Well, the blog has been quiet again
this week and my regular readers may quite possibly be recognising a
familiar pattern.That of the panic that sets in as Job centre signing
day nears and my blood
pressure rises. Some are not aware when they have high
blood pressure and it is up, others are, and I am in the latter
category..
Like thousands in the same position as
myself,
I have high blood pressure, a heart condition, sight limitations,
arthritis and other bone conditions and mobility issues, but am
considered fit for work by the Job centre. Since I can type and write
as I do, I don't in theory object to trying to find some
work I can do, but the problem is indeed trying to find a job
that I might physically be able to cope with, in a building where
I can manage the layout, and preferably
a job that doesn't mind my being housebound in icy weather and unable
to get out to go to work. As for writing or any other possible
means of becoming self employed and working from home, its a very
slow process before you even begin to have a living wage from it. The
Job Centre refuse to entertain my requests for help to become self
employed, seeing it as a means to avoid looking for a job and
fulfilling my Job Seekers agreement that I look for work. One
adviser, and she was a disability adviser even told me 'You have been
declared fit for work and you have to do as you are told !!!' I
reminded her that actually I haven't been found fit for anything
since the Job centre won't even sanction my applying for ESA, the
successor to Incapacity benefit and say that if I do apply I will be
refused and put back on JSA....she looked blank and didn't reply.
When I have pointed out to the Job
centre that there is supposed to be help for people who want to become self
employed, they have promised me that they would look into it and tell
me at my next signing, and when my next signing comes, I am passed to
another adviser who of course knows nothing about it. Eventually I
was told, 'We have to say there is help and money available because
we say so in our literature, but the money is in the hands of private
providers, and they don't want to pay it out.....so......
I have to do as I am told and apply for
jobs. My email job search in box is full of automatic replies acknowledging that my application has been received, and that if they
wish to pursue my application someone will be in touch, also many
messages saying that they have loads of responses to job ads just now
and if I have not heard within seven days then they are sorry but I
have not been successful on this occasion. Then come the messages
thanking me for my application but saying they are sorry I have not
been successful ...on this occasion.... and they would like to keep
my application on file. Even one of the job centre advisers whose job
it is to bully me into applying for jobs and cutting off my Job
seekers allowance if I don't , repeats the phrases as I tell him.
So, as every other Wednesday gets
closer, the blog articles get fewer while I am going through the job
application responses and filling in my job search record book, out
of my mind with fear that it won't be enough and I will be sanctioned
and get no money or forced onto a workfare programme that physically
I cannot manage....and every now and then I have an interview....
This Wednesday there I was at the
jobcentre and my name was called, not by the adviser I was booked to
see, she was too busy but by another one. He sat scanning my job
search book and I'm frantically telling him 'I have an Interview !!!'
I told him that I applied for the job because I felt it might be a
job I could physically manage, but I would just have to cope somehow
with the fact that it is in Richmond , at least 90 minutes each way on two
buses from where I live , and I cannot access the underground, which
would still involve a bus and two changes of train.However, as I
explained , I had applied for it because I felt I may be able to
manage it and as for the journey as I told the adviser I knew the
Department of work and pensions didn't care how far I traveled as
long as I got a job....
Much to my amazement , the adviser
checked out the travel route on his computer and told me that I was to
scrap the application because nobody would expect me to do the
journey to get to the job, and if I was asked about the application
then I was to say so. I pointed out to him that kind and reasonable
as he was being, the powers that be at the department of Work and
Pensions would take a different view of whether or not it was reasonable for me to take the job ....
He then asked me about the Work
programme and if I had heard anything from them since he last signed
me a month ago. When I replied no, but I would have to phone them
since I never hear from them he replied that they are being paid to
get me a job, but that nobody really thinks they are working. Job
centre advisers are also very put out that if a person on the work
programme does get a job, they might well have got it by themselves
and the programme played no part in it to help, but they get paid..It
might actually be that a Job centre plus adviser helps a claimant to
get a job, but the work programme gets paid. Regarding self
employment, now that I am on the work programme, whether I hear from
them or not, I
am not entitled to help from the Job centre for self employment such
as the Enterprise allowance and any
help that is available now has to come from the Work programme
I then mentioned to him that on one of
the very few occasions when I did hear from the Work Programme... in
February , the adviser said that she felt there was a better
programme for me... Work
Choice. The Work Programme adviser wanted me to ask
the Jobcentre about Work choice
You do indeed have to ask..most people
dealing with the Jobcentre and threats of sanctions to benefits if
you don't find a job know about and quite possibly dread the Work
Programme, but Work
choice is voluntary and kept very quiet. From my experience Work
Choice isn't exactly offered to you in the same way as you will be
forced on to the Work programme, you have to ask a Job centre adviser
i.e volunteer yourself.Until recently when the system was changed so
that Work Programme members had to sign on and meet with Job centre
plus advisers in the same way as they used to before going on the
work programme, they didn't see a job centre adviser.
I now have to phone the disability
employment adviser, the very person I asked to see at my last signing
when I was told to wait until the next lot of changes when I could be
ordered to go to the Jobcentre once, even twice a week, and then ask
for a Disability Adviser, now I have to ask one about Work choice....
As for the interview....I acknowledged
by email the invitation to a first stage telephone interview, which
probably would have decided if i was invited or not to a face to face
interview...and I haven't heard another word.....
Valerie
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