JSA Hardship payments

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  • bullbar wrote: »
    No not the JC+ but I did spend most of my career with HMRC.


    And as for the JC staff being called scum - that is mild compared to what I have been called especially in the evening whilst out for the evening with my wife and I came across someone that I had nailed a few week earlier!!





    Cant you just tell!
  • nicole2216
    nicole2216 Posts: 37
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    edited 19 March 2012 at 4:03AM
    I feel I need to post my opinion. I lost my job at the end of november 2011 and made a claim for JSA. I was initially advised that there would be an enquiry into my job loss and that I may not get JSA. I had initial full JSA payments whilst enquires were carried out, and my claim was authourised. For the first 2/3 times my payment was late, apprently due to a mishap at the main office, not my JC. My original advisor was very helpful and polite and searched on her database for relevant jobs, gave me the details and I applied for the jobs, to no avail I might add. In February I was advised that as I have been signing on for 3 months I would no longer be seen by my usual advisor but moved to another department (other side of the office) for a more intense job search each fortnight that would take approx 20mins a time. I was quite looking forward to the help in job searching. I am now 4 months into my claim and still I am attending the same desk as before, the advisor, who is always a different person, none of them friendly or helpful, there are no intensive job searches, my job search form is just signed off, they dont even bother to read what I have been doing to look for a job. I feel they are just not bothered weather im job seeking or not, and it does worry me that one day I will encounter an advisor who decides I am not doing enough to look for a job. Both my partner and myself are unemployed, but as I am the one claiming they can only 'help' me with looking for work. I have claimed before and been sent on the New Deal 25+ scheme where I had to attend a 5 day a week course for 6 weeks to 'help' me look for work. They helped me with a CV. most of the people there didnt bother to do anything, its very disheartening. I was made to take a job at 'Pret a Manger' in the city of london, I live in the most northerly borough of london. In the 13 weeks I was there I see numerous new employees come and go. At the begining of week 13 I was dismissed due to absenses, I was off for 2 weeks due to eye infection, beleived to be caused by a foreign body from the kitchen ie cheese or something of that ilk. I then had to make a fresh claim at the JC and with housing benefit, which took so long to process, that my rent account went into arrears and I was taken to court for non payment of rent and reposession. The court ordered I pay a nominated amount ontop of my rent to clear the arrears. An amount that I increased as soon as I was back in employment. I was informed by a court employee that many of the repossion cases were due to housing benefit faults.
    I beleive that it is very hard and demening for people to keep a positive outlook when they have to attend the JC and some of the comments written on here are very nasty. It would be interesting to know the percentage of forum users here who have actually had experiance with being unemployed for some amount of time. My heart goes out to those of you who have had bad expeiences in these places, and the reaction of some of the forum memebrs is disgusting. If you have spent most of your career with HMRC, and I presume (apologise if I am wrong) are now retired what right do you or any other permently employed person have to dictate how us unemployed people should behave. I am a hard working person, have bought up my children to beleive that you have to work for what you want in life, nothing is given to you on a plate blah blah blah just like I was bought up to beleive by my hard working parents. so please if you have not been in the position of being unemployed DO NOT presume to know how it feels. I will add that before I lost my job in November I was working for 5years. The only time I 'took off working' was to give birth to my children who were all premature, so I worked right up to a couple of days before they were born (I have 3)and when they were 18months I went back to the workforce and my husband took over the childcare. Whilst I was bringing up the children he worked. Neither of us are spongers, I have always paid my taxes, never worked cash in hand, which a lot of 'door knockers' used to do.
    Good luck to all you job seekers out there, I know how hard it is to 'survive' on benefits.
    Rant over and apologise for the long post, i guess I had more to say than I realised.
  • soundlab_2
    soundlab_2 Posts: 27
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    edited 19 March 2012 at 4:00PM
    bullbar wrote: »
    As you say - it is the bare minimum - they expect (although it may not be written down) you to do a damn site more!
    In fact it is doubtful if you would ever find a job doing 'the bare minimum' of effort!

    Maybe you have the problem, not them!

