I'm sure many of the people who read this blog will have encountered the stories in the news about James Purnell's work for welfare plans. On the face of it, and to particular types of people (generally the ones who are well educated/spoken/connected/balanced/experienced/etc enough to have never had too much trouble getting a job) the plans seem quite reasonable - "severely disabled people" and single parents of babies under one will be supported, everyone else will have to work for their money. And let's face it, those are the people we want to help with our taxes. We've had quite enough of supporting entire workless families like the Malcolm family who fulfil every stereotype of a feckless wastrel benefit scrounger that you ever heard (seriously, whichever reporter dug that lot up deserves a bloody medal).
Why does it bother me anyway? I have a job. Well, it bothers me because I know how extremely lucky I am to have got into a position where I could look for work, let alone how fortunate I was to actually get a job. I know that all it takes is one factor to slip - Steve and I breaking up, a change in Access to Work criteria, the company I work for to collapse - and all of a sudden I will be back on the scrapheap, and in a jobs market which is terrifying compared to what it was a year ago. It also bothers me because I know too many people who are in similar positions to the one I was in before I moved in with Steve, who would like to be working and earning their own money but simply aren't in a position to manage it.
The first problem is this "severely disabled" idea. The criteria for this is incredibly stringent. The Benefits and Work website has a free Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) self-assessment test. I count as disabled, but not severely enough that my capacity for work-related activity would be considered "limited", which has surprised a couple of people who know me.
It's not just me though. Here's an example from the DWP's own guidance (pdf):
"Customer receiving DLA (middle rate care) and DLA(higher rate mobility). A person with severe rheumatoid arthritis affecting the hands and feet, limiting the ability to walk and needing some help to wash, dress, cut up food, and attend to toileting needs. The customer is living alone and nobody receives Carer’s Allowance for looking after him."
That is an example of someone who is NOT considered to have limited capability to undertake work-related activity.
They cannot walk, dress, wash, eat, or go to the loo unaided, but they are considered to be perfectly able to do full work-related activity. And they will face "sanctions" if they cannot manage it.
How on earth does that work?!?
The second problem is the idea of full-time work-related activity or community work. Regular readers will be aware that I recently had to bow out of a great interview for a job that I really wanted to do at a place where I really wanted to work, just because it was full time. I'd love to earn full-time wages but the unfortunate truth is that I cannot manage to do a full-time job AND keep on top of life's essentials such as showering and eating and so on - as we've covered before, I'm pretty stretched just working part-time.
These new plans, however, would have me "working" 9-5, and facing "sanctions" when I failed to manage it. Which brings us neatly on to the third issue, which is rates of pay.
Basic ESA is £60.50 per week, which is the same as Jobseeker's Allowance for a person over 25 years of age. Then there's £24 on top of it for participating in the Work-Related Activity. I understand this is the bit that gets withdrawn if you "refuse to co-operate" by, for example, being stubbornly too ill to leave the house on more than one morning.
I suspect there are very few people reading this who would consider working full time for £85 a week, but disabled people will have a choice between that and real heat-or-eat poverty. You see, there are two good reasons why Incapacity Benefit at the long-term rate is more than Jobseeker's Allowance. The first reason is that a disabled person generally has to cover more costs than an able-bodied person. DLA (supposedly) accounts for the additional personal-care-related and mobility-related costs, for instance Meals on Wheels and taxi fares, but there are also increases in general costs - things like having to do more laundry due to frequently spilling things, buying more trousers because they wear through at the knees as you crawl around your home, or having to have an internet connection because you do not have the capacity to get to and around the local shops nor the supermarket for your essential groceries. The second reason is that it generally takes longer for a disabled person to secure a job, during which time they will have more household expenses of the sort that the able-bodied person on short-term JSA could defer until they'd got a job. I'll explain. Even putting aside issues of access and discrimination at the interview stage... let's say that the odds of getting a job are one in a hundred, so if you apply for a hundred jobs you will get one of them. While an able-bodied person could, technically, apply for every job in the paper that they were qualified for and hit the hundred in a few weeks, a disabled person with the same level of qualifications will only be able to apply for the few jobs that also match their physical capabilities - it could take a year or more to find a hundred suitable jobs to apply for during which time the boiler will still need repairing and the wheelchair will need a service.
