AIBU to want a different Universal Credit work coach?

It's the point of view of UC/the benefits system and is how you are regarded by them. The fact that you've worked before and have both qualifications and experience is irrelevant, as you are in the same position as claimants that haven't. You also said a SEND TA, which is a position that doesn't necessarily require experience or specific qualifications, and with the way things are now, most parents would be relieved that there was actually somebody with their child for a change.

In any case, it's shit, the system's shit, it's definitely not designed to provide a bespoke service, it's intended to make sure that you keep on applying for jobs in exchange for the UC payment. Genuinely, you keep doing what you are already doing, meet their requirements, keep the journal up to date, smile sweetly and take the money. You're entitled to it.

Where are you and what is your specialism?

I am always astounded by these job market posts as I (a tax accountant, albeit in practice) have never been in such demand nor have we ever found it so difficult to find potential recruits (I had a vacancy open for a full year with no applicants). You will have absolutely heard of where I work, and nationally we have about 30 open vacancies you’re likely to be qualified for (I don’t know your geography).

Have you tried applying for junior roles in practice? Say at even just the top 10 firms? I just can’t square your experience with mine.

Try school business managers or primary school receptionists. Not fantastic money but thats what my dad did after a career as an accountant

I’m not sure if the role was called a Work Coach at the time, but when I was on job seekers allowance 11 years ago, my equivalent thought I was an artist because I had a Bachelor of Arts degree.

It sounds like my partner is a similar position; he's been a self employed copywriter for 12 years,but the introduction of AI made him redundant, almost overnight. He's been applying for every possible job (I work a 3 on/3off night shift pattern,and my 7 year old son lives with us so one of us needs to be able to do the school drop off/pick up, no family nearby, and DP doesn't drive),so his options are limited.
He has seen a few Career Advisors and Work Coaches through the Job Centre,but they've been no help whatsoever.

Hope Andy Burnham has a plan for supporting people that have been made irrelevant, due to AI.....

As a parent of a sen child who relies on Ta support it makes me unbelievably sad and angry that a work coach would suggest sen ta jobs to random people.

It is a highly sensitive and difficult role working with very vulnerable children who will be struggling even to attend sxhool in many cases. Absolutely ludicrous they are hawking job adverts around to anyone they can in the job centre and shows how poorly the education sector is treated. They should pay them more and use proper qualified professionals

I digress !

Op i feel for you.

This is not exactly the same but I have been through similar trying to navigate the council sen system for my very vulnerable child.

I have been honestly gobsmacked by the poor levels of professionalism and general incompetence in many people I have been forced to rely on for support.

I'm afraid you need to keep your expectations so low they are in the bin.

DWP Work coaches are notoriously useless. Your own job searches will be more use.

I was allowed the slightly more expensive trousers that fit 🤣 They did also pay travel expenses for my induction day in that job (mostly remote role but had to go in person for that) - these little bits did help after running through a lot of savings.

I think a lot of people's experience of work coaches seems to hark back to the harsh sanction days under the Tories. Currently they are supposed to help people actually find work. They are not just administrators, they are junior management level, the administration of UC is generally done centrally and has nothing to do with individual jobcentres.

Sorry you are not finding your work coach helpful, but she does appear to be right in suggesting the SEN TA role though. And She probably has between 120 and 220 people on her caseload so you not having transport may have slipped her mind. On the other hand she may just be shit at her job. You could ask for a new work coach but if you do it through the journal you will be asking her!

Alot if the JC staff are horrible, it's a shitty job, and they are under pressure to stop people's money.
If they weren't working at the job centre they would be out of a job too.

I can't believe anyone chooses to work there these days.

Try the civil service jobs site - there should be finance roles across the service but HMRC might be a good bet as it sounds like you have lots of experience and their recruitment is supposed to be ‘blind’, so no age discrimination (allegedly).

I had a long civil service career and ultimately had to resign when trying to work, be a single parent and care for a terminally ill parent became more than I could cope with, after three years of juggling. It took me almost two years to find a new job which fit around my caring commitments and it was pretty depressing, to be honest. I had a number of work coaches and some of them seemed lovely, we had some mutually supportive chats - a good number of them we not
enjoying the work coach experience, as it’s a low band, low paid civil service admin role with more targets/micro-management/people related aggro than the pay warrants.

But, as many people have mentioned, their role is basically to tick the boxes, make certain you are jumping through the relevant hoops and prod/harass you until you get a job. You should have an easier time of it as you will be seen as low-hanging fruit because you are actually willing to work.

Good luck, it’s rough out there.

What did they say?

These threads always astonish me. I'm a work coach in Denmark and I cannot imagine treating my clients this way.

The DWP don't and can't help. It's merely an admin centre where they process claims. Their job is to harass you and pressure you into work and give out sanctions.
That's basically a punishment for relying on them and daring to need assistance.

Hope you can find yourself something soon. You won't get any help from the jobcentre just harrassment and threats.

It's many years since the job centre would actually help.

In fact there's rumours they are going to be renamed at the sanction centre 🤔😧🙃

I was in a very similar situation to you last year and unfortunately my partner is now going through it. Truthfully, if you’re an experienced professional then they don’t know how/have resources to help you so changing your work coach won’t make any difference. On one occasion the only advice they had for me was to just stay positive. Sorry you’re going through this, I hope you find something soon.

