Help me Please

aussiesbird

I agree that the decision making, higher up the staff ladder, is wrong and aimed at targets being met. I also agree that there are staff, as in any workplace, who are efficient and good at their job. And I believe that you, kelloggs are one of those, my comments were not a personal attack on you. Your knowledge on this forum has been invaluable and I am sure I speak for the majority when I say that it is much appreciated and you have helped us all out, in one way or another. However, IMO the CSA are renown for their incompetence and errors. In my case alone it took 3 years to come to the conclusion on a variation allowance which had a regulation stipulated that it could not be granted. My point is, this was written down in black and white for staff reference and the case was passed from pillar to post with promises of return calls and paperwork going missing, all of which was completely pointless as it clearly states in one of the regulations that the claim was not viable. This is incompetence, and costs the government money to put right. I will be claiming for costs and compensation for this and the arrears c**k up. This is just one case, you multiply that by the amount of backlogged cases alone and you have a lot of very angry members of the public, and rightly so too. The CSA is supposed to provide a public service, the public have a right to expect a certain amount of expertise and proficiency - the CSA are definately failing the public in this area. It is a very sensetive subject which is close to peoples hearts as a lot of us have suffered at the hands of the CSA. I believe that the changing of a name will not suffice in making the public trust the organisation and there will ALWAYS be this amount of uproar about it unless it is disembanded and the whole process reinvented on a much fairer scale.

kelloggs36

I too have been the victim of the incompetence of some staff, so I have every sympathy and I do understand that you are not aiming your attack on me!!!! I know just how frustrating it is to know what they should be doing, yet do not do! In the last year alone my case had had 4 caseworkers, all of whom are either off sick or are on holiday when I call, and as mine is a sensitive case, cannot be dealt with by anybody else. Even when I was in the office and handed my supposed case officer some vital info that info was not actioned until my other caseworker (who had been off sick for some time, so I was assigned a temporary caseworker who just sat on my case and did absolutely nothing except to promise me that he was!!!!!!) came back, which led to delays in getting my case back in Court - from the default date to the Court date - which incidcentaly was a Show Cause hearing - basically, ex already under a Court order which he breached, so to get him back in to Court after breaching the orignal order took 13 MONTHS! An absolute disgrace and it was blamed on staff shortages. Thanks Mr Prime Minister in Waiting for getting rid of all the staff.

Even in the beginning when I first put my application in, the delays were phenominal. Instead of following their own guidelines which state how long a person should be given before the next action could happen, they just extended the deadline even when it was clearly obvious that he wasn't going to comply. It happened time after time after time. I have had 3 lots of compensation and still they do the same.

There are lots of staff there who are really helpful and there are the useless ones - in every workplace though I do understand as in every case where I have had to make enquiries eg gas, electricity, TV, mobile phone etc EVERY one of them mess my case up, without fail.

What the CSA needs is for senior management to listen to those on the ground and to provide us with the tools with which to do our jobs. We need a computer system which delivers what it says on the tin - that would solve over half the problems (perhaps EDS would like to compensate everybody whose case has suffered at their sheer incompetence). The other half could be solved by a tougher line being taken by managers on staff who do not do what they are supposed to do (not discipline them for being off sick when they have evidence of their illness and have exceeded their sick time by a couple of days), instead of concentrating on pointless targets. THere needs to be fewer, purposeful targets to chase which will have an outcome for somebody.