jobseekers agreement - confused

[terry_gardener]

sorry for asking yet another question about JSA but i am confused by the whole precess and JCP people i have seen aren't much help.

i applied online on the 1/1/13 and first appointment was today. when i went i expected to get the jsa agreement that i had in september but he made some massive changed now he that you had to do a min of 22 steps to get back into work / look for work, when my old agreement stated about 6 per week. he also upped the travel time to 90 mins from 60 mins and also put me a so called course that is mandatory apparantly to people prepare CV's fill out application forms and help looking for work.

is all this correct or is just being awkward?

the strange thing is on the 2/1/13 i got a phone call from my previous employer and they want me back to start on the 28th Jan. so all the above seems excessive.

also when i contacted working tax credits to let them know i finished work on the 31st and i am claiming JSA they said that i would still get working tax credits for a further 4 weeks before it stops (called a run on) when i asked the JSA person if this affects JSA payments he didn't know the answer.

can anyone help with this.

 

[Pennine-Paul]

I was on JSA last year,depending on how long you have been claiming
your steps to find work changes,i.e.travel time, hours you can work,I got sent
on the course to improve my CV as well,Turns out you sit at a pc and fill in
pages and pages of stuff on the Gov.uk Lifelong learning site,something you could easily
do at home instead of having to make 4 or 5 trips to meet your so called adviser

https://nationalcareersservice.direct.gov.uk/account/Pages/default.aspx

They also sent me on a mandatory Health and safety course for a week and if you passed
you had the promise of a job interview at the end,if you didn't attend your payments would stop,
So I went on the course,duly passed and the interview was for a temporary job that would have taken me
over an hour and a half travel by bike for a 6 am start,12 hours a day loading hgvs with heavy boxes,
fine if you live near and your young and fit not for a 50 something with a bad back and a plate in my arm,
The JSA knew I couldn't do heavy lifting yet they still sent me on all that cack for a job I couldn't do
Thankfully I'm back in work now,you were supposedly to apply for 5 or 6 jobs a week when I was claiming
JSA,I managed to find about 1 a month that I seriously had a chance of even getting an interview for, the jobs
simply aren't out there and the staff at the Job Centre knew it.

 

[Gromit]

I signed on just before Christmas. Had the first sign on interview with them, they said I had to apply for a least 6 jobs a week and go on their new job seekers website everyday to check for updates. Thankfully I have an up-to-date CV so just gave them that.

I got a letter a few weeks later telling me that because I had not paid tax in the last three years, due to being a full-time student, that I was not entitled to any money. I signed off on my first back to work interview as it wasn't worth jumping through their hoops. Plus I sometimes get a few hours work on the recycling, so it was not worth having to sign on and off again.

I'm not likely to go and sign on again, as they provide no help at all to people wanting to find a job, they just seem to bully people. I don't blame them for being like that, as I have seen some of the characters they have to deal with.

 

[Black Sheep]

I've given up with the job centre,

I went with one intention, to get my national insurance contributions paid so that I don't have a short fall to make up later, fortunately my wife earns enough that we can cope for now without me bringing in a salary (hopefully not for long) provided I don't spend money! I'm also doing up our house (was a wreck when we moved in) so my time is being used instead of paying someone else to do it.

I went, had my interview and got 4 letters each the same, from a slightly different area of the job centre / department for work and pensions etc each saying "we can not pay you job seekers allowance as you have not contributed enough when you were working, we may be able to pay your national insurance contribution if you continue to jump through the hoops we set"

I could not find out if I was able to have my NI paid or not so, after going on holiday and so ending one claim and needing to start another, I have not bothered to start the new claim as it feels a waste of time and money to go to the interviews as my local job centre doesn't handle the interviews and I have to go to a different site.

Apparently working in a minimum wage retail job for 3 years after not finding employment related to my degree means I can't claim anything if I need to. I'd be screwed if it wasn't for my wife being employed.

sorry, not much help to the original question, just trying to say (sorry it turned into a rant) that you're not the only one confused and feeling passed around by them.

 

[fossyant]

Beggars belief doesn't it. Those unfortunate to lose a job, but want another job, are forced through these hoops. Those that are just lazy ar$es are able to claim benefits for years and years, I just don't get it. Someone knows how to milk the system.

 

[Gromit]

Beggars belief doesn't it. Those unfortunate to lose a job, but want another job, are forced through these hoops. Those that are just lazy ar$es are able to claim benefits for years and years, I just don't get it. Someone knows how to milk the system.

