Can anyone help, where to complain about a Job Centre staff member?

cit_k

krisskross wrote: »

Why is it the Job Centre's responsibility to find the OP somewhere to wait whilst a decision was made? Was there no library in the town to wait in? Is it in the remit of the person sorting out the crisis loan application to decide on the OP's mental state? The OP does not say what the 'cutting personal remarks' were. Could have been perfectly acceptable remarks that the OP in a distressed state took exception to. Why offer up a document that you didn't want the advisor to read? If I am handed a document i assume i am meant to read it.

What does the OP expect from the complaint?

All of us who have worked in front line roles have had malicious complaints made by people who simply don't get their own way. I wouldn't work in a job centre for all the tea in China.

If the document was offered for ID purposes, as it appears to have been, the worker should not have read the full document, they should only read the details sufficient to prove the persons ID, ie name/address and type of document for notes purposes.

To sit and read the entire letter, offered for ID purposes, would be well out of order.

MCGONIS

dreamylittledream wrote: »

Your comments about social fund officers are equally hilarious for someone who claims that they work in a social security office (which as you well know have not existed for some years, there are jobcentreplus offices that are customer and non customer facing. None of them are called social security offices).

The Benefit's Agency offices / Employment Service Jobcentres have not existed for some years. The concept of providing welfare in the country is known as Social Security. They are Social Security offices.

katygeorge

yeah i got a crisis loan today and they only pay out the giros at 11.30 and 2.30

dreamylittledream

atomicsheep wrote: »

Being a DM myself I can see that the different call centres operate differently causing conflicts in the way crisis loans are dealt with.
Our centre would never book a 3rd application for a customer awaiting benefit whether in receipt of ctc / chb or not. The application would not be treated as spent and in this situation i would have taken the application over the phone.

When you guessed a 3rd of applications are taken in the JC via a 3rd application again i think this will vary across centres.

My stats personally show that I make about 14 decisions per day, on average i book 1 per day into the JC for a 3rd app (thats it!!). Purely because the JC never have any spare appoints available.

This makes the 17 mins near on impossible for us most of the time.

Also (and this is just probably me) the inappropriate calls make up just 2-3 calls per day for me.

The original post then......heh............. Best practice is to put in writing to your JCP manager who can then feedback to the relevent office/officer.

I'll mitigate my earlier comment - I'd say a third of applications probably should be face to face but there certainly are not available appointments for this at the jobcentres - nature of an ill thought out change in process really.

As to whether its an aligment or a spent - I'd say its contextual really - if someone received their CTC and CHB lets say the previous day and failed to spend any of this on food and fuel and claimed to be in crisis then to my mind that's really a spent application, although given the OP did say she had been 4 weeks between main benefit payments I agree it probably should have been a phone application.

The point I was making is its all to easy to blame contact centre staff going after the easy life with booking third apps or targets harming customer service - the reality is usually a fair bit more complex than that and certainly misbooked appointments do happen but they are not a huge problem.

The problem with arguing with the 17 minute average is that more sites are already achieving it or less and there have not been huge problems identified with call quality. Personally I'd agree its an arbitary and not neccesarily useful target but I'm not convinced that its unachievable.

starlite_2

Rose_tinted, did you register just to make that dig? bless.

thanks for the posts (most of them anyway)

I may as well tell you all the full background, maybe then you can help further.

What happened is, I left my violent partner in march, moved to yorkshire, so yes was claiming income support and child tax credits. Then my ex had the children for a eekend and dint return them .No court orders were in place so police/ social services could do nothing. My own stupid fault for trusting him and thinking it was unnecesary to go into court.

So now as the family court case drags on and on, the children remain with him 100 miles away and I have them alternate weekends and every friday afternoon.

The job centre staff member read a court order which was a private document and completely irrelevant to my application.

I think she assumed i must be a drug addict or something as her attitude was appalling.

She asked how I afford the petrol to visit them, and told me my benefits shouldn't be spent on it. I pointed out the people sitting waiting for a crisis loan giro who were drunk and discussing which pub to go to. What is more important !!!!!!?

In actual fact my family have been paying these costs whilst i await a decision on a community care grant.

I have had to leave my home, which ruins my chances in court, and all i anted was enough o put my meters on and buy food whilst my esa was being proccesed. I dont understand why i was turned down.


She made very nasty remarks regarding my children and said she had no sympathy as she would never be in the position of only having supervised contact with her children . (she misread the court order, it is not supervised at all they stay with me at my mothers as I am homeless)

dreamylittledream

MCGONIS wrote: »

I'm not in-post though. I am outside of my workplace, in my own home. I gave someone that wanted some advice, just that.

