Joint-claim couple referred to The Work Programme
We were referred to The Work Programme with Reed in Partnership, on the 29th September. Both I and my husband have a joint claim and we are a married couple for the purposes of our joint claim for Jobseeker’s Allowance, this has been the case since the start of our claim, at the JobcentrePlus office in Harlesden.
My husband received a letter asking him to attend an initial interview on 4th October, and I was asked to attend an initial interview on 6th October. The penultimate paragraph of my letter informed me that I could bring someone with me to the initial interview (my husband’s letter said the same). I therefore accompanied my husband for his initial interview on 4th October.
When we first arrived, chairs were pulled up so that we both could sit with the advisor, and we felt the interview would proceed as normal. Within one minute into my husband’s appointment, the advisor felt that she needed to ask DA, her floor manager, about whether we could attend Reed in partnership appointments on the same day, as it was our wish to do so.
They both returned together to where we were sitting and D started telling us that it was the policy that they don’t see couples together, that it was their policy to split couples up because of company policies on domestic violence, irrelevant to what had happened with us in the past, that their policy at Reed in partnership at Chandelier House was to do things differently.
The floor manager making up his own policies
My husband, (who was within three minutes of having arrived, was embarrassed and upset, and also me, very embarrassed and upset too,) he asked that the floor manager, DA, show him the written policy that joint claimants are split up. We had only asked to be given appointments on the same day; we were not asking to see the same advisor or to see the same advisor at the same time together, but to come to appointments on the same day whenever possible. We certainly did not expect to be talked at in the manner that we were talked at during the first five minutes of our first visit to Reed in partnership, and in an open plan office at close earshot and in full view of probably some 60 other staff and customers, all around us at the time.
DA, lead us both into his office where he immediately repeated for a second time that the reason they split couples up is because of policies on domestic violence. I was absolutely embarrassed, and my husband was so upset that he had to remind him that he was not a social worker, that Reed was being asked by our JobcentrePlus office to provide us help into employment, not for him to be making up his own policies – could he please show us that policy. He didn’t. He refused for me to accompany my husband even though both of our initial interview letters explicitly informed us that we could be accompanied.
When he led us out of his office, the manager insisted that I sit in the waiting open plan area, no longer next to my husband, and for the third time, insisted in embarrassing me with his domestic violence policy. He also arranged with another advisor, the one who was due to see me on the 6th, so that she fit my own initial interview that same afternoon. I had my initial interview on the 4th and not the 6th October.
During my Initial Interview
During my initial interview that afternoon, I was asked to produce my passport and proof of my national insurance number, (so was my husband), however, there was no mention of these requirements to produce these proofs written down in the letters that we received inviting us for the initial interview.
I was asked to sign my consent to share information and I didn’t consent to signing it, because I did not want to give consent for Reed in Partnership Providers to share my information with strangers. Against my wishes, the Action Plan had a second, sneaky consent request and I was asked to sign it on the back of my Action Plan. It took some effort to rectify cancelling this second consent, to my satisfaction.
I was given my second appointment to attend Reed in partnership’s office for a review interview on 18th October. When I read the Action Plan at home that evening, I immediately drafted an email to my advisor repeating that I had not willingly signed their second Data Protection consent, and that I was withdrawing my consent to that part of their Action Plan.
I telephoned the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO)
Before attending my second interview, I did seek further information from the ICO about the manner and form of privacy notices under the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA). The Information Commissioner’s Office gave me their opinion that a Data Protection notice should have not been presented to me as a subsection of an Action Plan, in their opinion, this was an example of very sloppy administrative work and then they guided me to their own website, which contains the Privacy notices code of practice. It isn’t only a requirement of the ICO that these notices are done according to a code of practice; it is also a requirement of the European Union European Social Fund, that I be given an opt-out to withdraw my consent on sharing personal information at any time, in writing, to Reed in Partnership Providers.
I had to send my advisor an email to ensure that my rights to privacy under the European Social Fund requirements and the ICO weren’t being ignored because of ‘sloppy administrative work’.
Were the advisors trained? Who knows?
I doubt that either of the two advisors we saw or that the floor manager at Reed in partnership providers at Chandelier House have received appropriate training to administer my rights under the DPA. Their replies to my questions were sufficient for me to conclude that they did not understand their responsibilities under the DPA regulations.
The system to opt-out is not at all transparent or trustworthy, according to what I have experienced, read and been told by the ICO, especially if they are duplicating notices in a variety of different places - One form serving a different purpose to that intended for Data Protection notices. Again, I have now refused to give my consent to three different formats of consent notice.
My second interview was strained at the start
My second interview with my advisor, the review interview on the 18th October, started off somewhat strained at the start, because of my email I suspected, and my insistence about putting right my withdrawal of consent on the scanned version of the Action Plan which I had signed during my first appointment. I wanted the corrections to be made and re-scanned and the incorrect version of the first Action Plan to be deleted. This had to be done because my advisor informed me that the original form had been shredded after it had been scanned into their computer system – and yet the Action Plan had been a printout of what the advisor had been inputting onto the computer screen in the first place during our first appointment. Their computer systems do not appear able to deal with an opt-out under DPA.
Only during the second interview, the review interview, and not the initial interview, was I given the “Your Future Starts Here” and the “The Work Programme – You’re better off working” Reeds in Partnership leaflets, as well as the book “Put Your Mindset To Work “ written by James Reed chairman of REED and Paul G Stoltz, Phd, Penguin USA 2011, £12.99 on the cover. I think I should have received this information earlier; it certainly seems more pertinent to an initial first interview. It really is a superficial motivational tome, more suited to management development courses than to long-term unemployment. During the first fifty pages the word 'mindset' was repeated very often.
