This one goes out to our new work and pensions secretary Damian Green. What will he do about the destruction of disability support in jobcentres? Hope the answer isn’t Nothing, or Get Lost, Kate.
Throwing this out there as a conversation starter:
I post below a video extract from a meeting at northwest London jobcentre earlier this year.
In the video and the meeting, the jobcentre adviser freely conceded that services for benefit claimants with extra support needs had been wrecked by cuts. More than that: the adviser conceded to me and Linda*, a 51-year-old sick and disabled JSA claimant whose JSA claim had been closed and housing benefit suspended, that “the most vulnerable” claimants who “can’t cope with the complexity of the [benefits] system,” were at extra risk of sanctions, claim closures, housing benefit shutdowns and other bureaucratic screwups because the service had been wrecked by cuts. They were at extra risk because the DWP had radically reduced the number of specialist disability employment advisers in jobcentres. Disability employment advisers were jobcentre advisers who had the time and training to support sick or disabled benefit claimants. They weren’t all great, but some were better than nothing. On occasion, they acted as a buffer between disabled claimants and sanctions. Some would argue in defense of a sick or disabled claimant who missed a meeting, or they’d make sure not to sanction a claimant who couldn’t use a computer and meet online jobsearch requirements.
In various press statements over months, the DWP tried to tell me that DEAs had been replaced by work coaches who offered a tailored service. In reality, jobcentres advisers were telling me and sick or disabled claimants such as Linda that DEAs had been replaced with nothing:
(Video transcript at the end of this post)
You’ll understand why I’m very keen to hear about the sort of plans that our new secretary of state for work and pensions has to address this particular disaster area. I’m not keen on receiving more press releases, or empty statements from the DWP about so-called tailored support for sick or disabled people. I asked the DWP last week about the number of DEAs in jobcentres/how things were coming along, etc. They chucked me a link from an early-June Hansard debate in which already-forgotten DWP head and baton-dropper Stephen Crabb rattled on about plans to double the number of DEAs in jobcentres. If I am honest, this doubling didn’t seem a great result to me, given that the number of DEAs had been cut by more than half in the first place. God knows, too, if any action on the doubling front has or will actually be taken. It is my experience that commitments made by ministers and the DWP don’t always exactly match the reality of the everyday journey on the ground. Let’s add that to the list of issues to explore. I’m keen for Mr Green to open jobcentre doors at all times to journalists, claimant representatives and anybody else who wants to forensically examine the facts of the DWP’s support for sick or disabled benefit claimants.
Certainly, my experience of the service this year suggest the service for sick or disabled claimants left plenty to be desired. Linda, the claimant whose meeting was recorded in the video, found out the hard way what happens to sick and disabled claimants who fall foul of the DWP’s strict attendance and jobsearch requirements. Linda has learning and literacy difficulties. Earlier this year, she developed serious health problems: shortness of breath, shakiness and an awful pallor. She couldn’t walk more than a few metres at a time. She struggled to get to the jobcentre to sign on for her JSA. That sickness was the catalyst for a meltdown in her support. Linda’s jobcentre closed her JSA claim because she missed two signon appointments. She was too ill to walk to the jobcentre to attend. Linda struggles with bureaucracy and administration. She didn’t realise that she had to make sure that the jobcentre knew the reason for her absence within a strict timeframe. She missed GPs’ appointments to get sick notes, because she was too sick to walk to the surgery. Her financial problems escalated very quickly. Because her JSA claim was closed, Linda’s housing benefit claim was suspended. Next, Linda started to get threatening letters from her local council about the rent arrears she was running up while her housing benefit was stopped. Suddenly, her tenancy was threatened. This went on for months.
