To this is absolutely insane! Universal Credit Sanction

[ThisIsInsane]

Adult DD has had an absolute nightmare trying to get a job since she was fired just before Christmas,

She wasn’t happy in the role previous to that so applied for another, got it, gave her resignation. Three days into the new role, she was told, she wasn’t a good fit and immediately fired. She did absolutely nothing wrong btw.

This has massively affected her mental health. She’s never been fired before or been unemployed.

She has literally applied for over 1500 jobs since then, only got two interviews which she wasn’t successful at.

She missed a UC appointment in June. Not sure what exactly happened but she has evidence of her job search. At every appointment they tell her she’s applying for a lot of jobs and there’s noting they can do to help.

They have sanctioned her UC so she has only got £7!

According to the letter she has been sanctioned for 30 days for a first offence of missing one appointment after 6 months in which they have not helped her find a job!

She has an appointment later today and I’m planning to go with her to complain as she isn’t in the right head space to. I just think it’s totally disgusting! She lives at home luckily but can’t pay her phone bill even!

Imagine if she was living on her own and had no support!

AIBU to think this is extreme and unjustifiable punishment?

She worked in a corporate role but doesn’t understand you aren’t going to get a similar job from Indeed? Thats your problem to start:

You can easily do it on indeed. You save your cv and then just click quickly on loads of jobs

I'm not being nasty - I'm making a statement of fact which is that you clearly know nothing about employment law and even though I have been politely correcting you on the law for a while now, you keep arguing with me, so I've run out of patience with you.

As i already said if you bothered to read the thread, i know of an employer that was sued for something similiar, and the employee won.

So you dont know more than everyone else.

Miss high and mighty that you are.

You’re not wrong in that it’s a bloody hard time for youngsters. In that golden 30 years of the post war period when Britain was so much poorer than today and all the boomers had their hard luck stories made, benefits were given out at need, no questions asked and no sanctions, with council housing available. Britain is a bloody shit country now, absolutely shit to its people. However that will not help you right now - follow the legal advice and get your dd to apologie and follow all procedures correctly from now on.

I was an HR professional for one of the oil majors for a number of years and then volunteered as an adviser for Citizens Advice for 10 years. I don't know more than everyone else, but I absolutely know more than you.
Anyone can say "I know of an employer ..." - that's about as reliable as you claiming an Irish woman sued for unfair dismissal when she actually sued for breach of contract which is wrongful dismissal, so just give me the name of the case (employee? v employer?) and I'll read the judgment for myself.

@Flumpflimpo do you have a link to back up that example you kept mentioning? “I’ve heard of” isn’t proof of anything.

I agree. Applying for jobs has changed. You see a job, click, and send your cv. Covering letters are rarely needed either.

op - is your daughter’s cv a modern cv, with strengths, experiences etc, rather than a list previous employment, which was the cv of the past?

I spent some time job hunting a few years ago, but I didn't spend my days in bed while I was waiting to be granted an interview. I signed on with a temp agency and did all sorts of work while I was job seeking. That's the sort of thing that people who are serious about finding a job do.

Not in my recent experience of job hunting and then helping with a recruitment procedure. I'd say 50% of applications were CV plus either a covering letter or personal statement that needed to be tailored to the job specification (ones that aren't are sifted out straight away without even looking at CV). Other half were long application forms - also including personal statements.

The job market has got much more competitive so it's better to apply for less jobs but more carefully.

I think this very much depends on the type of job you are applying to.
I have never applied for a job by just clicking and sending my generic CV.
All require a covering letter and all require me to tailor my cv for the job I am applying for.
I cannot imagine applying for a job w/o telling the prospective employer about my previous employment. Surely previous employment is your experience.

Not going to a UC appointment because someone touched your bum on the tube but you didn’t see who it was?

The cvs do contain work experience, but rather than just listing them, they have alot more detail.

Old:
1980 - 1983 - Grange Hill bank - manager
1983 - 1985 - Walford bank - senior manager

The experience would be in the covering letter.

New
1980 - 1983 -Grange Hill bank - manager

• responsible for running and managing the bank
• recruitment and training of new employees
• developed links with local schools
• increased turnover by 35%
• won 1981 regional manager of the year

1983 -1985 Walford bank manager - senior manager

• youngest senior bank manager in company
• etc

My dp is currently looking for work, and with indeed and LinkedIn, you do just submit your cv by clicking the link. It’s too easy, and hence vacancies are getting 50- 100 applicants with 48 hours of jobs going live. We’re talking about more senior positions as well, not your minimum wage jobs.