Even Reasonable Adjustments and Access to work can't make everything possible. A reminder of a post I made before I got my job:
"I still have certain limitations. The obvious physical symptoms of my illness rule out quite a lot of things, especially in terms of the usual easy-to-get minimum-wage flexible-hours jobs. I don't think I'm in any way 'above' cleaning toilets or serving fast-food or collecting trolleys from a supermarket carpark, but I would do such an ineffective job of those tasks that really, another person would have to be employed just to pick up my slack."
Which brings me to my final point. Even with the job that I do, which looked possible enough to make it worthwhile applying, it costs quite a bit of money to keep me in work. I need taxis to and from work. There are no other transport options available to me so the taxpayer contributes about £40 a week to my taxi fares (I pay the rest). I also have a special machine, a mechanical press, bought by the taxpayer as I cannot use the hand-press my co-worker uses. That was £500. Other people need different things - Lilwatchergirl needed a wheelchair, an office chair, an ergonomic keyboard and mouse, and a PDA; Lady Bracknell's Editor needed a laptop and "Secure Remote Access System" to enable her to work from home when necessary, plus however many man-hours were required to untangle the inevitable snarl-ups; various other people have required voice recognition software or Braille displays or even actual human assistants to help with certain parts of their work. That's before we even get started on the costs of things of uncertain merit like DEAs and Remploy. All things considered, I suspect there are more than a couple of us who cost more money "working" than they did claiming IB. How will the costs of enabling us to attend and accomplish "work-related activity" be met on top of paying full ESA?
I don't have all, or indeed any of the answers, but what I have heard so far about the reforms strikes me as badly-thought-out and more than a little scary.
Showing posts with label remploy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label remploy. Show all posts
Sunday, December 07, 2008
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Remploy and MPs
Finally, a response regarding the Remploy problems. My MP referred the matter to Anne McGuire, the erstwhile Minister for Disabled People. The response consists of a letter from Anne McGuire to my MP regarding the matter (dated approximately two weeks before she was replaced by Jonathan Shaw), and a covering letter from my MP, as it went via his office.
As you'll see from that article, whilst in office Ms McGuire was all about welfare-to-work. And my MP is James Plaskitt, the Benefit Fraud Minister. Surely if anyone should be up in arms about a company like Remploy skewing the stats for disabled people entering employment, it's these two.
Oh dear. While I like having faith in humanity, and believe that people as individuals are generally good, fair, and basically nice, I really must stop being so naive as to extend this to politicians.
According to my MP, "It appears that there has been a genuine and unfortunate error in the handling of your case, for which Remploy and the Government offer their sincere apologies."
Not fifty quid, then. Nor any thanks for my honesty in not taking the money and running, or for alerting them to the problems. And I wonder, Mr Plaskitt, if you uncovered a Benefit Fraudster on the claimant side rather than the government side, would you let them off with "apologies"?
No. Even if a benefit claimant made a "genuine and unfortunate error", they'd be hounded through the courts and at the very least, be required to pay back the funds which they had received on the basis of the erroneous information.
The letter from Ms McGuire was a little more illuminating. Sort of. I'm not going to reproduce any of it here as it's full of management gibberish and unashamed weasel-speak, but ten years as a fan of Dilbert has enabled me to boil it down and so I present the basic content in English.
1. Contacting me: Oops.
2. Only sending the signature pages: Oops.
3. Wrong dates: Oops.
4. Telephone call: Oops.
It seems Remploy contacted a whole list of clients to try and get them onto the Workstep programme. The list contained the details of 16 people, myself included, who should not have been on the list. No one noticed until I spoke up. The other 15 are being 'reviewed'.
For each point there's a lot of meaningless flannel about "ongoing continuous improvement programme" and references to undefined "additional measures" which will be put in place. Oops is about the size of it, though.
As for the '£50 for returning some forms' business: apparently £50 is considered a perfectly reasonable "incentive" for people to return information. Neither Remploy, nor the DWP, nor the wider government see anything dodgy about that at all. My apologies to Wat Tyler and Dr Crippen.
As you'll see from that article, whilst in office Ms McGuire was all about welfare-to-work. And my MP is James Plaskitt, the Benefit Fraud Minister. Surely if anyone should be up in arms about a company like Remploy skewing the stats for disabled people entering employment, it's these two.
Oh dear. While I like having faith in humanity, and believe that people as individuals are generally good, fair, and basically nice, I really must stop being so naive as to extend this to politicians.
