Any feedback on this is welcome.

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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 →

On workfare:

Am making my way through several hours of interview recordings that I took earlier this year with three people who were on a six-month forced workfare Community Work Placement (CWP) at a north London charity called Embrace UK. With CWP, these people on jobseekers’ allowance had to work for 30 hours a week for six months on workfare in local charities and organisations. These JSA claimants had no choice. If people refused, they risked benefit sanctions.

Anyway – I thought I’d post the letter below.

This is a letter that JSA claimants on that six-month CWP workfare placement at Embrace UK asked the charity’s managers to write for people to take to their jobcentres in January this year. In these letters, Embrace UK asked jobcentres to allow the letter-holders to stay on at the charity as volunteers when the six-month forced workfare placement ended:

The reason that people on workfare at Embrace UK asked the charity’s managers to produce these letters to take to jobcentres? – they wanted to stay on at Embrace UK because the charity’s managers were civil and the workfare work wasn’t brutal. Staff at Embrace UK treated people on forced workfare decently. Being treated decently as a workfare worker was considered a monumental bonus and something to try and hang on to. The six-month workfare placement at Embrace UK was about to end. People were very worried about being sent on a CWP workfare placement at another charity. They could not be sure that they’d be treated well at a new placement, because they were workfare workers.

None of these people were doormats – quite the reverse – but they knew the odds on this scene. Workfare workers have very little power. They certainly don’t have much by way of workplace protection in reality. These people could complain about bad treatment, or refuse to attend a difficult workfare workplace if they really wanted to, but that sort of response would put people at risk of sanctions. All three people I interviewed in this case had been sanctioned at one point or another for spurious reasons. People knew exactly what it was like to have their benefit money suddenly stopped. Nobody was keen to go through that again if they could help it. That’s why people put a great deal of energy and effort into organising the letters that might convince their jobcentres to let them stay at a charity where they were treated like human beings.

This is the big worry: that people on workfare must hope for – rather than expect – decent work and decent treatment on workfare placements. It’s luck of the draw stuff. I wonder who is meant to monitor these placements for standards, and if they do. On the circuit, stories certainly abound of people on mandatory workfare placements being sent to charities where the work is gruelling and the management nasty. Being sent out in all weathers on charity bucket collection is something people dread (god knows I would): “I’m going out fundraising as well – doing bucket collection. I did a couple of days bucket collection down out the front of the shops,” an older guy called Graham told me when we discussed his workfare placement at the end of last year. His work programme provider, the notoriously unpleasant Urban Futures, had sent him on a CWP stint at a charity where he “worked” as a security guard and also went outside on bucket collections (he had a criminal record, as it happened. He hadn’t been CRB-checked by the charity and thought both jobs were interesting choices for someone with his recent background). The weather was freezing at the time of his placement. I know I wouldn’t have enjoyed being shoved out into the cold with a bucket on a threat of a benefit sanction. Continue reading →