Yesterday, I rang the Universal Credit helpline number (0345 600 4272) to ask about DWP support for Universal Credit claimants who have learning and literacy difficulties, and who struggle to use computers. (I’ve posted a transcript of a recording I made of the call at the end of this article).
This is crucial.
Universal Credit is an online system which claimants must manage online. There is a charged-for helpline which people can call if they get stuck. The charges for this are controversial. People who have no money can’t afford the calls.
Readers of this site will know I’ve spent much time with benefit claimants who have learning and literacy difficulties and/or can’t use computers. I’ve taken videos which show people struggling to even switch a computer on. Even before Universal Credit, these people were in no position to carry out online jobsearch activities.
The advice I was given over the phone yesterday for people in these situations was utterly unacceptable. It showed the DWP has absolutely no concept of the challenges and isolation people in these situations experience.
The officer even said that one option that the DWP is supposed to offer to people with support needs – making a Universal Credit application over the phone – should be seen as a “last resort,” was “not ideal” and that there were potential security problems with it. You’ll see that in the transcript.
I called because I know a man with learning and literacy difficulties who may be rehoused from London to Manchester at some stage (I’ve written many stories about this man’s jobcentre access difficulties in the past three years). I wanted to know about the DWP support he’d receive if he needed to apply for and manage an online Universal Credit account. I also wanted that information generally.
As I say, the DWP’s advice on the phone was unacceptable. I’ve listed reasons why below.
The DWP told me that people with access issues had three options. In my view, there were major problems with all of them. Remember – this is the advice people are given when they ring Universal Credit over the phone. This is not a finessed statement from a press office.
The DWP said:
1) The best option for people with learning and literacy difficulties was to find a friend or family member who could make and manage a Universal Credit application.
This was extraordinary. Readers of this site will know I’ve interviewed people who literally have nobody to provide that sort of support. I’ve made benefit and reclaim applications, discretionary housing payment applications and written benefit appeal letters for people because of it. Family members also struggle with the Universal Credit system, just by the way.
2) The DWP could help people make and manage an application over the phone – BUT the officer said this option was a “last resort” and “not ideal” because there was no special system in place for it.
He said Universal Credit officers just created an account as though they were the applicant and had access to usernames and passwords.
He also seemed to say there were potential security issues around that, because: “obviously, that data [usernames and passwords] is out there and we’ve got that as well as the claimant.”
3) People could contact Citizens Advice for help.
This was extraordinary too. When you go to the Citizens’ Advice website, you’re told to contact Universal Credit if you have access problems.Getting help from the CAB can be very difficult generally, because they’re so oversubscribed. I’ve queued at CAB offices with people to make appointments, only to be told by 9am that all appointments for the day had gone. People actually get angry now when you suggest they contact their local CAB, because they’ve already tried and failed.
I also note that the CAB site says people can make an application to the DWP in person. This wasn’t offered as an option in my phone call yesterday.
There’s more, which I’ll come back to.
Here’s the transcript from yesterday’s conversation. This is the information you get when you ring up as a member of the public. Thought this was pretty terrible, as I say:
10am 11 October 2017:
UNIVERSAL CREDIT: Is that a case of [someone] sort of not being able to the online procedures?
KB: Yes. [This man] has learning and literacy difficulties and he’ll be moving to [town name removed] which I think is rolling out [Universal Credit later this year]?
UNIVERSAL CREDIT: Right, okay. So, I would normally say unless there is any source of help local, whether it be friends, family in the area that they are familiar with, if they’ve got friends over there… what we would normally recommend is that a friend or family member help out…separate to that, see if they’ve got a local Citizens’ Advice. We do… as more of a last resort, we can make the applications over the phone.
KB: Oh, okay.
UNIVERSAL CREDIT: It’s not ideal. We’re not going into any special system. We’re just logging in as if we were a claimant ourselves and we just create all the usernames and passwords and things, so it does mean that we are creating that and obviously, that means that data is out there and we’ve got that as well as the claimant – whereas if the claimant is setting it up, only they know the username and password.
KB: You would have that [security information].
UNIVERSAL CREDIT: We’d have that as well. We’d need that to set it [the account] up, so there is nothing special about it – [we] literally just go onto the claimant website as the claimant ourselves and just go through it as if it were ourselves. If a friend or family is able to help, that is more ideal, but we can do it over the phone.
KB: Okay, so you’re just saying there might be a bit of a security issue around other people having the password…?
UNIVERSAL CREDIT: Yeah… because you’re sort of dealing that out over the phone, so it opens up a little bit more, but as I say it’s [unclear]… I mean, there’s obviously a trust in us, but it’s better for a claimant if they can get online themselves, or if they’ve got help to do so, because it’s not just setting up the account. A lot of the maintenance is done via the online systems as well, so if you have, for example, a change in circumstances, you report that online as a primary option. Obviously, we’re always going to be making allowances for people who have got difficulties, of course, so we always have the phone option here available whenever that fails or that’s not possible to do so.
