Desperate jobseeker sets himself alight outside Selly Oak Job Centre.

[carernotasaint]

www.birminghammail.net/news/top-stories/2012/06/29/desperate-jobseeker-sets-himself-alight-outside-selly-oak-jobcentre-97319-31284847/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter#.T-2V_LFgo31.twitter

I've been saying on here for over a year that the moderately ill are the group where the suicides will be. They need less help, but they don't need help less.

and frighening for those involved.
The system will root out the some that shouldnt be getting the money,but catch others that are entitled and need it.

i know someone who tells me that he should end his life.

he's been on jsa for 6 months, after having been unemployed and not claiming benefit for about 3 years (he had worked on and off - 2 days a week maximum for about 7 years before he claimed), because he was using his savings.
He has tried really hard to get a job - he's been applying 5 or 6 a week, not just in his field (which is nigh-on-impossible to get work in these days), but in all sorts of manual labour jobs, bus driving, supermarkets etc, and got nowhere (he sounds a bit posh, so the supermarkets are refusing him because he looks like he can do better)
he owns his home, but he's started to talk about releasing capital on it - which means he's totally putting himself at risk of losing his house completely (he can't even sell and downsize, because it's the smallest house you'd ever see!)

The concerns of driving the vulnerable towards being the suicidal have been voiced since at least 2008 (when ESA was first rolled out). Indeed the worries the seem similar to the worries now: example.

No Government seems to have been capable of creating a satisfactory system.

Are their models from other countries that should be championed as a solution here too?

I have a friend who works in a court where benefit appeals are heard - he said they are flooded with them now and nearly all the decisions are being overturned by the court as being clearly wrong. He said it is appalling how many they are seeing now where people are clearly eligible for the benefit.

How it works though is knowing only 50% of claimants max will take it that far - a lot will not appeal at all. So immediately made a huge money saving.

Job centres genarally treat people like shit. The staff seem pathologically unable to apply any common sense.
My DH lost his job a few years back, after working all his adult life. He had to claim jobseekers allowance- we wouldn't have survived without it. He was given a 'time' to sign on each week that clashed with the school run. If he didn't sign his money would be stopped. He tried explaining to the staff that he couldn't make that time, and was told that if he had commitments, then he couldn't be considered 'available for work' and would not be entitled to JSA at all. They absolutely refused to listen to the fact that we'd cancelled our childcare because he was unemployed and when he found a job we'd go back to our childminder.
3 months of begging favours from family members/other parents every week. Absolutely fucking ridiclous.

I AM one of those 'wrinkles' nthat is 'too disabled' for JSA, yet 'too able' for ESA. I have uncontrolled epilepsy. My Neurologist point blank refuses to sign me as fit for FT work, as the last job I had, I worked 22.5 hrs a week, and it STILL made my seizures worse. He doesn't think I should work AT ALL, and will not even under duress, sign me as fit for more than 16 hrs a week. If I press him as finances are intolerable.

The ONLY thing keeping me going was being with my Ex-P, who was working FT. Right now, I am 'protected' by being a Lone Parent with a DC under 5yo, as DS3 is 17mo. The DAY he turns 5yo, I will lose everything.

I can't get WTC (UC) after next year if I don't work 24 hrs a week (that's coming in for LP's next year), I can't claim JSA as I will be 'too disabled' to meet the 40 hrs criteria, and I will be 'too able' to claim ESA as I will be 'too able'.

What makes ATOS's decision even MORE derisible is the fact that until just under 2 years ago, I was on Incapacity benefit and getting severe disablement allowance, and was getting HR DLA. Now I get nothing...

Did the DWP cure my disability and forget to send ME the memo??

www.thisislocallondon.co.uk/news/londonnews/9215292.Dad_committed_suicide_after_housing_benefit_cut/?ref=twtrec

I work on an advice line for benefits and we have recently been 'trained' in dealing with suicide threats and how to take them seriously.Several times we(as an office) have had to summon the emergency services to people at the end of their tethers.

Its soul destroying as there is nothing the advice line can do to help - just state how a benefit appears on the screens at the time of the call.

Just recently we have had slow running systems so a person with no money has to wait for an average of 40 minutes to get through and then wait again for up to 10 minutes for the screens to work.Its an 0845 number so most calls will cost about £5 -£6 .

