What happened when she recorded her jobcenter interview.

Here’s a calm, assertive lady who knows her rights trying to assert them and record a job centre interview.

The video speaks for itself. But if anyone is in this position and wants to know what their rights are , I’ve copied the Freedom of Information Request reply from the Department of  Work and Pensions, stating exactly what a claimant’s rights are in videoing their jobcenter interview. You’ll find it below the video.

FOI3032 Response 04.07.13.pdf

Recordings by claimants during
interviews, telephone calls etc 
General
Claimant publishes recording on the internet
 
General 
Claimants may seek to record a telephone conversation or an interview with 
DWP either openly or covertly using digital recording devices such as 
cameras, microphones and mobile phones.  There are a number of reasons 
why the Department should stop this happening in open plan public 
spaces. Jobcentre Plus has particular guidance on this here. 
A key concern is that if the claimant is visiting DWP premises such as a 
Jobcentre, and is using, or intends to use, their recording equipment, in an 
open plan area they could record other claimants’ personal information. This 
is not acceptable.  
If the claimant insists on recording their interview, a private interview
room must be used. Where such a facility is not available on site and no 
other solution is possible, arrangements to use an alternative Jobcentre Plus 
office will need to be considered. 
Staff should also be aware that interviews can be recorded where it is a
“reasonable adjustment” requirement under the Equality Act 2010. If
necessary speak to your local Disability Equality Adviser who can
facilitate this.  
If a claimant indicates that they intend to make a recording of a conversation 
or interview and staff involved are uncomfortable about being recorded, the 
matter should be raised with local management. Another member of staff who 
is less concerned about being recorded can take the call or conduct the 
interview. This may take time and a future appointment may be necessary.  
A claimant may resort to threatening to record, or actually record, telephone 
calls or interviews as a last resort if they are unhappy about the way they 
have been dealt with by DWP. It may be more appropriate to resolve the 
underlying service issue in which case they may not feel the need to record 
their dealings with DWP. 

---

This guidance is currently under review and guidance will be published here in
due course. If you have any queries, please contact Information Management,
Devolution and Governance.
For guidance about the Department’s own routine recording of telephone calls
with claimants please click here.

You can find more information on this Freedom of informat

Not allowed in Swansea Atos disability assessment centre – because she uses a wheelchair.

From the Facebook page ‘Atos miracles, 12th March 2014

My partner suffers mental problems – he won’t leave the house without me (I am his only carer – we have no other family or friends whom he will leave the house with) he suffers sever panic attacks, mild agoraphobia, his communication skills are very poor, and during his ‘examination’ he is most likely to become uncooperative and maybe verbally aggressive. He is due to have his assessment/interrogation in a couple of weeks in our local medical center in Swansea.
The room where the assessments are done is upstairs, and as a wheelchair user I would need to use the lift. I phoned the center yesterday to get advice as I would need help getting up the ramp into the place as its quite steep, and maybe a little help in the center too as my partner – although able bodied is unable to help me much due to his mental problems. The advice I got wasn’t at all helpful – I was told I am NOT ALLOWED in the center because if they have a fire the lifts are turned off so I wouldn’t be able to get out! Their only suggestion was to arrange a home visit – for which my partner would need a Doctors letter. Our GP is unlikely to provide a letter as my partner is able bodied – but its me, his sole carer who needs the help to actually take him to this place!

Yes – I’m disabled physically – but I can cope with his needs in the house – its out of the house that looking after him becomes difficult. ATOS are now trying to arrange to have him assessed in a different city where I wouldn’t need to use a lift!! How ridiculous is this??? I have never once been denied access to any other building because if there is a fire I wouldn’t be able to use the lifts!!!!!! How many other wheelchair users live in the Swansea area and have faced this difficulty? The idiots are assessing many disabled people so surely they should situate themselves in a building where wheel chairs are allowed to enter??? And are they breaking the law to deny wheelchair users access?????

