What does job centre/society actually expect this woman to do?

[steppemum]

I support a lady (friendship through a charity) I'll change some details to make it less identifiable.

She has a son aged 5 and in school and so the job centre are giving her a lot of hassle to get into work. But I just cannot see how she is supposed to do this:

• she is a single mum. Her partner is not son's dad and doesn't live with her.


• she lives on a large council estate out of town. Very little work on the estate. 20 minute bus ride into town. Some work in town, mostly in shops (which I doubt she would get, she's not likely to get a customer facing job) most work is then a further 20 minutes on the bus from the bus station in town.


• there is no breakfast club or after school club, or holiday clubs at the school


• there are no childminders on the estate. The closest ones are about 1 mile away, and don't do school drop offs or pick ups


• she does have local family, but they are not willing to do any childcare, either before/after school, or in the holidays.


• she is only likely to get a minimum wage job as she has no qualifications.

So, she could only work day time, from about 9:30 - 2:00 in order to do school run, no weekends and she has no-one to look after her son in the holidays.

Job centre has told her she is being too fussy and she must be more flexible with timings.

Am I missing something here? I just don't see HOW she can get a job! She would like to work actually, but is also pretty scared about ending up with less money.

Yes, but what is the impact on her mental health of forcing her to carry on pursuing a fruitless search for work that isn't going to materialise? What is the point of making this poor woman perpetually go through the motions of looking for work if everyone knows that, realistically, she is not going to find something that matches her skill set and her limited availability. It must be utterly soul destroying to have to keep applying and keep getting rejected, and to feel that there is no way out of that endless cycle.

It would be so much better if we thought about this in a holistic, long term way. If we offered a fully funded programme, with free childcare provided, that would realistically enable this woman, and others like her, to develop practical, useable employment skills that would properly help them to climb out of the holes that they're in. With proper tailored support, coaching and counselling to build their confidence, develop essential life skills, and address any difficulties relating to their mental health. A programme that would make a genuine, lasting difference to their lives and to the lives of their children, and stop the same problems being revisited on generation after generation.

Instead, we just keep perpetually chasing them to submit a few more hopeless job applications for jobs that they have no chance of getting, simply so that they can tick a box to say that they have done it. It is as inhumane as it is futile.

My Mum was illiterate, and after having us she worked in a school kitchen (she’d had jobs before having children on a factory floor, then worked her way up to a charge hand position). This was around 1976.

She was a GA in a school kitchen, as one of 15 kitchen hands in medium sized primary school.

It was pin money to help pay for nice things; Dad was a rep on £17k so paid all bills.

Mum taught herself to read - but it took years.

When she started in school meals, she didn’t need to read as there were head cooks & assistant cooks to do that ‘hard stuff’ as she called it. In her 44 years of service, kitchen staff (albeit in a school half the original school’s size) had be pared down so hard that, still as a General Assistant, there were only 3 staff (one for only 2 hrs a day) to run that kitchen - where 90% of the 310 roll had school dinners.

As the years progressed, GAs had to be able to read to prepare food, read allergy information, go on formal courses with written homework & exams, and had to be able to step in as cook at times if her boss was away. Even so, that gave her a maximum income of 4 1/2 hrs a day at minimum wage. When she left to retire last year, it took 6 months to fill her job as people needed to be earning more in order to keep their basic income guaranteed so they could pay basic costs of living.

There just aren’t these type of low to no skill jobs out there anymore. She was well motivated to learn to read, but even then it took years. And there is still a huge stigma in not being able to read.

I don’t think many on this board understand the true struggle of those that are disadvantaged by learning difficulties or illiteracy. Even a GA job, in school hours, requires the ability to read. There are no factory jobs, public transport is not only expensive but shockingly poor. Even fruit picking or food production facilities require the ability to travel miles (or out of town). If you can’t drive (or can’t afford to drive), or there is poor & expensive public transport, then that job is out of reach to OP’s client.

Couple that with a lack of wraparound childcare & even the most basic of unskilled work is untenable.

Sadly, my Dad is in a care home (unfortunately, we’re in his last few hours, it may be why I’m pretty riled at posters’ ignorance right now). The amount of paperwork & care plans vital to his well-being need basic literacy in order to perform their jobs!

I don’t have answers to provide a solution. But there are an awful lot of (allegedly) literate people who’ve replied on here who haven’t read the OPs posts, or must think that just because there are a plethora of jobs available then that means there must be a job for everyone, because the real world isn’t like that.

Whoa! This poster replied before any additional information was added so wind your neck in

The op has said that neither of the 2 local schools have breakfast of after school clubs

I agree there are two issues

I wondered if a time limit to the type of benefit she is receiving has a time limit, eg two years / 5 years or something else. And if you get moved to another type of benefit if no job is found

and if any work had been possible before dc as they might help with direction when she does solve cc issue

I haven’t read the whole post but would a voluntary role in a care home be suitable, spending time one to one with a resident that has no family visitors for a few hours, I have often seen this as a gateway into employment as the volunteer becomes more confident the managers have encouraged and supported, not all jobs in care homes are irregular hours and if they can see that someone is committed they will offer other roles maybe a little gardening or cleaning/laundry paid along side the voluntary companionship with a view to progress employment in a caring role in the future

So sorry to hear about your dad 💐

No idea about benefits although in the old days I know single parents could remain on income support until their youngest child turned 12. Now you have to prove you're looking for work. It's a shame the woman in question doesn't have a specific diagnosis

Sadly, having a specific diagnosis is no guarantee that people will be able to access disability benefits. An awful lot of people don't qualify, despite really struggling.

