To be worried about someone I don't even know

[Edlyu]

I take calls from people who claim benefits and help them navigate their way around benefits & understand the rules for claiming etc.

I dont process any benefits so can only signpost them to where their problem lies . Mostly my help is all that's needed but sometimes its beyond anything I can effectively do. Most days I have crying people trying to hold it together to describe their awful circumstances and often have to tell them that sadly there is nothing I can do and that there will be no money forthcoming for some time due to the processing of information etc. It makes me so annoyed that people with no experience of being on benefits blithely uphold what the government is doing based solely on whatever the daily mail chooses to portray.

But I do my job well and help where i can . I try to keep one step apart from the callers as I just cant take on so much sadness on top of my own day to day worries.

But.

I took a call yesterday that I cant get out of my mind. Its was from a man in his 50's who lived alone and had had his benefits stopped for not doing enough to seek work. He said it was a mistake on the part of the work trial provider who didnt give the information to him in a way the jobcentre could access. He spends his week looking for work in a supervised situation so this should all be documented by them.This is what they are paid to do.

For this offence he had a sanction placed on his benefit. This means he gets no money at all for the period of the sanction. In this case it is 4 weeks . That is NO money at all. So no food or any way of paying for heat. He is not allowed to get a crisis loan and has been refused a hardship payment. His housing benefit has stopped and he has no family in the area.

I tried to signpost him to foodbanks and the salvation army but he said he would rather die than be reduced to this. I offered to find contact details of his MP so he can try to get some help from him but he said he couldnt access a computer to do this .

This is a far as I could go on the phone but his beaten voice just haunts me . He wasnt crying -just downtrodden and without hope that he would have food or heat any time in the near future. He lives in a relatively affluent area near the south coast and I am so troubled that behind a clean and presentable front door someone is slowly starving and is very cold tonight .

I think you have been fed a line OP. The only reason hardship would be denied is if the chap could not show he was in hardship. Not too difficult. He simply had to write down on a form he had no food, heating, etc.
There are no targets for sanctions any more.
As long as the chap showed at least 2 jobs he has applied for in each benefit week, he would not have been sanctioned. Telling us verbally is fine, does not have to be written down. In fact, we do the referral while they are there so the customer can answer the questions themselves.
IS is not sanctioned. Only a deduction if customers don't come in for an interview. If they can't make it, phone up and we will rearrange to suit.
We would never impose a sanction if someone is in hospital, IF we know about it. And even if we didn't, we would lift it once we did know about it.

2rebecca
Your comments that it 'sounds odd' and 'hard to know whether or not the bloke is stretching the truth' show you doubt the veracity of his account and yet on this very thread there are people writing of similar situations.

Your suggestion that he brought this situation on himself strengthens the notion that sanctioned claimants are simply feckless or irresponsible. The truth is that when you're in a vulnerable state and dealing with a set of complex rules that you may not fully understand, it is easy to unwittingly break those rules.

If someone says they'd rather die than use foodbanks or the salvation army I'd think them a bit melodramatic.

Perhaps you've never known anyone in this situation. I have, and for her this was the straw that broke the camel's back. Anyone with a shred of compassion might see that for the man concerned this was probably the final indignity in a long series of awful events.

I'm not the only one expressing these views. Sorry if someone expressing a different view to you upset you so much.

Slurping makes good points but Edlyu is right to correct her on the entitlement to any Crisis loans during a sanction period. It is rather a moot point anyway with Crisis Loans being abolished at the end of March.

For me its not about wether it is true or not it as about the possible consequences of over stepping a boundary. The OP has fulfilled her duty to this man, if she where to get involved beyond that in the way some people albeit with the best intentions this WILL have consequences on her self and this man. And these may be catastrophic especially for him.

KatieScarlett you obviously know your stuff and I would guess that you are a PA. I think that when you have being doing the job for a while and re-adjusted to the constant changes and endless paperwork you just get used to how it is and expect customers / claimants to be able to do the same and follow the rules.

Some do try it on but a fair minority are incapable of managing their own affairs and following or even knowing what the rules are. They are the ones that get caught in a trap and can't make their way out of it. People are getting thrown off ESA and being forced to claim JSA and many are struggling to even be able to do this.

I agree that despite this most people somehow manage but I do think that we are not too far away from some sort of tipping point as a perfect storm is building this April with all the changes coming into effect and the rollout of UC later on this year.

I see people in these and worst situations almost daily and you just can't rescue every one, what you can do is go so far in your duty to empower and provide people with the means to help the selfs.

Katie Many of us have helped and are helping people who have been sanctioned without good cause.

As for being too proud to go to a food bank, well, sometimes it's too scared. I know my dh couldn't do it if he were alone. I know of someone with mental health problems (paranoid schizophrenia) who had her dla removed and was put on jsa recently. It took her her csn going into the centre and administering her injection in there to get things reinstated as they were. She's still waiting for dla to be reinstated, but at least she doesn't have to turn up and jobhunt etc every week. Another friend with AS and PTSD was also put on jsa. She has had to appeal and won her appeal three times since last july. Not just for dla but also so she doesn't keep getting put into wrag or jsa. This week the office in liverpool told her she shouldn't be in wrag because she has a degree so should be on jsa. She was then sanctioned for 'having a tantrum' in the centre. FFS you couldn't make it up.