    Of course its the bare minimum , but as both the person and the job centre agree on it then to stop his money for doing what is agreed upon is harsh, If they up the minimum then they should tell him, make a new job seekers agreement or give him a letter explaining that the minimum has been upped and make sure he signs that he has received the letter and agrees to it

    And is that bit at the end of my quote aimed at me? if so then wow, iam 1 of the most polite, kind and friendly person you could ever wish to meet, it takes a lot to rile me up :) Theres no reason to be talked to like i was talked to, theres no reason at the end of my meeting with my adviser for her to turn around and comment on my clothes "make sure next time you come into to see me you make a bit of effort with yourself and put on some nice clothes" I mean yeah thats fine of my adviser to say that to me isnt it? ( FYI, Was i dressed like a chav/tramp? no i wasnt, boots, jeans, coat and jumper, all clean all ironed)
  • lazyman72
    lazyman72 Posts: 43 Forumite
    hows it a mistake fgs, he should know when his own damn job centre is open *roll eyes*

    big deal? well no it wasnt but it could have been if it werent for me, thanks to that idiot and his 'mistake'

    oh and ive just remembered another 'mistake' that almost cost us money, some idiot had put on my OHs file that that he (my OH) had called in and told them he wasnt going to be turning up for his appointment, apparently my OH had phoned the previous week and told them that :rotfl:

    oh and there have been a fare few 'mistakes' which has led to us being paid late (sometimes upto a week late)

    i think they should all be retrained, seems to be far too many 'mistakes' going on in the JC+

    There is one way you can avoid putting up with their mistakes ................... GET A JOB, ANY JOB and you wont have to deal with them again.
  • sofaman
    sofaman Posts: 104
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    lazyman72 wrote: »
    There is one way you can avoid putting up with their mistakes ................... GET A JOB, ANY JOB and you wont have to deal with them again.

    I'd like to award lazyman the 'Stating the obvious award' 2012, well done! :T

    Anyway, to all the deniers out there who think job centre staff don't have targets when sanctioning claimants.
  • RAS
    RAS Posts: 32,550
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    sofaman wrote: »
    I'd like to award lazyman the 'Stating the obvious award' 2012, well done! :T

    Anyway, to all the deniers out there who think job centre staff don't have targets when sanctioning claimants.

    thanks I was looking for that.
    The person who has not made a mistake, has made nothing
  • Mara69
    Mara69 Posts: 1,409 Forumite
    nocareer wrote: »
    Jobcentre Staff are scum, of that I have no doubts.
    nocareer wrote: »
    As for being overworked and underpaid, you civil servants don't know what hard work is. Pushing a pen all day and sitting on your !!!!, a monkey could do it, and would probably do a better job. :mad:

    User name is very apt and with an attitude like yours I have no doubt you'll be seeing a lot of your local job centre :rotfl:
  • Personally looking at the comments about JC+ its mainly the staff and centre thats the issue.

    I've had very bad experiences with my recent advisers and i lost my money for a fortnight and wasnt told about hardship payments so basically had zero money to live on.

    My recent advisor hadn't told me the job search requirements had changed from 6 a fortnight to 18 also in the past 4 times i've been to sign, i've not been given my new job search sheet 3 times now. To an adviser its a simple mistake but if it was someone signing on, we'd lose our money for it. the system is very one sided and you are made to feel beneath everyone else.

    Where i live is a reasonable sized town, but with limited travel options (public transport) and limited skillset (retail) there are only so many shops you can keep going into. those 18 things a fortnight are probably the entire stores in our town centre. Its easy for an adviser to keep forcing you to go in but i've actually been asked to stop leaving CVs in one or two stores because i've taken my CV in so many times and other stores now simply refuse to accept my CV or fob me off to apply online.
    In a large city with lots of options doing 9 things a week to find a job is easy. in the town i'm in you get known very quickly and you just become a harassment and puts employers off more than anything. I was also told that being unemployed for so long (just over a year) i need to start applying for jobs outside my skillset, yeah thats very logical i had two interviews last week for jobs i applied for and didn't get them, why? cos i wasn't effin qualified that's why lol

    I'm just being reffered to the work program which i highly disagree with. the scheme is doing more damage to finding a job than it helps as stores arn't obliged to keep you on after your two weeks trial and can even reapply immediatly after, stores are getting free workers. it crippled the christmas temp vacancies here last year and is set to do same again, why would a store pay me £6.50 an hour when they can get me for free, doesn't just have to be for 2 weeks either i could go for the whole christmas period and receive nothing but my £65 a week jsa for 45hours a week which personally is disgraceful and is just a form of legal slave labour.
  • sniggings
    sniggings Posts: 5,281
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    Orville wrote: »
    I think HB does get stopped initially. They think your now employed. If you notify them though that you are still unemployed they re-instate it.

    At least that is my understanding.

    Correct, you have to show no savings in bank accounts etc and no income from elsewhere.

    My ESA has been stopped but after a few weeks my housing benefit has started again.
  • Ambiss
    Ambiss Posts: 44 Forumite
    edited 28 August 2012 at 3:00AM
    I would have thought you could appeal this decision and almost definatly get a backpayment,- provided you can prove that you met the steps that were agreed (and you signed on) and the information on your form was correct and genuine

    I know that doesnt provide any money to live from in the meantime though :(
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