It looks like those lazy people will be dragged kicking and screaming through those loops. There was a lot of people there who were p**d off that their benefit had been stopped. The place was packed out.

 

[Black Sheep]

Beggars belief doesn't it. Those unfortunate to lose a job, but want another job, are forced through these hoops. Those that are just lazy ar$es are able to claim benefits for years and years, I just don't get it. Someone knows how to milk the system.

someone close to me is a social worker / health visitor and some of the families she visits don't work and live off benefits and their older teenage children have moved out and do the same

so how have they got benefits with never paying anything in but I, who have tried to work and find work can't?

doesn't make sense to me...

 

[P.H]

Beggars belief doesn't it. Those unfortunate to lose a job, but want another job, are forced through these hoops. Those that are just lazy ar$es are able to claim benefits for years and years, I just don't get it. Someone knows how to milk the system.

Divide and rule, the Tory game, you don't have to play it.
Of course there's fraud, there is in every walk of life, but the amount of benefit fraud is so small it simply isn't significant.
A few people can and do milk the system, so what do we do? Force them to take a job that deprives someone else who wants it from getting it? What good would that do?

 

[MontyVeda]

the last time i was on the dole i went to the jobbery and had a meeting with my Jobseekers Advisor. After two or three minutes, and as many signatures he said i could go. I asked him when he was going to give me some jobseeking advice. He didn't quite understand my question, so I suggested we could go through the huge database of jobs on his computer to see if there's anything suitable for someone with my experience... he clearly couldn't be arsed but i forced his hand to actually do something.

to this day I have never come across a more disinterested and apathetic workforce than those in the Jobbery.

 

[terry_gardener]

thank you for the comments. seems to be all along the same path.

how do these people keep jobs, some have no customer service skills what so ever. i know when i was in customer service, if i had there attitude i wouldn't have the job for long

 

[DCLane]

I once ran a series of 6 training sessions with some of their Doncaster staff about customers and customer service.

In the first session they denied they had any customers; all of those in the training had client-facing job roles and they saw 30-50 clients each day. Most of whom were wanting assistance with jobseekers allowance and looking for work.

By the 6th session, they grudgingly accepted that they might have customers and that their clients might be their customers.

At that point I gave up ...

 

[MrJamie]

The impression I got when I was on JSA was that the whole experience was horrible and depressing, but with the likes of the Mail's daily benefit outrage, they've been pushed and pushed into adding more and more pointless hoops, which make it a pain in the ass for genuine people but pretty much no difference to those used to riding round the system. I recall two guys loudly discussing their blagging methods, in earshot of the nearest few advisors, amongst other things I recall being kinda offended by this guy laughing saying how many times his nan had "died" to get him out of some appointment/interview.

I've never been worried about people claiming benefits, because I don't believe that many achieve much of a standard of life and happiness that way anyway, but I do remember getting quite irritated with JSA by the number of schemes, programs, forms, "hoops" and such which were forever changing as new no doubt expensive initiatives were being introduced, while missing the basics of helping people look for work and telling them which other advice/benefits/loans/courses etc were available.

 

[Speicher]

The people working at Job Centres have targets to meet. These targets are "getting people off benefits", not "finding people work". Alledgedly.

Once a month one of their mobile offices, aka large caravan, might park up on the car park in town. They might be able to offer advice, but that advice does not include telling people when they are next likely to be there, other than it could be four weeks on Tuesday, or possibly Wednesday, because of the recent Bank Holiday. Fortunately I no longer have any contact with them.

They could not even tell me which courses were available because they had confused a Horticultural College here, with another college over forty miles away. They did not know of the existence of one that is seven miles away. Perhaps their skills lie in obfuscation and inaccuracy.

 

[Arch]

It sounds like all those out of work who want to work should be running the job centres. Perhaps if the staff (and those who set the rules, as I'm aware front line staff have little say in it) were on the other side of the counter, they'd find out how demoralising it is when the person supposed to help you doesn't seem to bother...

(I'm fortunate enough never to have had to deal with them, but I can tell it would drive me mad...)

 

[Night Train]

I remember having one of those 'training sessions' with a group of other claimants.
The trainer was telling us all the ways we could improve our chances of finding work, a bit like teaching granny to suck eggs. We picked her to pieces as we had all seen it, done it and worn out the tee shirt, numerous times.

One chap asked her if she really believed all 'her guff' would make any difference and she said she hoped so as she would be redundant by the next week due to job cuts!