Category Archives: JobCentre

Today I received another letter from JobCentre Plus. I had hoped that cutting ties would mean that I would be left alone, but no. They’re not done with me yet. And to think I stopped claiming JSA because I wanted a simpler life. Ha ha de ha ha.

Casual readers may not understand my deep loathing for the JobCentre, perhaps believing that a state-funded job agency that requires people to show up and sign on before they get any money is a good idea. Maybe it is, in principle. But if one then creates a huge monster of bureaucracy, and then sets targets, and then lays down a big, complicated set of rules, and then hands it all over to people who appear to have little imagination at all, that is today’s JobCentre. The JobCentre employs people who cannot read the words ‘hearing-impaired’ on my info screen. It employs people whose job is quite clearly to get through the huge stack of forms and sign-on sheets and little else. It employs people who, despite me pointing quite clearly to the sign-on time on my signing-on booklet, ask if I’m there for an appointment.

One time, early on, I spent about an hour patiently explaining the exact nature of my mobility issues – basically, my feet are not quite the right shape, which affects how I walk, which affects my knees – to the resident Disability Advisor. Simple enough stuff, and I even went so far as to show him the scar on my left foot where a surgeon had tried - and failed – to fix the problem. I explained that due to these issues, I could not walk far. I needed regular rest. In fact, I would preferably have a job where I am sitting down most of the time. I suggested admin or data clerk. The next week, what job advert did he send me?

Shelf stacker at Morrisons.

I wish I was making that up. I even stored that particular email in a file in my inbox, just so I could marvel at it, and print it as proof, if I ever needed it, that the JobCentre were not going to find me a job. Indeed, over the four years that I was signing on, on and off, a total of about two years in that time, every single job or little gig that I found, I found myself. The JobCentre were absolutely no help at all.

Case in point – the Disability Advisor told me that I had the right to an interpreter via Access to Work, and that the JobCentre would help me if needed. A few weeks later, I had to go to the JobCentre to sign on, but I also needed to talk to them as I had secured a brief part-time job, knowing my benefit would be affected and that I would have to fill in some forms. I called to inform them of this, a week before I came in, and asked for an interpreter. When I got there, no interpreter. I wrote on a piece of paper and asked where they were. The person who’d drawn me for signing-on said it hadn’t been booked. I asked if they had got my request for an interpreter. His reply was, I swear;

“Yes it’s on the system that you asked for one but the manager said no because it’s not in the budget.”

Not in the budget? According to law, when an interpreter is requested at a government agency in good time, they need to be provided. I’m hazy on the exact details, but I know that there is a special pot of money dedicated to providing access, given to JobCentre Plus by the government. And the MANAGER of the JOBCENTRE has REFUSED to give me an interpreter because it’s NOT IN THE BUDGET??? If I hadn’t been so ground down by the general apathy at the JobCentre I would have made a lot more fuss at the time. As it was, I just wanted to get the damn forms done and get out of there.

And these are the people, you understand, who were supposed to be helping me find a job.