Universal Credit, Frequency of Appointments

SEEKINGINFO

I've been on Universal Credit since December 2018 and during that time I've had infrequent appointments with different members of female staff.

Like JSA where you had an appointment every two weeks is there supposed to be the same sort of appointment frequency ?.

I find the appointments to be a waste of time as what I say verbally I could simply put in a journal message and save the travelling time and cost involved.

The work coaches seem very non chalent when I state the above.

Regards.

calcotti

Appointments are at the discretion of the work coach.

huckster

Universal Credit is partly about trying to get people to take personal responsibility to improve their lifes. This means trying to find work or if working to find better paid work.

Give that the standard allowance rates are not really enough to support any decent standard of living, most people are going to want to find work.

Appointments are not very regular, possibly due to the amount of additional work required to handle new UC claimants. Work Coaches now have more work to do, as UC is a more complex benefit. A lot of this additional work is required at the start of a new claim. Once the claim is up and running, the Job Centre are mostly seeing those not working, just to check how their work search is going.

If you are wanting more appointments and help from your Work Coach, you can always make this request.

tomtom256

calcotti wrote: »

Appointments are at the discretion of the work coach.

Wrong it depends on what labour market regime you are in.

Intensive is weekly for 10 mins for first 13 weeks of claim, then either stay weekly for 10 mins a week or fortnightly for 20 mins. Which in essence is old style JSA rules.

Work Preparation is 3 monthly, also includes LCW.

Work Focused is 6 monthly.

All other regimes are as and when required as you do not need to schedule appointments for these.

calcotti

tomtom256 wrote: »

Wrong it depends on what labour market regime you are in.

Intensive is weekly for 10 mins for first 13 weeks of claim, then either stay weekly for 10 mins a week or fortnightly for 20 mins. Which in essence is old style JSA rules.

Work Preparation is 3 monthly, also includes LCW.

Work Focused is 6 monthly.

All other regimes are as and when required as you do not need to schedule appointments for these.

Apologies if I've got that wrong. Local UC rollout manager told us at outset that one of the intentions behind UC was to get away from rigidly prescribed meetings which DWP recognised as not very useful and to allow work coaches greater discretion than DWP staff had under JSA. (Quite a lot of things have turned out differently to what we were told!)

I can't find specified appointment requirements in the Advice to Decision Makers - do you have any links?

huckster

calcotti wrote: »

Apologies if I've got that wrong. Local UC rollout manager told us at outset that one of the intentions behind UC was to get away from rigidly prescribed meetings which DWP recognised as not very useful and to allow work coaches greater discretion than DWP staff had under JSA. (Quite a lot of things have turned out differently to what we were told!)

I can't find specified appointment requirements in the Advice to Decision Makers - do you have any links?

What the roll out manager told you is correct.

Reality may have bitten and it is now about what makes sense. If the claimant shows evidence of really trying to find work, with a CV prepared, job applications being made etc, then they might only be seen every 3 to 6 weeks*. If on the otherhand a claimant is poorly organised, no CV prepared, some evidence of work searches, but generally looking like they need more help, then they might have more regular appointments by phone or face to face.

What tomtom has posted is what was originally proposed in some arears as a guide to what might happen in a perfect world.

* Can also depend on such things as Youth Obligations which applies to 18-21 year olds.

calcotti

Thanks, huckster.

tomtom256

The rules are as stated, it's called SR15 or Weekly, fotnightly, mandatory appointments as they prefer to call it, which isn;t so catchy.

We are quality checked to ensure we are doing this and pulled up if we aren't.

Other JCP's may not be enforcing it as rigidly as they should, same as new style JSA falls under the same UC appointment rules, but again not all JCP's are complying nationally.

If I can find a link I will post it, but it's all internal DWP stuff so probably not on the net.

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/366996/response/904624/attach/5/2%20Conditionality%20and%20regime%20Overview.pdf.

This PDF is the best I can find regarding appointments.

calcotti

Unfortunately I can't get that link to work.

tomtom256

Updated directly to what do they know so should hopefully work now.

SR15 is the spending review 2015 which laid out the requirements based on what the goevnment was funding staff to do, but I can't find that exact part.

calcotti

Thanks tomtom. I note the only group with a specified frequency in this document is the intensive work search group. I also wonder whether the approach may have been changed over the last 4 years.