The real problem was that there was nobody to take charge of the situation: no specialist officer or adviser at the jobcentre to keep Linda’s JSA claim open and nobody to help her restart her JSA and housing benefit claims when they were both stopped. The paperwork that poured through Linda’s door about all of this was unreal. There was a P45 and letters from the DWP about the JSA closure and endless letters from the council about the housing benefit suspension and mounting arrears. In the meantime, as you see in the video above, we sat with jobcentre advisers who freely admitted that with no specialist disability employer advice or support at jobcentres, people in Linda’s situation were being thrown to the wolves. I understand that Linda is paying off the arrears now – but the point is that none of this should ever have happened in the first place (I note that there is plenty of money for Trident, too, while people in Linda’s situation are rubbed into the ground for arrears). Time for the DWP’s new leadership to show us exactly how all this will be fixed. In real life, that is, as opposed to on twitter or in press-statement guff.
*name changed
Video transcript:
Is there any sort of replacement for that disability adviser or… it just hasn’t happened.
Unfortunately no. Well (says name of ex-disability adviser who had been moved to another job and was sometimes still at the jobcentre) is still around…
Yeah she’s been helpful, she just used to…
But unfortunately no, in terms of that [dedicated DEA role to support sick and disabled claimants navigate complex jobsearch requirements] it is quite an issue because the most vulnerable can’t cope with the complexity of the system
Those people are being left behind
Yeah, for sure, I mean, you can’t deny that…people who are ill…
Yeah, that’s amazing.
It’s a serious issue. But until eventually it gets to the top, which it will eventually, but until…
It’s just interesting, because a lot of people from WRAG now will be coming to the jobcentre, you know, ESA WRAG [the work related activity group for employment and support allowance]
That is true…
And you know… if you guys are all like busy and…
Yeah, I mean what they do need again is a disability employment… a DEA. As you can see, they have cut the role and the more we need it… it doesn’t make sense. This is where they come into their own.
Yeah, because in the past, when people haven’t been able to walk in or whatever…
Yeah, they [people with support needs] haven’t disappeared. The need is still there, but…
The service isn’t…
But until people from up high decide to reinstate them, we’re going to have a lot of people falling through the net.
Hi, Kate
Under-provision and under-training of Disability Employment Advisers was something that concerned me as a disabled jobseeker about 15 years ago, and my research via a ministerial question brought back the information that the whole of the jobcentre plus network, there was a total of just 650 DEA’s, and that figure had remained consistent for about ten years.
Private legal safeguarding of vulnerable people?
My question had actually focused on the recruitment and retention of DEA’s though, of which no centralised record was kept. Prompting me to ask that question was the fact that my latest Disability Employment Adviser had been taken ill through stress very shortly after being taken on, and had been off sick for about six months!
An ex-DEA contact I had at the time also told me that in his earlier days as a DEA the in-service training was inadequate for the amount of legislative changes that DEA’s really had to work with, and he eventually reckoned that he could be more effective with a disability charity.
In summary, I would say that no matter what legislation such as the 1995 Disability Equality Act and the 2007 UN Convention on Rights of Persons with Disabilities has existed, UK governments were too interested in cutting and privatising services and making scapegoats of disabled people rather than helping us.
And, incidentally, after my stress-induced missing of a signing-on appointment and my general record of no lasting success as a decades-long disabled jobseeker, it was an ordinary but very sympathetic jcp clerk that first advised I go for Incapacity Benefit rather than JSA, and not the jcp’s resident DEA. No DEA ever spoke to me about benefit entitlements; I became inured to Jsa levels and living on hope till I ran out of hope that I would ever get a job.
See also The new Prime Minister as ultimate mandator of safeguarding for vulnerable people.
The latest Private Eye cover shows new PM Theresa May in audience with QE2. QE2 asks: “How long have you got?”
Tess replies: “I’ve appointed Boris Johnson as Foreign Secretary.”
Questions might be asked about what Tess has told the new Work & Pensions Secretary about UN investigators findings against UK governments under her immediate predecessor who trumpeted a call for tougher benefit sanctions at Conservative Party Autumn Conference 2007, when as I argued, talk of need for tougher sanctions drew attention away from the abuses against claimants that went under the name of ‘system meltdown’ where and when they were acknowledged.
And of course, has she any projection of how many more benefit sanctions deaths might be ‘tolerable’ before the not-mandated-until 2020 General Election?
It is extraordinary that these people think these deaths are acceptable, but they do.