This system is designed to grind people down. Even IDS has admitted it.
The absolute worse thing for me is the brainwashed people parroting the work harder mantra. It's not the high rate taxpayers who begrudge someone like this lady support it's her peers. Those who are one of two bits of bad luck away from being in the same boat.
It gives some people comfort to sneer at less fortunate and some perverse feeling of superiority.
I'm not a high rate just a normal tax payer who was lucky enough to be born at a better time. When I started work I got what was considered a cushy job for life, when I became ill and had to stop for a bit I got sick pay and when I could only continue part time my disability pension kicked in after help from my union. Where do you get a job like that now? I want my tax to be spent on helping people live. Not just exist so others can maintain extreme wealth.
I do some admin for a food bank and even there, in that desperate situation people will decide who is deserving and who isn't. Ignoring those who've created the need for its existence.
It's mind blowing.

We have up-skilled too many jobs leaving some people in limbo.
In DHs company when he first started there used to be a tea lady who worked about 4 hours a day, pushing a trolley around selling tea and helping out at interviews, small events. When she retired they didn’t refill that job.
How many jobs like that have been lost. When I worked for the council when the cuts came it’s always the lowest paid jobs with short hours to go first.

@MayorDusty well said 👏👏👏

Some of these suggestions still wouldn't get this woman off benefits.

Pushing a tea trolley around 4 hours a day, dinner lady, couple of hours cleaning a day - none of these would provide a living wage.
what's needed is very well described by @Mumwantingtogetitright

It's actually really common and not at all unlikely. We don't all live in London!

Exactly. The woman would still need top up benefits. Like I said the saving to the government would be negligible but it would get one more person off the unemployment register which keeps the tabloids happy not to mention the hardworking tax payer 🙄

We are getting hack t the 18th century concept of the "deserving" and the "undeserving" poor or feckless.

The current policies in this regard start from the assumption that people claiming benefits are spongers and should be tested to the limit with job application criteria on pain of loss of benefits. This in spite of the fact that most of understand, and Job Centre staff know, that the long term unemployed are usually people who are disadvantaged in some way - age, intelligence, education, addiction etc. To treat them all as if they are spongers is deeply wrong.

I do not doubt that there are people milking the benefits system, but my experience with disabled and disadvantaged people is that many are not claiming their entitlements through ignorance or inability to complete the extraordinarily complex forms - a bit of a facer if you can't even read.

It wasn't that uncommon is poorer parts of the country, before benefits, for women to take up prostitution for extra cash while the kids were at school or in bed in the evenings.

Retail isn't that flexible in terms of wanting people to work at weekend or bank holiday working. Some childminders do not work weekends.
There is also the school holidays to consider too ( which are often overlooked, but it's a lot of weeks to find childcare )
Would she be eligible for any kind of disability benefits at all ? I'm not that up on benefits or anything I'm afraid, but it does sound as if she may have learning difficulties? I don't mean to offend anyone by the way.
I can sympathize with her predicament to be honest as it isn't as easy as some like to think it is especially if she hasn't any help at all and her partner has died. If she is struggling to clean her own place then cleaning may not be an option either. It's not easy.

"I do not doubt that there are people milking the benefits system, but my experience with disabled and disadvantaged people is that many are not claiming their entitlements through ignorance or inability to complete the extraordinarily complex forms - a bit of a facer if you can't even read." @Mischance - exactly.

The people I know who get full living allowance etc. were supported through the process by a relative who has a degree and worked at the council so knows the process.

On their own or just with their social worker, they wouldn't have been able to fill in the forms correctly, or with the right answers to unlock the money. I do not know if they are more or less deserving than those who aren't getting benefits because they have no support to apply for it.

DHs DB died in his 50s because of diabetes complications. He was a proud man but lost his job and we think there was undiagnosed LDs and potentially early onset dementia. He was preyed on by unscrupulous companies and loan sharks - it was disgusting really that it's allowed to happen- and had to scrape by on a tiny amount which we supplemented with online shops.

Ultimately who benefits from this charade of this poor woman trooping to the job centre every week. Perhaps they would be better making people attend adult literacy and numeracy classes as a condition of receiving benefits, that way increasing their actual employability when it is feasible to do so and making them more able to support DCs through school, and highlighting those with SN who are incapable of basic learning so are only made to apply for appropriate jobs that don't require skills they aren't capable of.

Good grief MN is patronising sometimes. People are absolutely blinkered about seeing anything outside of their own experiences.

The benefits system absolutely should take circumstances into account or the government should fund decent, council:run childcare in all areas.

She would get help towards childcare costs in her position. She should complete some free functional skills qualifications to improve her employability skills.

Not really. That poster had already been told that the lady wouldn't be suitable for a customer facing position.

There is no childcare available to her.

Childminders one mile away she could use during the school holidays, if there was the opportunity to study flexibly during school hours.

Has she ever worked? I worked as a completely single parent (dad not involved) but had a job beforehand so managed to keep it after maternity leave.

😂😂😂😂 good one