Just so that you know:

This week, I have already spoken with:

• Homeless young mothers from the Boundary House hostel in Welwyn Garden City who’ve been placed in cramped, single-room “studio” flats with their kids miles away from their jobs and study. They were terrified (rightly) that they’d never find even halfway decent accommodation.
• A young woman (aged 22) who told me that she’d been sanctioned for missing a meeting, even though she’d let her jobcentre know that she couldn’t attend, because she’d been placed in housing out of the borough. She said that she didn’t know she could appeal the sanction decision. She also said that she hadn’t been told about hardship payments. She has a two-year-old daughter. She had no idea how to address any of these problems and nobody to ask.
• A 53-year-old man who has serious mental health issues (his depression and anxiety are so bad that he often can’t leave the house). He has to pay the bedroom tax. His council tax benefit has been cut. And now, it seems that his DLA has been stopped, or that anyway, he’s getting nothing. He filled in a PIP application form with assistance several months ago and was called to an assessment. He says that he couldn’t cope with the face-to-face assessment, though, and so the assessor told him that a home visit would be organised. But it seems that it wasn’t. He says that assessment just never happened. He contacted me on Tuesday, because no money went into his account as it did when he was receiving DLA. He says that he’s been told he has to start again with a PIP form. He’s very confused and worried. He no longer has a social worker. God only knows what has happened. The point is that there’s nobody around to help him navigate any of this. (Disabled People Against Cuts are planning a national day of fightback on 13 July against the abject mess that is the Personal Independence Payment system. Find out more here).

I just want you to know that all this is still going on while the political and media classes amuse themselves with their appalling game of thrones. I’d also say that the chances of these so-called systems being improved, or even acknowledged, in the next few years are about zero. Probably less than that.

My latest at Sentinel News: the DWP really is leaving people with no money to live on at all.

Of the many twisted punishments that the DWP likes to hand out to JSA claimants, I’m thinking atm of the one where advisers make a claimant wait for days to find out if they will be sanctioned for missing a meeting or a supposed jobsearch transgression. Making people wait days or more to find out if they’re going to have any money for the next fortnight really is one of the perverted acts. You have to wonder about a bureaucracy that hands out that kind of thing.

Twice in the last couple of months I’ve spoken with a couple of people who said they were nervously awaiting the outcome of a decision about a potential sanction. Neither of these people had a) any idea whether or not their next JSA payment would be made and b) any real idea when they’d formally be told if they’d been sanctioned and for how long. They were told only that the outcome would be sent down by a decisionmaker of some variety at some point and that there was no point asking before then how things were progressing. I actually sat with one of these people as that person asked an adviser – plaintively, it must be said – if there was any news on a potential sanction for a missed meeting. That person was told a decision would be sent by letter. If there was no letter by the end of the next week or so, the person could assume that there was no sanction. Similar story for the second person, who has also been told to Wait And See.

I’m sure there’s an explanation for all of this to do with systems. Sadly for the DWP, I’m not interested in hearing it.

“I felt like I was being totally bullied in the playground by this big bitch… it’s like the more white and English you are, the more fucking shit you are. I’m not being funny, but it’s true.”

So. That’s a quote. That’s the sort of thing people say when I talk with them at jobcentres. These places are not pleasant, you know.

I give you the transcript below as an example of one sort of discussion that I have a lot of – discussions with people who are over 50, out of work and signing on at jobcentres where they must participate in jobsearch activities. In the past couple of years, I’ve met a lot of people who are over 50 and sometimes getting on for 60 at jobcentres. Some are on Jobseekers’ Allowance and some are on Employment And Support Allowance, and some go backwards and forwards between the two as they’re found fit for work and then found not-so-fit-for-work when advisers see where things are really at. I’m not sure exactly what point I’m trying to make by uploading these stories. I think it is probably that signing on when you’re older is grim and that I hope I never have to do it.

This is a transcript from a discussion that I had a few months ago outside Kilburn jobcentre with a guy called Terry, who was 54. He said that he’d been sanctioned by a jobcentre adviser a few days earlier and that he had no money in his bank account. He’d come to the jobcentre to ask for a hardship loan. He was furious about the sanction. No surprises there. People who’ve been sanctioned generally are furious. Being sanctioned does not usually bring out anyone’s best (even though government believes that sanctions teach people very important life lessons and make them better claimants. Or something). People must go through the motions of looking for work. They must fill in jobsearch booklets and talk about answering job ads. Everyone is perfectly aware that these so-called jobsearch activities are pointless. You’re generally no closer to work at the end of them than you were at the beginning, particularly when you’re over 50. To be sanctioned for the poor performance of a task that you know was meaningless in the first place doesn’t teach you much, except that you’re stuck in a farce. And to hate everyone, I guess.

Anyway. I’ve had conversations like the one below as a matter of course at jobcentres over the past couple of years. The main lesson that I take away from these stories is Don’t Age. You may not think your best is behind you when you get past 50, but everyone else sure will. The system will certainly rub your nose in your failures as it perceives them. Nobody reacts well.

What a comforting thought.

Terry, 54:

“I’ve just been sanctioned. I will tell you why. I have to describe this sort of stuff (he showed me the jobsearch notebook in which he had to write details of his jobsearch activities) with my supporting jobcentre like samples. Anyway, that’s what I’ve done. Anyway, she [the jobcentre adviser] signed it. She was just about to send it and she said – “Oh, you’re still hoping to teach guitar from home, still, right,” because I’m saying this that and the other and I’m hoping to start teaching. She said – “you’re just repeating yourself. You’re cutting and pasting.”

