-credits-managed-migration-discovery-phase-lessons-and-opportunities/

    I am still on old style (“legacy”) JSA and I will cling to it for as long as is humanly possible. I do not want to be paid monthly as it is hard enough trying to survive fortnightly on such a pittance never mind monthly, in fact weekly pay would be better as it once was in my youth on UB40 Unemployment Benefit (pre-Jobcentre, the good old days of none conditional signing appointments, no jobsearch evidence, no CVs, no computers, much better). But also one of the main reasons I want to avoid UC is the unfeasibly impossible 35 hour jobsearch rule, which is guaranteed to get a Sanction. That and the built-in obligation/requirement to accept part-time jobs. As far as I’m concerned UC is a no go, and is something to avoid for as long as possible.

    • I went to the pcs universal credit caseworker’s picket line in Stockport on Wednesday. They told me that they had about 400 cases each. I got them to repeat that as it seemed impossible, but 400 it was. They also said that they regularly couldn’t get to journal messages because of the workload and that staff weren’t replaced when they left. I’ll put up a blog on this soon

      Anyway – point of making this comment is say that the bloody thing is in meltdown, there’s nothing like enough staff and people who use this “service” are shafted before they begin for all these reasons and more. I would have thought that the chances of getting a sanction because there’s nobody available to look at your journal for several days are probably quite good, especially if a caseworker has 400 people on their books.

      Government doesn’t give a shit of course. A wildly understaffed and punitive social security system is a runaway success as far as they’re concerned. Stay with JSA as long as you can.

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