Its horrifying and so stressful talking to people who sound so beaten by the system.

I know its not your fault Bigword and i also know what you do must be stressful but that system is the height of cruelty.

I am £80 in debt this month. Because I have had to call Tax Credits to do my renewal - couldn't do paper as it changed from a joint claim to a single part way through the tax yr last yr, and I didn't have my Ex-P's P60. So HAD to do it on phone.

I ALSO had to phone CSA, as DD's payment hadn't arrived.

I ALSO had to phone back the jobcentre for a telephone review as I missed the call as I had the police round about my neighbour who turned off my water meter in the street and vandalised my electric meter leaving me with no power, with essential medical equipment for DS2 - his heap air filter and nebuliser. If I didn't phone then back, they would stop my IS.

£80 of bills I've not paid just to put credit on my phone. To make these essential calls.

I am so depressed right now.

And the worries about UC, which I have made sure I understand the true horror of for someone in my circumstances, are making me verge on suicidal, to the point that I went on anti-D's this week. For the first time in 13 years.

Oh, and the CSA? Phoned the national number, had to phone 5 different 0845 numbers before someone could tell me the number for Bolton as the case is clerical and everyone else's crappy computer thinks the case doesn't exist, and none of the first 3 numbers had the RIGHT number I needed. And as the payments have been fine for, well, a decade, I have list the number!

(turned out to be the Natwest/RBS thing, but I didn't know DD's Father's wife banked with RBS, not exactly the sort of thing you know about your Ex's new wife, who they bank with, is it?)

carernotasaint on this anonymous forum I can only agree with you. I do really try to help in the limited way I can, but the best I can do is make a phone call to another office. Its a crap system for helping people. Its not joined up and the system we use is possibly the worst available.

I hate that it costs people so much before they even get to speak to me and that I am unable to help in any real sense some of the most desperate people other than a vague promise of a callback some time in the near future - possibly.

And I hate that there is still a 'them and us' culture between jobcentres and other offices who deal with people on benefits so that often the poor sods are locked in a circus of 'not me' and have to make multiple calls before tracking down their measly payment.

Pah ! Im stopping now. Its stressful enough dealing with this 9-5 every day without going into more detail with a glass or several of wine inside me

At least there are still SOME people working for the DWP that have a heart, most of the ones I speak to A) talk to me like I'm something they have trodden in, B) repeat stock phrases from a crib sheet when faced with a situation like mine that their computer systems aren't clever enough to understand, C) hang up on you if you cry, D) threaten to stop your benefits if you cry, E) tell you that your 'issues' are not their problem, you still have to leave your 7yo that is on life support alone in hospital to go for a fucking work-focused interview that they won't let you rearrange, or F) expect you to make a 9.05 appointment a 45 minute bus journey away from your DC's school on a school day...

Or even G) expect you to cancel an appointment at Great Ormond st hospital (a mere 3 hours from your house by various means of public transport) that you have been waiting a year for and if you miss will not get put on the waiting list again, and you ALSO can't rearrange just to attend ANOTHER FUCKING WORK-FOCUSED INTERVIEW WHEN YOUR YOUNGEST DC IS ONLY 10MO AND YOU SHOULDN'T BE HAVING THEM TILL HE IS 1YO ANYWAY.

Raaaah! The rage!

Sorry. Feel better for getting some of that out of my system!

"But my computer says you can't BE a disabled Lone Parent with a disabled DC"

"No, I am not a disabled Lone Parent with a disabled DC, I am a disabled Lone Parent with two disabled DC"

"But the computer says that isn't a scenario I am able to input"

"Eh? You tell me that if I wrongly fill in the form or knowingly withhold information that I know to be true, then I will have my benefits stopped and may be prosecuted. Therefore, you need to input the full information on your system so that my benefits don't get stopped and I don't get prosecuted for withholding information."

"But the computer won't let me"

"HEADDESK"

JESUS CHRIST. Im sorry you are having such a hard time Couthy. That is bloody ludicrous. xx

why the fuck are calls to the BA charged???
they should be freephone!

i do remember when i worked for the jobcentre (years ago now), we were always encouraged to call people back. but of course, they had to call us first.,