I believe that the ‘key decision makers’ involved, with all their ‘political science’ game playing, etc, rob themselves of their humanity. See especially Benefit sanctions, social cleansing, the Shock Doctrine and loss of social security and Control by the workforce vs deskilling, robotisation and workfare at the behest of those who rob themselves of their humanity
They rob themselves of humanity by removing themselves from any situation which involves considering that of others… I actually think people have to be sociopaths to want to lead in the political sense. You can tell they have no concern for the consequences of their actions by their actions.
New Kwug Blog posting: ‘Extremist Disruption Orders’ and Benefit Sanctions
The only time I’ve seen a DEA involved now is those on Employment Support Allowance,anyone on JSA is given appointments at all times of the day sometimes told to sign fortnightly when they are on weekly signings and revert back again. Given appointment letters two weeks before the date but given next weeks the week before sometimes two letters for the following weeks,thats the help the disabled are getting,there is no consideration for Learning Difficulties or anything else,any mention of disability is simply ignored and acted on if nothing is wrong talk about anything else but.
There’s people stranded in that environment for years with little or no skills or education and subjected to continuous innovative attempts to trip them up once being told “we’ll be lucky one day”. Its nasty shocking underhanded scheming and an environment of evasiveness and irrelevent conversations
Anyone who has recorded these interviews will be struck by the attitude and often pauses/subject evasion on playback .
Now that I come to think of it, when I was into reading and challenging government ‘green papers’ on, say, welfare reform with Green Party comrades, there was a standard heading, ‘disability impact assessment’. (A ‘green paper’ is a government discussion or consultation document toward putting in new legislation.) Perhaps the reason I forgot about the ‘disability assessment impact’ is that it was generally recorded as ‘Not Applicable’!
And now one of those wonderful ‘think tanks’ that work with governments toward privatising government services has a new report out called, The future of public services: digital jobcentres. I find the introductory blurb so unbelievable that maybe that is why I did not even refer to it when I blogged about it last night, and I’m sure you will feel likewise, Kate. The introductory blurb reads:
“Today’s report, The future of public services: digital jobcentres, sets out the opportunity to transform public employment services in the UK. This paper is the fourth in a series, conducted in partnership with Accenture, which looks at the role technology will play in the future delivery of public services.
“Jobcentre Plus – the UK’s public employment service – won plaudits for its performance over the financial crisis….”
Plaudits from whom, I wonder? Then of course the blurb goes on to talking about financial pressures on the UK economy post-Brexit vote and with Universal Credit’s ‘introduction of in-work services [sic] bringing about a ‘need to do things differently’. (I’ve heard it all before with ‘austerity’, haven’t you?)
But anyway, it struck me that with online tools, I could do a word search in the pdf document of that report The future of public services: digital jobcentres, in search of the term ‘disability impact assessment’.
Lo and behold, as I typed into the ‘Find’ bar within that document window and reached the letter ‘s’ of the word ‘disability’, the background of that ‘Find’ bar turned a pinkish colour indicating that the word ‘disability’ did not occur in that document.
Anyhow, my blog post announcing the existence of that wonderful new think tank report started from the Boycott Workfare Welfare Action Gathering recognition that online signing would lead to greater isolation for benefit claimants and reduced opportunities of solidarity between jobcentre clients and self-help groups such as the Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group (KUWG), Scottish Unemployed Workers Network, etc.
My own initial blog response to the Reform report Digital jobcentres to heighten isolation and reduce solidarity? focuses much more on who are the ‘movers and shakers’ advising government on how to privatise everything?
Yet the matter of ‘disability impact assessments’ or the lack of reminds me of something I said at the KUWG’s first burnout workshop this last Tuesday. I observed that while I do get burnt out occasionally, as an integral member of I am far less burnt out on ESA Support Group status than I ever would be on Jsa conditionality and the like, where those who told me what to do had not a clue who I was and had been institutionalised into not caring. When I was a jobseeker on far less money than I receive as an ESA Support Group person, basically all I had to live on was the hope that all the effort I put in would be rewarded one day with a job; but then I discovered that everything I volunteered at was wound down through lack of funding.
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