I think the general consensus is that indeed is a very weak way of applying for work. My new term is good for jobs in schools, nhs jobs for nhs, charity job, guardian jobs, TES, LinkedIn, government find a job, directly with companies, local agencies and your local council are all good options. Indeed is just chucking cvs at the wall and seeing what sticks.

look at the big local employers, go and apply for every job at Tesco, Aldi, McDonald’s etc just to get back into work and keep looking for temp or perm work in the right sector. Delivering groceries or picking groceries always looks like a reasonable job and often advertised locally.

I did read it all. No, I don't think we should never leave the house. I go out and about as much as possible. It's clear you've never experienced the terror of thinking you might not get to the toilet on time, of having a disaster outside the toilets with teenage girls giggling, of then leaving a trail of excrement on your way into the toilet, of causing the closure of the toilets for cleaning, and of being in the toilet, listening to people outside the door calling you 'disgusting.' Very difficult to concentrate on a job with all that hanging over you. I applaud those who work, and thank my lucky stars I'm financially OK. Yes, I'm aware it has nothing to do with OP post, but you're talking about it, so why not me?

Yes. That’s what she was supposed to do. And start looking for a new job whilst remaining employed.

Or put up with not having a job and being on UC whilst searching for jobs.

YANBU at all OP. I hate sanctions with a passion and deal with people sanctioned for the most stupid of reasons.
There’s some great people working for the DWP who do lots to support people and then there are others who I despair of.

Tbey are supposed to try and contact people and make sure that sanctioning won’t push them into extreme hardship, my experience is that this does not happen enough. Which is why people end up unaliving themselves at times.

it’s heartless, it’s cruel and needs to stop.

Awe, you poor wee sausage. Who hurt you?

Temping agencies can be good but you still have to get lucky. I temped for an agency for a year while I searched for work. Very convenient because, unlike with a permanent job, you can easily get away to attend interviews. I was their 'star' temp (I wasn't any better than others but the agency thought I was, and that's what matters). Hence they kept me in work most of the time for an entire year except for when on holiday. Finally got a proper job, but when, 18 months later, redundancy struck, that agency had closed down. I signed up with others, but never got a toe in the door and so only got isolated single days. Long term unemployment again and then a new agency got me work for a year in the same place. Temping agencies can work but sometimes you have to play the long game.

Even the government recognise this. Weekly or greater incidence of faecal incontinence is one of the things that leads to a claimant to be deemed to have "limited capability for work or work-related activity", and rightly so imo.

Yes. Which is why the poster who kept saying that UC would force a disabled person to evacuate their bowels on the job centre chair was told she was wrong over and over but she kept going on about it.

UC do not treat everyone the same. They won’t force someone with a disability into the job centre; alternatives will be made if they are deemed to have a work requirement or to need to attend meetings.

Maybe the Poster you're insulting is just getting a little bit peed off with people not being able to get out and do a bloody job due to anxiety, depression, PTSD or whatever other condition is flavour of the month!
OP daughter and the other poster who can't leave their houses need a bloody good shake and get a job!

Lazy louts who expect to be able to lie in bed all day while I work to pay for them.

I don't have a low opinion of people who claim benefits, @PandoraSocks. I have a low opinion of people who claim benefits, lie around in bed and don't meet their obligations to get their free money.

I've worked with clients with mental health issues for almost 2 decades. I've seen first hand how utterly life destroying severe anxiety, depression and PTSD can be. Your glib attitude is ill-informed and frankly insulting.

Anxiety is an awful lot more than just being a bit worried or uneasy: it can be utterly paralysing, render people unable to speak coherently etc. Similarly, clinical depression is not just being fed up. It can rob people of the ability to motivate themselves to do the most basic things, like eat, bath or shower and dress themselves. I've supported clients who are so shut down by their depression that they can barely speak.

And as for PTSD, the sheer terror sufferers experience when something triggers a PTSD flashback can be impossible to overcome. One of my clients now has a physical disability after being hit by a car when their PTSD was triggered by the loud bang and crash of something being unloaded by a lorry and they bolted across the road, another is so terrified of encountering dogs that they are scared to leave the house.

All my clients would love to be free of their mental health conditions and able to live a normal life, but they can't. MH services are shockingly under-resourced, many go months without seeing a psychiatrist, the waiting list for things like EMDR therapy are endless and for many conditions there is no meaningful treatment.

My DB is bipolar. The only medication that controls it effectively is a 4-weekly depot injection (aripiprazole) that renders him zombie-like for 7-10 days after he's had it and starts to wear off about 10 days later so that he gradually becomes more manic and delusional. What employer would keep someone in a job who's only capable of working for a week or two out of four?

The ignorance and prejudice some people on here display about mental illness is so appalling that I come close to hoping that they'll experience it for themselves sometimes.