While the world goes to hell in a handcart… Shepherd’s Bush jobcentre called the police today because a small group of people (five) from the Kilburn Unemployed Workers’ Group were standing on the wrong part of the pavement as they handed out leaflets. There was a line between the sidewalk and the paving-stones on the entranceway that people in our group crossed when it started to pour.

Two of Fulham’s finest attended this incident. One copper told us that the police had received a report that our group was blocking the doorway. The coppers checked us out. “I can see you’re not blocking the doorway,” the first copper said.

I’m sure there’s a point about jobcentre and police priorities, and civil liberties, in here somewhere. Haven’t quite decided what it is. Might post some video later.

On being found fit for work and government indifference to the impact of the work capability assessment on mental health:

This story should give you some idea of the callousness with which the DWP treats people who it throws off disability benefits. The woman in this story is in her 50s. I met her at one of the northwest London jobcentres in July this year. She’d been receiving Employment and Support Allowance for about six years for long-term mental health problems. She’d been found fit for work at a recent work capability assessment.
As I wrote at the time, she was reeling. She had absolutely no idea what to do. This is the part of things that always stands out to me: the brutal way that the rug is pulled. Just a few days before we met, this woman had received the letter that I’ve posted below. The letter said that she was no longer entitled to Employment and Support Allowance, because she’d been found fit for work. Her last ESA payment had been made in early July – just a few days before we met. She was obviously extremely concerned about those payments ending. And you know – who wouldn’t be?

“They didn’t give me nothing [at the work capability assessment] – zero points. I got my letter, but I’m doing this with mental health problems. I can’t read and write very well,” she said. The letter she’d received was absolutely no help at all (we read through it together). The letter told her that she’d get no more money from early July and that “you should start looking for a job straightaway.” The letter gave a number to call to make a jobcentre appointment and offered one of the DWP’s standard little sermons on the so-called benefits of finding a job: “we know that most people are better off in work,” etc. That was it. That is always it. I’ve worked with a number of people who’ve received these letters and that’s generally how things go. That’s how the DWP tells people with mental health problems that they’ll no longer get money to live on. Anyone who hasn’t inherited a pile of money and needs some sort of income to live on (I’m guessing that’s just about everybody) should have an inkling of the way that feels. Bottom line is that the work capability assessment is about removing money. The system is harsh. Continue reading →

Any feedback on this is welcome.

(You can contact me here if you don’t want to leave a comment):

As readers of this site will know, I’ve spoken from time to time with people who have money deducted each week from their benefits. The money is deducted for social fund loan repayments and a supposed overpayment in one case (the person there says that the DWP’s overpayment claim is wrong and wants to challenge it). This repayment money is taken each week from people’s jobseekers’ allowance. Most people seem to be getting about £73 a week in JSA.

I want to know if there are limits to the amount of money that the DWP can take out of a benefit. I presume there are, but haven’t been able to get the DWP to confirm that, or to tell me how limits are decided, or to tell me much at all about the way that this system works. If I’m honest, I wonder why people are made to repay these loans at all, given that most people I meet can’t afford to. They take out loans because they haven’t got money. That situation hardly changes when they’ve got a loan to pay back. I suppose this “system” is about making sure that people who are unemployed a) get in debt and stay in debt and b) are regularly reminded that there’s no such thing as Something for Nothing, for them, at least. The amounts deducted from benefits are substantial in some cases. You can see here that this person was asked to repay nearly £20 a week at one point. At other times, the repayment was around £15.

Those amounts are a big chunk out of £73, to say the least. The amounts also seem to be completely random. Letters about repayment amounts pour through people’s doors. One letter will say one figure and another letter will say another figure and another letter will say another figure, and nobody knows what is going on and where the numbers will come from, or when. All people know is that they don’t have much to live on at all when these amounts are taken from their JSA.

This person has just been sent another letter. The DWP wants to raise the repayment totals again:

We called the DWP a couple of months ago and got the repayment figure knocked down to about £9 a week. I thought that the £9 repayment rate was supposed to stand for a while, but apparently not. Continue reading →

Update 11 November:

People have probably seen this story about 60% cuts to the number of disability employment advisers in jobcentres. It is OUTRAGEOUS for the DWP to claim in this story (as it has to me) that work coaches in jobcentres provide disabled people with a “tailored” service as a kind of replacement. That is an out and out lie. As I say below, on two occasions in the last few weeks, jobcentre advisers have told the disabled claimants I was with that they could NOT provide disabled claimants with support because their jobcentres didn’t have the time or the resources. I’ve even got a recording here of an adviser telling the disabled claimant I was with that his best chance of getting any jobseeking support was to move to the Tottenham jobcentre where disability employment advisers were still working. No disability support was available for the man I was with at his present jobcentre, because of the loss of that role.

How is it that the DWP is allowed to perpetrate this myth about work coaches tailoring services for disabled people?