KB: Okay. Can I ask also is it possible to get the jobcentre to make the [Universal Credit] claim and do that maintenance…? Or is that not what they do really.
UNIVERSAL CREDIT: What you mean – like getting the jobcentre to do the maintenance side of things?
In general terms, there’s not a lot of maintenance to do really, because the system sort of self maintains most of the detail. So, for example, if a person’s working, the system will download their earnings automatically, so people aren’t reporting anything. You don’t generally have to phone us much of the time.
Given that there is an illness or disability at play here, it might mean that they [the claimant] have reduced interaction with their local jobcentre… some people have to come in everyday, some people have to see their work coach every week and this person might not ever have to see one, so it might be a case that they don’t actually need a lot of interaction online, or in person, so there isn’t a lot of maintenance in that respect.
It’s just more if you wanted to contact us… we encourage the online system, because we have an [online] notepad system in place. It’s called a journal. You can leave a message for the staff at the jobcentre, or the service centres for people like me and then we respond through the journal. It goes back and forwards like that, but where you can’t do that as a method, you just simply contact us over the phone like you are now. There’s always an alternative option, but I wouldn’t worry about the maintenance. There’s not a lot that has to be really done once it is all set up.”
So that was that. I’d dispute the comments about the streamlined journal system, too. People are complaining about the inadequacies and inaccuracies of that system all over the place. It’s not on. At all.
But the surely the whole point of Universal Credit is to save money, and to make claiming benefits more difficult than the old system of JSA ?
To remove choice, and to force people to take low-pay work that previously they would have rejected ?
Iain Duncan Smith the architect of Universal Credit always believed that if you have a welfare system with easy access benefits, a large number of the unskilled working-class are going to choose not to work. Unless they are forced to do so by the government.
Too true. And this creates a scenario where some people will not actually be able to apply and comply.
In a paper addressed to the planning committee of my local Green Party (as a Green Party member), today I wrote that Universal Credit is ‘Ground Zero for the Welfare State and Civil Society’.
Anyhow, my immediate response to the headline response here was made even more relevant by a lunchtime conversation at my local Quaker Meeting where I cited what you had already e-mailed me about the telephone conversation in question, Kate. It was also made more relevant by my going into the ‘read more’ bit, where this text appears from the transcript:
“UNIVERSAL CREDIT: Right, okay. So, I would normally say unless there is any source of help local, whether it be friends, family in the area that they are familiar with, if they’ve got friends over there… what we would normally recommend is that a friend or family member help out…separate to that, see if they’ve got a local Citizens’ Advice. We do… as more of a last resort, we can make the applications over the phone.”
At lunchtime I was told that Hereford’s CAB is closing down, while Universal Credit is scheduled for ‘full roll-out’ in Hereford in March 2018. I also thought of the E15 Mums whose stories you have previously covered, and their struggle to stay in the area where they at least have a support network.
There is also the matter that the ‘help-line’ call charges amount to £33 per hour!
Before I saw your blog post though, I was also directed by a friend to an item that appeared on last night’s BBC 6 o’clock news. That item now appears as an online news clip at the BBC website:
‘Selling everything’ because of universal credit
…Holly Sargent first applied for universal credit eight months ago…
One of the things that comes home quite clearly in that clip is the ‘vicarious stress’ that the mother has been put through as well as Holly the claimant in Wales who has been forced to survive on food parcels. (Vicarious stress is the stress of watching someone else, especially a loved one, going through that sort of thing.) There is also the matter of Holly’s social worker’s vicarious stress as she prepares to help Holly through her 10th application for UC!
And what of the emotional scars imposed on Holly’s child who is being looked after by Holly’s mum as Holly is rendered unable to fulfil motherly responsibilities?
How many more clients does that social worker have to see in such circumstances? Also in last night’s news item about Universal Credit as Jeremy Corbyn at last ‘tore into Teresa May about UC failures at Prime Minister’s Question Time (quite belatedly in the view of Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group) is the mention by a Welsh housing association rep that it warned the DWP in 2014 that only 6% of its potential UC-fodder tenants had savings accounts!
Meanwhile however, the BBC correspondent on the matter said that the main parties agree that UC is a very good thing….. (Around the 10:00 mark.)
First they targeted single people making a fresh claim for benefit in a world with ever-decreasing number of jobs….
This shambles becomes more unbelievable every day. It’s surreal. It’s like we’re all actually living in a Ken Loach script. Life imitating Art imitating Life. Stop the World, I want to get off!
I hear you
What they claim to be their last option should be their first option
What is happening to the welfare state under this government reminds me in a way of this Michael Foot speech made in the House of Commons on 28 October 1980 about the impact of monetarism on British industry.