More #JSA stories from jobcentres: “It’s impossible. You’re trapped.”

This article is by Kate Belgrave on http://www.katebelgrave.com

In the last couple of weeks, I’ve been attending leafleting sessions outside jobcentres with the Kilburn Unemployed Workers’ Group and talking to people on JSA about their experiences as they sign on.

We’ve been talking to people about sanctions, about being spoken down to by staff and having to walk on eggshells or risk being sanctioned, about relying on the jobcentre for JSA payments between short-term, low-paid jobs and about pointless work programme courses. I’ve posted some transcripts from today’s discussions below.

This morning, we were outside the Neasden jobcentre. It was freezing cold and there was a nasty, biting wind and a number of people we spoke to looked cold and shaky because they were not dressed warmly enough for the weather. I know we hear a great deal about life on JSA being a rort and people on benefits enjoying TV and cigarettes and long days lying around in the sun and all the rest of it, but it never looks that great when I see it. People talk about having to go weeks without money and being forced to grovel and fawn to staff to avoid being sanctioned, and about the terror of putting the card into the cash machine and finding that no money comes out because you’ve been sanctioned after all. And in this rubbish weather, they look cold.

This is the punishment you get these days for the crime of being unemployed and not rich. You are utterly powerless. You’re on the receiving end of everything. You have to put up with everyone’s crap. Of course – things are very different if you’re rich and connected. Life generally is very different if you’re rich and connected. Very different. If you’re Chris Huhne, for example, you get your media-class buddies to give you a column at the Guardian when you leave prison. If you’re Maria Miller, you help yourself to £90k from the taxpayer and claim that little earner was totally above board. If you’re Nadhim Zahawi, you charge the taxpayer to heat your horses’ stables. These people genuinely believe that it’s the rest of us who are out of line. That’s the part that really gets me.

Most of the people we spoke to this morning were forced to collect JSA between low-paid and insecure jobs, or to subsidise low-paid and insecure jobs – something that ought to concern everyone who relies on a wage to pay the bills. One of the women, Noreen, talked about finding work on “lucky days.” She meant that she found work by herself on days when her luck was in and she managed to talk to the right people, not because there was any system in place to help her. Pity she doesn’t have as many lucky days as Chris Huhne.

 

I’ve been speaking to people for a couple of weeks now and have yet to find anyone who has found work through their jobcentre. Everyone talks about finding work themselves. These jobcentres are an exercise in degradation and futility. People don’t go to their jobcentre because they believe that someone will help them find a job. They go there to present meaningless “evidence” of a fortnight’s jobsearch activity and to sit very still and silently during interviews with jobcentre staff in the hope that they’ll avoid a sanction. “They’re about stressing people out and raising your blood pressure and they are there to give you a heart attack,” Noreen told us this morning. Can’t help thinking that is the point of the exercise as far as Iain Duncan Smith is concerned.

Anyway – here are a couple of people who sign on at Neasden jobcentre. I’m changing the names for these, because I don’t want jobcentres getting fancy ideas about sanctioning people who dare to share their views in public. I won’t respond well if I hear that is happening. People who are on JSA have every right to share their views and I’ll keep posting their views because of that.

Read the rest of this article by Kate Belgrave here: http://www.katebelgrave.com/2014/02/more-jsa-stories-from-jobcentres-its-impossible-youre-trapped/

Those vile people sitting in the jobcentre a few feet away doing absolutely nothing.