Here’s the post I put up yesterday: this is a report from a meeting yesterday at Kilburn jobcentre where the woman I was with was told she’d have to wait ages for any disability support and that her best bet was to visit a jobs club run by a local trust to see if the trust could provide any disability support:

10 November:

More on non-existent support for disabled benefit claimants as Iain Duncan Smith plans to push more sick or disabled people off Employment and Support Allowance and into jobcentres:

Today, I attended a meeting at Kilburn jobcentre with a JSA claimant in her 50s who has learning difficulties. We were seen almost an hour after the appointment was meant to start. The adviser we saw was very apologetic: the jobcentre was badly short-staffed. The lack of advisers was clearly a problem. Other people were complaining about the length of time that they had to wait. We could see that staff were under pressure.

During the conversation, the adviser told us that the jobcentre’s Disability Employment Adviser – the person who is meant to give additional help and support to disabled claimants – was now so busy and oversubscribed that she didn’t have time to see everyone who needed support. The Disability Employment Adviser now worked across several offices and the wait to see her was very long.

“Weeks?” I said.

“Longer than that,” the adviser told us. She was clearly concerned about this problem. Nobody else at the jobcentre had the time or the skills to properly support disabled claimants. “She [the Disability Employment Adviser] has got the experience and the contacts.” The adviser said that our best shot at disability support was to turn up at a jobs lounge that is held regularly at Carlton Hall and to see if anyone there could provide any assistance – help filling in job application forms and that sort of thing.

“Basically, if someone has got support needs now [at this jobcentre], there is a problem,” I said.

“Big problem,” the adviser said.

Continue reading →

Here’s another short one from the “What is the point of jobcentres?” files:

I went to a JSA signon meeting with a claimant this week at one of the London jobcentres. The jobcentre adviser we saw was very keen for the person I was with to attend a jobs fair that will be held in mid-November.

“Bring CVs,” the adviser said. The person I was with only had one paper copy of his CV left, though, so I asked the adviser if the jobcentre could make some photocopies. The jobcentre adviser said No. The jobcentre couldn’t photocopy the CV, because the paper the jobcentre used wasn’t of a good enough quality. I wasn’t 100% sure what the adviser meant by that, if I’m honest. We weren’t demanding a parchment scroll, or personal embossing – we just wanted a few basic copies of a CV. If jobcentres don’t have the right paper for photocopying CVS – well, perhaps they should. They are jobcentres, let’s not forget. As it stands, we’ll have to get the CVs copied elsewhere, at our expense. I’ve done it before. I’ll be doing it again.

To recap, then: I asked an adviser at a jobcentre if the jobcentre could make copies of a CV for a jobseeker to take to a jobs fair, and the adviser said No. That may not sound like a major event in the greater scheme, but it does make me wonder. This sort of Absolutely Nothing Happens Here experience is so typical of the many visits to jobcentres that I’ve made over the past two years. If jobcentres won’t, or can’t, do the basics – help fill in job application forms, or copy CVs for people to take to jobs fairs – then the long-term unemployed are trudging backwards and forwards to jobcentres for the hell of it. I suppose that’s a political win somewhere. Very strange.

Here’s a very recent example of the extraordinary lack of support that disabled JSA claimants can find at jobcentres when they’re looking work.

In the recording below, an adviser at a north London jobcentre actually tells me that advisers at this jobcentre can’t give extra jobsearch help or support to the disabled claimant who I’m with. The adviser doesn’t try to pretend otherwise. He says that the jobcentre can’t help this disabled man, because there are no Disability Employment Advisers at this jobcentre now (DEAs are advisers who are meant to have additional skills and time for disabled benefit claimants). Nobody else at the jobcentre can give the man extra support. The adviser said that the man’s only choice was to move jobcentres to one that does still have specialist disability advisers. That was the end of that. So much, I thought, for the DWP’s claims to me by recent email that disabled benefit claimants can expect “tailored support specific to their individual needs,” at jobcentres. These DWP claims of “tailored support” for disabled JSA claimants are rot as far as I’m concerned – as great a lie as the DWP’s use of fake benefit claimants and quotes in leaflets. It seems to me that when the DWP talks about “tailored support” for disabled claimants at jobcentres, the DWP pretends to offer a service that it does not.

The disabled JSA claimant in this case is a 52-year-old man who has learning and literacy difficulties. He worked for years as a kitchen and general assistant, but hasn’t found work since he was made redundant from his last job about six years ago. I’ve attended his JSA signon sessions with him for over a year (we both wonder why we still bother a lot of the time). This man struggles with writing and spelling in particular. We’ve spent much time filling in job applications together. Here’s an example of an application form he filled in where he copied words that I wrote in my notebook into the form. You can see the trouble that he has writing coherent sentences even when he copies text:

This man often says that he is keen for a job. He says that he attends job fairs and when we met last week, we arranged to meet again to fill in application forms for porter and general assistant roles (he can’t use a computer, so needs other people to make online applications). He needs help to fill in the forms. He says that he’s lost his chance at jobs in the past, because he couldn’t complete forms to an acceptable standard: “I went to a nursing home in Enfield which I really should have got in there, because it was just a simple kitchen assistant job. No – the reason they give me was Oh, there were some mistakes in the application form and the spelling.” Continue reading →