I’m a SEN teacher and you don’t need any qualifications to be a SEN teaching assistant, experience with children (with or without SEND) is preferable but even that isn’t essential especially in the current climate where recruiting staff is a real challenge. If you have your own children you would have more experience than most of the people we employ!

Just to add, obviously you would be working under the direction of the teacher and at my school you would receive training to support you in the role too. There is also the opportunity for TAs to gain on the job qualifications once they’ve passed probation.

SEN teaching assistant (as in your OP) or SEN teacher (as in your subsequent posts)? They are two different roles. Some vacancies for the former do not require any specific qualifications or experience. Sometimes that isn’t a problem because in some situations it is more about having the right fit rather than someone with SEN qualifications/experience.

My mum worked in retail for 30+ years, then applied to her local college as a SEN TA. She got the job with no qualifications or experience and has been there for 5 years now.

Re Stacey Duguid and all her media outreach, in case she's reading ...
I do think that she has been really brave and created some much stronger visibility on this issue of mid-career worklessness. But I think the problem is structural in the economy ...

Stick with it OP. Summer is a terrible time for recruitment. Things might get better soon.

Your job coach is not the issue. As PPs have said, the title is a misnomer. They are essentially an administrator who processes your benefit claim. You are undoubtedly better qualified than them and could do the job better than them. I don't think there's much point asking for a new one. The new one might be marginally more competent at filling in the paperwork quickly but they won't be able to offer you any of what you actually need to find a new job, which is actionable intelligence on local/national opportunities or labour market trends.

The job market for well-paid knowledge workers in mid-career (which is what you sound like you are and I am too) has currently ground to a halt. If you are a woman it - anecdotally - seems to be worse. See, for example, all the recent media interviews by an unemployed fashion editor called Stacey Duguid.

I don't agree with Duguid that AI recruitment processes are the problem (although they are a problem). I think these are a symptom not a cause.

IMO, the multiple causes of the frozen labour market:
Brexit - took a huge bite out of the UK economy and we exported 000s UK jobs to Europe.
Other geopolitical factors leading to rising business costs eg Ukraine war, Straits of Hormuz - less £££s for companies to spend on wages
UK business tax rises by Rachel Reeves eg NI didn't help (although are a local difficulty compared to the two factors above)
The rising business costs are leading some companies to export jobs, like what's happening in your ex-workplace
Then AI. Is it taking knowledge worker jobs? Well, some, already, for sure. If any freelance translators or audio transcribers are reading, to name two former jobs, their work has been decimated. But there is probably also a factor that businesses are currently spending their spare cash on AI-related software, or tokens, or improved cybersecurity and so on ... and not on back office services that they can automate or outsource.

All this leads us to ... it being very very hard to find a job at the moment.
It's also hard for grads, NEETs and other groups, of course but in this post I just want to focus on mid-career knowledge workers who can't get a job.

MN isn't on average very helpful as a source of real intel on what to do next. It's easy to say: "well get a job in a supermarket, or as a care worker, or as a cleaner" or as you heard above "become a freelance accountant" but these are often a sort of substitute moral position statement (eg "work, get a job any job, don't claim benefits") rather than sensible advice that takes into account an individual person's skills or future aims.

These are the most helpful things I can say:
*To get a future job in your industry you will have to have a look at future trends to form your own judgment about whether it's still got any life in it or is dying. It is quite hard to take a step back at a stressful time but it is a thought-provoking exercise. You can mine the FT for this, for example and listen to some industry podcasts. Is there any place in finance that jobs are expanding right now? In fintech? Or could you move over into wealth management for HNWs? Or pensions. And so on. (I don't know much about the finance industry so these are just sub-sectors I'm plucking out of the air - I'm sure you can think of better).
*widen your search to national or even international, not just local (I appreciate this might be hard if you have young kids etc).

*recruitment consultants are pretty useless atm. Not because some of them aren't nice well-intentioned people but because we are in a falling labour market and they don't have many vacancies to recruit for. Don't waste too much time with them.
*don't invest money or time in "retraining" unless you are really certain it will lead to opportunities. I know several people who took a law degree as adults about 5-6 years ago in the hope of becoming a paralegal, getting articles etc. It mostly hasn't worked out, because of outsourcing and AI although they could not have predicted this when they excitedly signed up for their courses. Ditto becoming an electrician or tradesperson. You can pay to attend a training course but then you have to find an apprenticeship which is a big blocker, not because of AI but because of the structure of the industry.
On finding any work at all.

*don't bother with supermarkets etc. They are all staffed up by existing workers or the young grads who can't get the other jobs. If your job coach suggests you apply for Tesco put in an application and then you can say you have. If you get the job great. But you almost certainly won't.
*think what practical skills some people don't have for work and see if there is anything you can trade on. Driving is a good one. A requirement to drive and access to a car as part of a wider job eg salesperson will knock quite a lot of potential applicants out of the frame. But there are other non-core but necessary skills that might differentiate you
*look for where the zero hours contracts that you can do might be. In the finance industry are there tasks that are outsourced to agencies that you could do, even if min. wage. Most of these types of agencies are now assigning tasks by apps.

I could say plenty more but this post is already too long!
The main thing is you are not on your own. There are plenty of us in the same boat even if on MN the discussion is a bit fragmented and keeps getting mixed up with NEETs and grads etc.