I deal with the situations described on this thread every day. It's heartbreaking how vulnerable some customers are but we do our very best to help. However we don't get to decide policy, we can only work within the legislation.
I care very much about the people I am responsible for helping, but it is incredibly difficult, not to say dangerous and stressful to do our job.I very much resent the idea that somehow we enjoy depriving people of money. We don't.

Thing is Katie not everyone is like you, that occurs across all walks of life, some people enjoying wielding power over others, and will take every opportunity to do so, even if it's in a tiny stinky dole office somewhere off the beaten track. I don't think that most people working for the dwp enjoy the harder side of the job, I've had friends work there. I do think there are one or two bods who relish the thought of lording it over people with mental health problems or learning difficulties. I also think that there are some who don't understand mental health problems or learning difficulties and will do the minimum amount possible to get them out of their hair. There are teachers, sales people, doctors like this.

I don't recognise any of my colleagues as fitting that description. However I can only speak of my 27 years in the department, I'm sure there are bad uns, however they should be dealt with by their manager as half our appraisals are based on how we conduct ourselves.
I just feel its open season on here for JCP staff and it hurts to hear atrocities being attributed to us when usually we have had sod all to do with the awful decisions and are the ones left to pick up the pieces.

Oh, op that sounds so sad.
You sound like a lovely person thinking about those in need.
We have had the same done to us, unsure on whether it is a sanction or a suspension yet as the decision hasn't been made
We are lucky as we have other benefits coming in, as we have children, but to think someone, especially elderly is put in this awful situation, saddens & shocks me.

We have gone overdrawn by £200 to cover the mistakes one horrible jobcentre man made and how on earth we'll ever catch up is beyond me. The bills ate the housing benefit and we have had to borrow money from the bank to pay the rent.

We know absolutely nothing about what's going on, apart from dh needs to sign on as usual for the interim.
They suspended our payments without warning, help or guidance.
The telephone personal at the jobcentre are saying a decision hasn't yet been reached and it's now two weeks later. The person on the line also said the man that took the decision to stop our jsa, was supposed to have consulted us about hardship loans, he never did

This has all happened because one man was having a bad day, and chose to pick on my dh, who has only been claiming for 4m and in that time has also had a seasonal job. He looks for work tirelessy, even though there isn't much going. Most weeks there are only 3 jobs he can apply for, and the rest of his form is filled with 'nothing available'.
Jobcentre man wasn't happy with his form, he didn't even bother to photocopy it or take it, yet he has the power to stop our payments with NO evidence!!!
His advisor is very pleased with him and knows my dh wants and needs a job, but of course the man that signed him on thought differently

So we may not be able to pay our gas and electricity now, and even if we do it will cause debt problems.
Problems we don't want, we are rid of debts and are now back on that road again. I also found i was pregnant last week by mistake on the pill, sadly i have miscarried . I think the man at the jobcentre has contributed to it in some ways as iv'e been crying non stop and not sleeping worrying about bills. It's a very sad and worrying time for me and this new government has me worrying even more

It's even worse that a 50yo man can be treated with such caliousness.
A man that has probably worked all his life and paid all his taxes to get treated like scum and given no money for heating or food. It's disgraceful in this day & age a person can be let down so badly by a system that is there supposedly to help!
I'm not suprised you are worried, anyone with a heart would be. Maybe you could find him some help, some way x

Katie it hurts to hear atrocities being attributed to us

I can understand your defensiveness; I'm sure you come across all sorts in your work and believe you when you describe it as stressful and dangerous. However, I don't think anyone on this thread (or others I've read about benefits) attribute 'atrocities' to the front line staff in Job Centres etc. I think people are quite aware that it's government policies etc. that are to blame.

I agree that some people need so much help and support that it's hard to know where to start with them. We are living in a target driven world and that includes the amount of time you can spend dealing with people. Take too long and your own efficiency is on the line with all that that entails including sackings.

Much of these targets are driven by the general opinions that civil servants are lazy, tea-drinking parasites with gold plated pensions who are just there to make life difficult. I can't speak for all but as far as I can tell most people are desperate to help people as far as they can and get just as frustrated as everyone else with inflexible rules and regulations.

If you elect a government that demonises people on benefits and gets the DM to drip venom continuously about scroungers and benefit fraud you will get to the point where the public will support all this 'reform' without ever knowing the actual consequences of it.

Katie
Nobody is blaming you or 99% of dwp frontline staff. As I said, there are people in all walks of life who are happy to make the lives of others that little bit more difficult. Unfortunately, the government is handing it to these people on a plate.

I wouldn't say all the frontline staff of the jobcentre are bad. But like in all walks of life there will always be someone to make things difficult as that is what a jobsworth does.
You are a nice person op, if only all the staff were like this and had compassion and empathy for their fellow humans, as it doesn't take einstine to realise the difference between a true grafter and a person that works the system on their arse.
Power to you op

Not saying you should get involved though, as it could cost you your job.
I would do what i could to help using the right roots, but failing that i think you should take step back.

I have thought about your thread a lot overnight. I also have to say with a heavy heart that I think you should not get too personally involved. He may not have facilities to cook if you send him food and your donation could be wasted. You may lose your job and your ability to further help others. By all means send him a list of agencies and food banks. Make a donation yourself to your local food bank. Some peoples problems are so complex that caring alone will not solve them, even if you are family. And believe me I've been down that road.