[Note: James is the son of Alec... Alec was knighted this year and he is raising money for Prince Charles' favourite charities... by getting fat cats to donate to selected charities appropriate to their businesses... James graduated from Oxford (politics, etc) and Harvard (MBA) and his co-author has a corporate training company in California so I sincerely hope that the DWP isn’t forking out £12.99 to pay Reed for supplying me with their chairman’s book - with so many unemployed it should become a best seller for him in no time. The CEO of Ingeous seems to be a similar type of business tycoon.]
I watched my husband getting the mean treatment three desks across from me
I have already noticed that my husband’s advisor is behaving towards my husband differently, as well as in an administratively different manner (I think this certainly relates to the manner we were both treated during the initial minutes of his first interview,) the forms I have been asked to fill out and sign by my own advisor, differ from what he is being asked to fill out and sign by his advisor, and we haven't yet begun any of their programme.
My husband’s advisor is insisting that everything is mandated mandatory and therefore has to be completed and signed as a mandatory requirement, she is also insisting that my husband supply personal and private information about me as well as him (i.e.: Personal Details You, Personal Details Your Partner, Children Living With You, Current Weekly Income, Benefits Continued, Savings and Capital in £s, Taxable Income for the Last Year (6 April 2010 to 5 April 2011 (P60s show earnings for each tax year, Housing, Homeowner and Long Leaseholders as the subheadings, under the REED v2 15-09-11 logo) – In this form which she gave him is asked private information that I think is quite irrelevant for the purpose of helping him (or me) to find full-time employment.
My husband's advisor didn’t explain to my husband the purpose for which she required our personal details - unreasonable and unfair. Yet she was adamant that my husband must mandatorily supply her with all the personal information she asks of him, (including information about me behind my back, I know that the reality of the matter is that she intends to make life easier for herself by omitting what she thinks we don't understand). This is all very confusing, contradictory, inappropriate and unfair. Anyway, I asked my husband to tell her on my behalf that I don't want to share private information - I obviously cannot refuse to take actions towards finding a new employer, but I can certainly refuse to volunteer personal information about our personal lives for beaurocratic non-actions.
All this could have been avoided if both my husband and I could have been interviewed together for at our first two interviews. The whole setup isn't about the letter of the law, the whole setup is about the reality of having price tags on our heads, and the easiest method to get those price tags cashed in - it is a one-sided conversation - a set plan of meaningless beaurocratic processing.
What, no stairs? I've never know a 70s office block without its featured architectural stairs
A last personal concern which I have is that the building we have been referred to frequent has no stairs. Access to the first floor is via two elevators. I have serious health and safety concerns about the lack of choice and lack of walking access up and down Reed in partnership’s office space. I prefer using stairs, the fact that there aren’t any, worries me in case there is an emergency, such as a fire. Given a choice between an elevator and stairs, I would personally prefer to use the stairs and walk up to the first floor of an office building instead of using the elevators, why isn’t this choice available to me at the Chandelier Building? Because the entire office has been put together very fast.
My husband has been sent on their internal course this week
Because my husband's advisor is very mandatory in her customer style she would not hear my husband out - he wanted to tell her that first thing on Monday is our signing-on day. My husband promptly arrived to his course, stayed 75 minutes and left to sign-on. Whatever happens, the JobcentrePlus appointments take priority... we have been told by JobcentrePlus. In future, the provider needs to accommodate our JobcentrePlus appointments.
Internal Guidelines to the JobcentrePlus Staff
I tested out the Secretary of State's theories to the House of Lords and I asked the floor manager at Harlesden JobcentrePlus to see their internal guidelines (supplied by the DWP via their intranet). I specifically wanted to learn how they decided who to refer to 'The Work Programme'. She printed out sections of these guidelines straight from the intranet. Reasons to refer are these:
a) (informal, work of mouth) Too many unemployed people for the number of appointments which the available employment advisers can handle... so the long-term unemployed need to be moved on, to make room in their appointment books for the next wave which has become long-term unemployed.
b) (formal, the reality is different from the liberal wording of the legislation itself) Absolutely everyone on JSA is mandatorily referred and there is no choice, it is a political bluff those statements about mutually agreable interventions which is best to meet an individual needs of the customer, which is implied by the wording placed in the legislation by the legislators.
If you've received JSA for 12 weeks only, you can volunteer to go on The Work Programme early, this is the only voluntary option that exists for JSA claimants. If you receive ESA, IB, or SDA, you can 'voluntarily' accept the help of The Work Programme: "Claimants who volunteer for the WP, but whose participation on referral is mandatory will be subject to sanctions if they then fail to undertake the activities requested of them by the WP Provider... Claimants who volunteer for referral to the WP and their participation is also voluntary will not be subject to sanctions if they fail to undertake activities requested of them by the WP Provider" - Work Programme Referral Confirm Eligibility (Internal JobcentrePlus Guidelines) - so pre-WP, WP or close your claim altogether... but once you're on WP, you're on it for two years even if you've found your new employer.
The Work Programme is all about the provider getting a good return for their contracts for having put themselves forward to be the providers, (the same thing as happened with the tenders for railway services) during the first two years of the first batch of customers onto a new programme. I suppose the maths can be done to determine the income that is accrued at various stages of the project - it is human beings we are talking about here, not lifeless commodities though. Tendering out distances the government form unemployed constituents during a time of austerity cutback exercises.
The Links to the Links to the Links of The Work Programme
http://tinyurl.com/66tkn65
This is the blog page where I have put links to everything that I have found and I have read about 'The Work Programme' (I wrote a short introduction at the top of that page)