Then someone else came along, as happens frequently on these forums and wanted to pick my post to pieces and correct me. That particular post added no value [in my opinion] or advice to what the OP originally asked.

It's a discussion board - you made some points that were not directly answering the OP's quesiton that I disagreed with. I pointed this out in a civil fashion.

You then got very stuffy about this and started arguing semantics about what a 'social fund officer' is when there is no such job title anymore, job titles for SF vary but the generic term for any one connected with social fund would be social fund officer - crisis loan interviewing officers therefore are social fund officers - much in the same vein about your point about social security offices.

katygeorge

wow just read the whole post now, i found the lad on the phone very helpfull but he did keep saying 'do you want to tell me anything else?' about 7 times in the end i just asked him what did he actually want to know.

my trip to the job centre to get the giro was a total different experience (not the staff it was the other people).

as for the OP - sadly having to wait is just a fact of life, and reading the document - i would of, if somebody hands me something i read it, more out of habbit. she could well have thought it was relating to benefits so there for needed to read it. But whatever rude comments she made about yourself is not ok. they have posters all over the job centre saying 'were only here doing our job treat us with respect', well its the same for us were only there to get something done that needs to be done and should also be treated with respect, its not like we would willingly hang out in the job centre

starlite_2

Oh and the reason i had the document is, having my mothers as a temporary address the only letter I had was this from my solicitor with the court notes and order attached. I trusted that they would just use the front page.

dreamylittledream

starlite wrote: »

Rose_tinted, did you register just to make that dig? bless.

thanks for the posts (most of them anyway)

I may as well tell you all the full background, maybe then you can help further.

What happened is, I left my violent partner in march, moved to yorkshire, so yes was claiming income support and child tax credits. Then my ex had the children for a eekend and dint return them .No court orders were in place so police/ social services could do nothing. My own stupid fault for trusting him and thinking it was unnecesary to go into court.

So now as the family court case drags on and on, the children remain with him 100 miles away and I have them alternate weekends and every friday afternoon.

The job centre staff member read a court order which was a private document and completely irrelevant to my application.

I think she assumed i must be a drug addict or something as her attitude was appalling.

She asked how I afford the petrol to visit them, and told me my benefits shouldn't be spent on it. I pointed out the people sitting waiting for a crisis loan giro who were drunk and discussing which pub to go to. What is more important !!!!!!?

In actual fact my family have been paying these costs whilst i await a decision on a community care grant.

I have had to leave my home, which ruins my chances in court, and all i anted was enough o put my meters on and buy food whilst my esa was being proccesed. I dont understand why i was turned down.


She made very nasty remarks regarding my children and said she had no sympathy as she would never be in the position of only having supervised contact with her children . (she misread the court order, it is not supervised at all they stay with me at my mothers as I am homeless)

Hmmmm don't confuse the decision with the interview - they were not completed by the same person. If you disagree with the decision and remain in crisis you need to seek a review of this to try and obtain funds - you seem to be implying that you were not awarded a crisis loan? Did they not explain to you why you were turned down when they gave the decision? Thats grounds for complaint in itself.

The only reason that springs to mind is that if you have been without any funds for the last 4 weeks how have you been supporting yourself? Crisis loans are the lender of last resort - there must be no other way of preventing a risk to your health or safety. If family have been supporting you up to this point and are prepared to continue doing so then a crisis loan would be declined.

I'd agree that the comments that the interviewing officer made do not sound appropriate and as a seperate matter you should make a complaint to the manager of that jobcentre in question.

Oh and that does solve the question of whether you should have been dealt with on the phone or face to face. If you have no other income and have made a new claim to ESA then it should have been a telephone and not a face to face interview. The decision however, may have been the same depending on how you explained your circumstances.

EDIT: You are currently living at your mothers? That would probably be why the application was declined - unless your mother was going to allow you to starve or you were unable to stay there anymore then there would not be a serious risk to your health or safety so a crisis loan would be declined. Crisis loans are not a replacement for benefit - they are only paid if such a risk would occur if they were not paid.

MCGONIS

dreamylittledream wrote: »

It's a discussion board - you made some points that were not directly answering the OP's quesiton that I disagreed with. I pointed this out in a civil fashion.

You then got very stuffy about this and started arguing semantics about what a 'social fund officer' is when there is no such job title anymore, job titles for SF vary but the generic term for any one connected with social fund would be social fund officer - crisis loan interviewing officers therefore are social fund officers - much in the same vein about your point about social security offices.

Oooooof. I'll go back to your post last night. The OP wanted advice. I still feel I gave the OP that.

I don't want to hear back from you after this post as we are getting too personal now. Let's just agree to disagree?