To this is absolutely insane! Universal Credit Sanction

Your daughter sounds like she has ptsd from what happened to her. She needs to go to the doctor and get diagnosed. They will help her. I don’t know how it translates to benefits but there should be some kind of help in that direction for her. She’s finding life difficult and sleeping too much which is not surprising after a sexual assault.

OP does your DD have a work coach at the Jobcentre ? If not, ask her to request one and then declare a mental health condition. She doesn’t need a formal diagnosis - she can be considered to have a MH disability if it significantly impacts her day to day life. The work coach can then carry out a work assessment to see what kind of work DD may be suited to and how best to apply. They will take MH into account and will work with your DD on a suitable plan for a return to employment. They will also be able to advise on how best to avoid sanctions and whether any exemptions apply.

OP you are right. £7.00 for an entire months living costs is inhumane. The end.

Maybe she needs to be more resilient? Getting the hump and resorting to sleeping all day won’t do her any good in the long run. Pick up bar/ cafe work in the meantime of looking for a job she wants ?

If she had applied for 1500 jobs and only got 2 interviews something is seriously wrong. There are jobs out there obviously so why isn’t she getting any of them. Is she over/under qualified. Does she need help with interview skills? Is her CV relatable? Can she get help with these issues and then see if that helps?

Generally if it’s only a few days there’s little or no notice period it would be no more than a week!
Absolutely she should not lie, if it was discovered the sanction would be far worse as she will have committed fraud!

your daughter would have been asked to give her reasons as to why she did not attend and given 7 days to do so. If she did not do that it would have been automatically sent up to a decision maker to decide if a sanction was appropriate.
Has she missed prior appointments? If so, after so many it gets sent up to a decision maker. You can request a mandatory reconsideration. You can also request a recoverable hardship payment.
Has she declared anxiety and depression under health on her UC account. There is lots of support on offer - she can be signposted and referred to various services.
iIf she is too unwell to work she can get a fit note from the GP, easements can be put in place and a work capability assessment carried out.
work searching - the nature of recruitment has changed - job centres no longer have jobs on boards or find people jobs as recruitment is digital and centralised. Recruiters find it a waste of resources working with job centres. However, job centres do have resources to help with job searching, tailoring cv’s and cover letters. They will always tell you quality over quantity regarding application. Is she making use of these resources?

I’m so sorry to hear this and that your daughter is struggling to find jobs. If you want I could send you my CV (it’s quite well written) and some practice interview questions. I’ve always been good at getting jobs.

She can apply for hardship payment if needed for hygiene costs

So she’s apparently applied for 1500 jobs in 6 months which is about 250 a month but is sleeping 14-16 hours a day. That’s a lot of jobs a day. Then on top of that if she really has applied for that many jobs which seems unlikely, you are now saying she isn’t capable of attending one appointment or rearranging it within timescales?

Something isn’t adding up here.

Your daughters life seems very dramatic in my opinion - threatened with a knife, assaulted, fired after 3 days for no fault of her own, applied for 1500 jobs with no success. I’m not saying that none of those things happened, maybe she is just very unlucky, but it does seem a bit strange that’s she had so much happen to her.

When you fail to attend a UC appointment your are given 7 days to explain why, if this is the first appointment you have missed and you explain it is due to mental health this is accepted as a good reason and it is not sent to the decision maker. If you have missed 3 for good reasons, the 4th is sent to the decision maker. If you do not give a reason it is sent to the decision maker. The decision maker decides whether a sanction is appropriate.

For the first sanction in 12 months you are sanctioned the number of days between not attending and the day you contact and ask for the appointment to be rebooked, plus 7 days. For a 45 days sanction your daughter must have ignored the prompts to rebook for 38 days OR asked for it to be rebooked and then not attend again until 38 days after the original appointment.

If this process has not been followed she can ask for a mandatory reconsideration which can overturn the sanction or shorten it as they have not followed the above.

So nasty.

Other countries like Sweden give every unemployed person 80 percent of their last job income.

The UK is very bad in this area.

OP said she has a degree, which means she’s done GCSE and A Level/BTEC. So academically she can, just would need training

Oh, fair. I didn’t know

This is possibly not her first sanction if she has been sanctioned for a month, they increase the more failures to attend appointments or complete actions that you do.

Complaining it's not fair won't so anything, she (not you) needs to give a reason why she didn't attend and ask for a mandatory reconsideration. For example, if her mental health is bad, has she reported this to UC? (Report a change - health from her home page) if her mental health is making her more forgetful, she has difficulty concentrating, this could be evidence for a mandatory reconsideration.

Is her mental health affecting her ability to work? Does she need see a GP or get some mental health support?

If what you’ve said is accurate, this is an awful situation. I’m so sorry, she sounds like she’s had a very difficult time. Would she consider more education - college to retrain into something she loves? Change direction and travel, work abroad doing something fun, just do something to give her some space. When you are down, the world just wants to knock you harder 😢

I actually think “good for her” for telling the MD he was rude for being rude - and having a backbone and integrity, even though it cost her her job!! Not many people really stand up for what is right if there is a risk they can lose their jobs!

She’s been through a lot recently with being assaulted twice and fired from a job and sounds like she’s avoiding life and the world by sleeping a lot. It sounds like building her confidence back up is the first thing to do - could you afford to pay for some therapy for her? Can she volunteer for a short while/ get a lower paid job to get back into a structure and rhythm and build her confidence back up?

Can you check if she’s having nightmares or flashbacks from either of the assaults, also just wondering if she might be experiencing any trauma symptoms, if so EMDR might be helpful.

What makes you think this young woman has got what it takes to become a teacher...

How old is she OP and why are you letting her sleep in all bloody day?

Locally we have an organisation called 'get Oldham working '. They do the stuff you'd think the job centre should.
Is there anything similar near you?

Agency tomorrow.
She needs to get any job now else she'll disappear into herself.

But they don’t though. If you contact them with a reason and proof, then you don’t get sanctioned. Even if you just contact them immediately, you’re only sanctioned for 7 days. You can even just change your appointment if you contact in advance and you won’t get sanctioned. But if you have an actual reason, then you’re fine. So they don’t treat everyone the same. They only sanction the people who simply didn’t turn up with no reason; that’s the OP daughter.

The OP’s daughter has nothing wrong with her and no reason for missing it, so that’s 7 days but then she also didn’t bother to contact them so that’s all the other days added on.

What a star you are @Lemonysnipit ... sending good vibes all round!

There is in nursing which is what I was referring to

It's a case of everyone bring treated the same. For every person genuinely missing one appointment due to an oversight, there's probably a dozen more deliberately missing their appointments because they cant be arsed. The job centre have to treat all claimants the same.