The blog has been quiet this week....as my regular followers know this suggests my fortnightly trip to the jobcentre is looming and since they won't give me any financial help to enable me to become self employed and treat the endeavour as a way to avoid getting a job, I have to apply for jobs I have a very good chance of not getting and apply for enough of them to meet my job seekers allowance rules and get job seekers allowance....as an adviser once told me :You are on Job seekers allowance and you have to do as you are told'. Since I was a very well behaved girl I was never spoken to like that at school.
At my last visit two weeks previously I discovered that it is all change at the Job centre and things have come full circle. If like me, you are registered on the Work programme, which usually happens to job seekers allowance claimants after a year , it used to be that you didn't sign on as such every fortnight but had to go to the Job centre between 10am and no later than 3pm and hand in your job search sheet. The sheet went to an office and if it was approved then you got your money the following Monday, as my day to go was Wednesday. However, the last time I went, assuming I just had to pop in and hand over my sheet, I was greeted with 'That has to go upstairs now !!” Well, the form may have to go upstairs but I can only take it with some considerable palaver since I cannot manage the jobcentre stairs and the lift cannot be used by clients unaccompanied, for one thing it is beyond the staff security doors and needs a pass. Before I was put on the work programme and had to sign on in the normal way, the staff firstly, as I could tell with considerable resentment, made a member of staff available to take me upstairs. Eventually I got a disability adviser, and they are on the ground floor.
This sort of situation will affect thousands of people, not just myself, since so many disabled people have been forced by the government to claim Job seekers allowance after losing their sickness and disability benefits and they have to sign on as being available for work. Now of course I am back to square one. The Work programme clearly isn't working and people on it like myself have to sign on as they used to before being put on the programme. However, the Job centre have kept no record of my disabilities, including a heart condition, high blood pressure, arthritis, an ankle held together with pins and a metal plate and partial sight, so I am fit and well and they don't see why I can't go upstairs.
It used to be that when I had to go upstairs I had to have a member of staff go with me as clients were not allowed in the lift on their own, now things have changed and staff members are not allowed under any circumstances to go in the lift with the public in case they are accused I suppose of rape !! So I now have to be put in the lift downstairs and met by another member of staff upstairs. If users of the work programme are now also having to use two lots of resources and sign on as well at the Job centre, it suggests that the work programme isn't working in fact Only 3.5% of people referred to Work Programme find long-term jobs
photo credit: HelenCobain via photopin cc
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