The big problem is that when it comes to exposing them and their actions on tv news items about Universal Credit, etc, they hide anonymously behind the BBC front-people.
I shall do what I can to come up with a placard about this, Kate.
Meanwhile, my latest placards for KUWG can be found at
http://kilburnunemployed.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/more-placards-in-face-of-relentless-full-roll-out-of-universal-credit.html
Some v good placards there 🙂
Which do you like particularly?
Alan
Protectors one and eugenics made easy. Kind of rolls of the tongue that one 🙂
‘Protectors not protesters’ is borrowed from Tina Rothery New Internationalist article about anti-fracking activities, Arrested for crossing the fracking road.
There’s more now at http://kilburnunemployed.blogspot.co.uk/
Hi, Kate
I’ve just seen this on the BBC website in response to my search there for items about Universal Credit. Universal credit: Plaid Cymru offers to pay for claimants’ calls:
‘People claiming universal credit have been offered free use of Plaid Cymru phones to avoid helpline charges.
‘Party leader Leanne Wood said amid delays in payments, charging callers up to 55p a minute to check the status of their claim “adds insult to injury”.
‘The party said all Plaid MPs and assembly members would let claimants make the calls from their offices.
‘The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) said people concerned about the cost could request a free call back….’
What do you make of all that? What about the transport costs to Plaid MPs offices? is one concern I would have.
Regarding the ‘free call back’ from the DWP, it strikes me that one could ask for the free call back, but how many years would the starving claimant have to wait for that call back?
The big issue for me with the callback thing is – I imagine you have to make a call to request a callback. I’ve called the Universal Credit helpline numerous times and I don’t remember a “request a callback option.” I’ll try it again tomorrow to check because to be fair, I’ve never listened out for that option so it is possible it’s one of the 6 you have to wait through, but if it isn’t – well, kind of defeats the purpose.
And yeah – I suppose Plaid Cymru is doing a half-arsed right thing there, but dragging the kids across town in the rain to the MP’s office which may or may not be open at 9am (some are closed on various days of the week) to sort out some ridiculous and unwarranted deduction from your Universal Credit account over the phone would probably be pretty painful. Politics needs to campaign to get rid of charges altogether.
It would be interesting to see what a transcript of the six options reads like, and what might develop from your publication of such a transcript.
I was made aware many years ago before I became more settled on ESA, that the sequencing of ‘options’ that came up when I called DWP could change over a period of time, probably to screw claimants even further.
Incidentally, in 2004/2005, 44% of calls to DWP helplines — 21 million calls — went unanswered.
I wonder whether they publish DWP call-centre stats nowadays?
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And another thing…you may think this is the least of our problems but it’s a valid point nonetheless; why are there no coat hooks in the Jobcentre? If you go there to do jobsearch & have walked a mile or two in pouring rain because you can’t afford bus fares where do you put your wet coat whilst using the computers? Are we expected to sit there for hours on end dripping wet? JCP staff musthave somewhere to hang their coats, so why not the detainees….erm…I mean Claimants?
I dont understand the logic in making people apply for something online or find jobs online when they have never used a computer before.
How about providing courses to be PC literate and then make them do this.
When my mum was in school, computers did not exist. She spent most of her life being a housewife and a full time carer for my Ill dad. Now that he is no longer with us, she has been left deskilled, and to fend for herself. She is very much struggling with this ridiculous system. I dont live with her so cant even help her with all of this. I can’t believe they are telling her to log in etc. When she doesn’t even know how to turn on a PC. She is absolutely rubbish with technology and forgetful.
If you have a look round in your area and make enquiries you might find some IT courses. It will vary from area to area but where I live there are IT courses available at Dip (Learndirect) and at Standguide (via the Right Steps to Work scheme), you also could check with local Community Centres & Colleges.There are courses aimed at complete beginners.
I have tried to do the training with my mum. This has proved to be absolutely impossible. I find it difficult. I tried to alter details which stated she moved in to her property this year, when in fact she has lived there for 6 yrs. Had to update the whole housing info and the damn thing then reset it to this year! And I had to confirm that was correct!! I have had to fill in appeals, (a judge finally overturned the “decision makers”). All updates etc have to be done by collecting info over the phone. This isn’t easy. My mum gets stressed and confused I live in perpetual terror that I have made some mistake that Will plunge her further into debt and arrears. The big joke is that she lives in SUPPORTED accommodation. All she gets is a referral to a housing support service and that was 8 months ago nothing since although she was accepted* I think?? It is driving me mad, I check the account constantly. She struggles to remember that if she works a couple of extra hours she must make up the uc shortfall from the extra pay so increases debt again. I can’t put too much pressure on her as she can’t cope with it. I dont live near her and she can’t move as she has some friends where she is. How can I get help to prevent higher debts, she needs 1 to 1 on a monthly basis when her uc comes in but she lives in a rural location with sparse and expensive public transport. She has anxiety and depression.