From the facebook page ‘The People vs the Government, DWP and Atos”

“I’ve just seen this outside Devizes Job Centre:
A man standing crying and and so distressed he wet himself. He was saying ” they won’t help me! They won’t let me have any money! They say I’ve used all my foodbank vouchers”.
He proceeded to collapse to the ground and curl up in a ball, his arms around his dog. Two passers by were supporting him. One went to buy him some food & the other had gone to get him a blanket. Several people averted their eyes and hurried past!
I couldn’t do any more than was already being done for him, though I would have liked to help. I cried my eyes out for him and cried in anger at the vile, despicable people who are sitting in the Job Centre a few feet away doing absolutely nothing!!!
I cannot believe what is happening in this country.
This system is totally horrendous, obnoxious and despicable!”

https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-People-Vs-The-Government-DWP-and-Atos/430588573684275

Shocking Extent Of Sick And Disabled Benefit Sanctions Revealed

The shocking extent of the number of sick and disabled benefit claimants having their benefits cut, through the use of sanctioning, has been revealed in a Freedom of Information (FOI) request made to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

According to the response from the DWP, 172,750 Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) claimants were referred for potential sanctioning between October 2008 and June 2013. Of those referrals, 76,300 received an adverse decision, meaning their sickness benefits were cut or stopped completely. 11,600 of those benefit sanctions were in Greater London alone.

read the rest of this article by Steven Preece on the ‘Welfare New Service’: http://welfarenewsservice.com/shocking-extent-sick-disabled-benefit-sanctions-revealed/

Trials and tribulations of recruiting from the Job Centre

With an unsurprising lack of joined up thinking, nobody amongst the powers that be seem to have considered what effect the government’s crackdown on the unemployed would have on potential employers attempting to use the jobcentre to look for workers. Here’s a report from one such, copied from a page on the website Real Business –

Jan Cavelle shares her trials and tribulations of recruiting from the Job Centre

For those of you who haven’t attempting to recruit from the Job Centre in recent years, you may be unaware that it has been absorbed. The name is now misleading as the department covers national insurance numbers and benefits rather more than jobs.

There is a website heading “finding a job” but rather surprisingly the first section offered on this is how to complain about the job centre. Conversely, to advertise your position, you will have to delve into the sections headed elsewhere on Gov UK and look for help for recruiters. And help you will undoubtedly need.

Should you persevere and advertise your position – perhaps an admin assistant with good typing skills based in Hemel Hempstead – you will then be amazed to find your area of the site awash with CVs of assorted skills, few who type, most of whom live from John O’Groats to Lands End and firmly confirm they will not locate. 

If you persevere and make contact with the best, you will find some you have selected carefully have no contact details for you to use, while others sound panicked by the mere suggestion of interviews and you will undoubtedly never hear from them again.

You may notice a similarity to some of the CVs. This is due to the advice from the job centres themselves on how to write them, which has resulted in you receiving a multitude with the same cliché ridden enthusiasms on the excellence of their team-playing skills and goal orientation.

If you have been brave enough to advertise your direct email, you will have receive a selection showing the classic blunders. The largest group are usually the ones where the covering email professes to be particularly selecting your company as one they want to work for – yet shows the emails of every local company under the sun in the CC addresses. 

However passionate they are about the possibility of a career with you, many also stop short of any tailoring to the job advertised.

You may also blanch at the email addresses that are suddenly descending on your inbox – shadesofgrey99@hotmail.com or spawnofthedevil@btinternet.co.uk are not the most appealing propositions.

I was cheered to see somewhere recently that my time allocation of a minute per CV to make a first round decision is about average. The length of some are simply stunning. I have seen them list several pages of jobs – and this is not the in depth descriptions but simply positions and dates. 

I had one recently that took a good three pages to describe in some detail how the applicant had been unappreciated and mistreated in all their previous positions and intended taking the last employer to tribunal as soon as possible – all the more amazing in a small town where local companies tend to know each other.

The reason for all this excruciating time wasting of the recruiter is of course the tightening up of the benefit system, resulting in a wide variety of people who have no intention of working being enforced to send off their CV ad hoc, with no likelihood or intent of success.

All that said, some of the Job Centre CVs have brightened my days over the last year – perhaps my favourite ended his covering letter:

Yours sinisterly

I am saving him for Halloween.

Posted in ‘real business’ 27th September 2013http://realbusiness.co.uk/article/24269-job-centre-cvs-leave-much-to-be-desired-