Last week I posted the first draft of a report which I'm hoping to present to jobcentre management sometime later this year.
I'm now posting some more text that I've included in the second draft.
Many people who are long-term unemployed live chaotic and marginal lifestyles; frequently not having easy access to services that most people take for granted. There was one particular example of a person living under such circumstances that aptly sums up the problem that enforced attendance at a jobsearch programme full-time for five days a week can actually make practical real-world jobsearch impossible.
Like several thousand other people in Doncaster, Gerald was living in a mobile home on a site where there was no landline telephone service provided; and because he was unemployed he couldn't afford a mobile phone . Mail wasn't delivered to individual addresses either, he was only able to collect it from the site office between 10:00 a.m. and noon…but of course he was doing jobsearch in town at that time, and so could only effectively collect any letters on a Saturday morning. I can recall one particular Monday morning when one of the rather more enthusiastic young women in the office was wanting him to apply for a job where the closing date for applications was that Friday. Gerald explained to her that it would be a waste of time phoning up and asking for an application form because he wouldn't have access to his mail again until Saturday. She seemed to have difficulty in understanding the problem.
Of course, the best way to get people such as Gerald back into work is to actually provide them with decent housing where they are able to have a telephone line installed and have letters delivered through their own letterbox in the morning…but, of course, this isn't the responsibility of the Department for Work and Pensions, is it? I think a bit of co-operation between different government departments is required here.
Sometimes I think that the private companies that win contracts to provide jobsearch services for the DWP just aren't up to the job. Over the years I've seen examples of there being too many people for the facilities provided, with many of these facilities being out-of-date or of no practical value. One personal example I can give occurred at Barnsley many years ago when I was offered the opportunity to take a psychometric test on the computer, which would tell me which would be the most suitable type of jobs for me to apply for. It was immediately obvious that it was an American program I was using, and I was soon frustrated by the fact that I couldn't answer many of the questions because none of the options applied to me; there was no account taken of the fact that I can't drive and have never had a job…the programming just assumed these facts as given.
After spending an hour taking the test it suggested I should be a linesman on the railroad, or a Congressional lobbyist…not really appropriate for Barnsley.
When I went to sign on on Monday I was told that I'd been called in for another interview at the jobcentre on Friday week. There's a very real chance that I'll get sent on another useless scheme and then won't be eligible for the First Step programme for possibly another two years...how bloody pointless! I'll have to hurry up and get something approaching a final version of the report ready for the 18th - because this might well be the last opportunity I get. Hopefully by then, Brian, the occupational psychotherapist who's mentoring the scheme will have enough information.