I said – “what?”

She said “I’m taking it to my manager,” and so that’s it. She hasn’t signed me on and she’s said “I’ll leave it to my manager to sign anyway” and Monday came and my money wasn’t there, so obviously I’ve come down here. I phoned Belfast as well [the Belfast benefits centre] and they said I’ve been suspended. So I’ve come down here and I’ve got a hardship form for jobseekers, so I filled that in and given them my bank statements, but basically, this is unbelievable. I felt like I was being totally bullied in the playground by this big bitch. Yeah, it’s like the more white and English you are, the more fucking shit you are. I’m not being funny, but it’s true.

Continue reading →

I give you below an example of an older, sick and disabled JSA claimant being treated like trash by the DWP via her jobcentre.

This story is for anyone who has bought into Iain Duncan Smith’s very peculiar “I destroyed social security, because I care about sick and disabled people” logic. It should give you insight into two of Iain Duncan Smith’s key legacies for sick or disabled people who must use his ex-department’s services: 1) a breathtaking bureaucratic callousness which even decent DWP staff seem forced to affect and 2) utterly threadbare support and services for sick, disabled or at-risk people who are out of work. One measure of a minister’s “success” is surely his department’s behaviour towards people who need that department’s services the most (and who likely will always need those services in one form or another). You’d expect people in those situations to be treated with the least bureaucratic contempt, not the most:

From time to time, I attend one of the London jobcentres for JSA signon meetings with Linda,* 51. Linda has a learning difficulty and a list of health problems that has lengthened fast in recent times: shortness of breath (she stops a lot to rest when she walks), shakiness and a pallor so stark that one adviser remarked on it at meetings in February and March: “what’s happened to make you so pale?”

When you get down to it, though, nobody really gives a damn about Linda’s terrible paleness, or the reasons for it. There is certainly no system or support in place to make sure that people in Linda’s situation are protected from the cruellest excesses of the DWP’s punitive sanctions and benefits-stoppage regimes. Linda found that one out the hard way. In January, Linda’s jobcentre closed her JSA claim. Linda missed a couple of JSA signon meetings, because she got sick. She wasn’t able to walk to the jobcentre. The jobcentre took a “Two Strikes And You’re Out” approach to the missed meetings. They shut Linda’s claim down altogether. She went without money for several weeks. She had to borrow money from a family member who wasn’t happy about the loan.

“I couldn’t come in [to the jobcentre for the signon meetings]. I was too ill,” Linda kept weeping when we met at the jobcentre late in February to try and restart her JSA claim. She was certainly unwell that day. I was shocked at her pallor myself. I hadn’t seen her for a couple of months and was taken aback. I went very quickly from thinking that she needed to get her JSA claim back on to thinking that she should probably see a doctor as a priority. She was pale, shaky and weepy in the way people are when they’re too unwell to be out.

Continue reading →

More on the garbage that the DWP and government talk when they say that the aim of ESA cuts and fit-for-work assessments is to encourage sick or disabled people into work:

As readers of this site will know, I regularly attend signon sessions at a north London jobcentre with a guy I call Eddie in these posts. Eddie is 52. He spent most of his working life as a general assistant in kitchens. He was made redundant seven years ago and has been out of work since. He signs on for JSA. Eddie has learning and literacy difficulties (he finds writing especially hard – here’s an example of a Morrison’s job application he filled in by copying notes I made). Eddie is unable to use a computer or email. He can’t open a browser on a laptop, or type in links, or navigate to a wegpage.

But here’s the thing. Eddie’s jobcentre adviser keeps giving him handwritten weblinks and email addresses to take home and use for job applications. His adviser does this at every third or fourth signon meeting. He prints or writes out a link that he knows Eddie can’t use to type into a computer that he knows Eddie doesn’t have. You can see the most recent hard-to-read handwritten instructions and link here:

Eddie was absolutely furious when he was handed that piece of paper. He is furious every time that he is given a link to pursue. “That man knows I haven’t got a computer,” Eddie said angrily. “He’s taking the piss.” I imagine that the jobcentre adviser also knew that Eddie didn’t have a hope of landing one of civil service apprenticeships advertised on the link. Eddie is older, in poor health (he has diabetes and leg pain, which he struggles to manage) and has regular hospital and GP appointments. His literacy levels are not good. He has none of the skills mentioned on the link as far as I can see.

“Taking the piss” doesn’t begin to cover it. I don’t know if the adviser meant to be cruel, but that is neither here nor there. Eddie feels the insult, as well he might. This is a bureaucracy humiliating a person that the job market has discarded. This is a bureaucracy making an older sick and disabled person traipse to the jobcentre every fortnight and go through the motions of jobseeking before being allowed his paltry benefit. Eddie knows and the adviser knows and I know that these signon meetings are the ultimate exercises in uselessness. There’s no point in Eddie being forced to attend the jobcentre at all – except, I suppose, that Iain Duncan Smith gets off on the idea that he can rub a sick and disabled claimant’s nose in that person’s lack of options every fortnight. Other than that, I don’t know why we’re here.

Continue reading →