According to my MP, "It appears that there has been a genuine and unfortunate error in the handling of your case, for which Remploy and the Government offer their sincere apologies."
Not fifty quid, then. Nor any thanks for my honesty in not taking the money and running, or for alerting them to the problems. And I wonder, Mr Plaskitt, if you uncovered a Benefit Fraudster on the claimant side rather than the government side, would you let them off with "apologies"?
No. Even if a benefit claimant made a "genuine and unfortunate error", they'd be hounded through the courts and at the very least, be required to pay back the funds which they had received on the basis of the erroneous information.
The letter from Ms McGuire was a little more illuminating. Sort of. I'm not going to reproduce any of it here as it's full of management gibberish and unashamed weasel-speak, but ten years as a fan of Dilbert has enabled me to boil it down and so I present the basic content in English.
1. Contacting me: Oops.
2. Only sending the signature pages: Oops.
3. Wrong dates: Oops.
4. Telephone call: Oops.
It seems Remploy contacted a whole list of clients to try and get them onto the Workstep programme. The list contained the details of 16 people, myself included, who should not have been on the list. No one noticed until I spoke up. The other 15 are being 'reviewed'.
For each point there's a lot of meaningless flannel about "ongoing continuous improvement programme" and references to undefined "additional measures" which will be put in place. Oops is about the size of it, though.
As for the '£50 for returning some forms' business: apparently £50 is considered a perfectly reasonable "incentive" for people to return information. Neither Remploy, nor the DWP, nor the wider government see anything dodgy about that at all. My apologies to Wat Tyler and Dr Crippen.
Wednesday, September 03, 2008
We Apologise For The Break In Transmission
Wow, no blogposts for a month. Not quite sure how that happened. My apologies to anyone who got concerned. I am okay.
On with the excuses, well, I had a week or so at the beginning of August where I couldn't seem to phrase anything right. After that, I kept telling myself I would blog later, which never came.
Two things are notable for having NOT occurred. First, I still haven't heard anything more on the Remploy problems. They were going to investigate it internally, but then my MP stepped in via the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) and now contact is supposed to flow via the MP and the DWP. Which it isn't. In mitigation, my MP is the "anti-fraud" minister (see "we are determined to catch those taking money that does not belong to them") which probably makes it difficult to suddenly reverse mindset to a non-claimant whose problem is that they are being offered and declining to accept money.
Second, I haven't organised that proper week away at the coast and I'm no longer convinced that I want to. There seems to be an awful lot going on at the moment and I get the strong impression that my presence would only exacerbate matters.
However, I HAVE been doing lots of things.
I've applied to Social Services for help and they have done really well - preliminary assessment over the phone same-day, a home visit from a social worker to do a full assessment the following week, a home visit for a financial assessment the week after that, then it was a home visit from somebody from the Rowan Organisation to talk me through the options for Direct Payments and whatnot, and finally a visit for assessment by an Occupational Therapist.
This level and speed of response would be pretty good even if they'd just turned around and said "no, you're not eligible for any help, care, equipment or services, and even if you were, you'd have to pay the full cost." But amazingly, and despite all the horror stories I've heard from both service users and providers, they've really come through.
The social worker has assessed me as needing 7 hours of personal care and 3 hours of social care per week. The financial assessment means this will be funded by social services. The Rowan will help me use Direct Payments to hire a PA to help me. They will help me find a suitable Personal Assistant (PA), do criminal records checks, assist me with holding interviews, and help with the paperwork (eg taxes and NI for my PA). It's all ready to go and there is just one problem - while Steve agrees with the idea of me getting the help I need, faced with the reality of it he found that he has difficulty with the idea of someone coming into his house. I don't have the balls to just go ahead with it without his consent but hopefully we'll work something out soon, as it's really quite upsetting to be struggling and going without while knowing that I don't have to.
The social worker also said we could have an emergency plan, in case Steve is hospitalised or has a family emergency or something. The "In Your Place" scheme means that if something like that happened, a temporary carer would be sent to the house to stay with me and fulfil Steve's role - not just the active personal/social care things, but also supervision, and doing the things that I can't do but am assessed as not needing help with because I live with someone who can be reasonably expected to do them, like cooking or going to the supermarket or changing the sheets on the bed (the idea is that these things aren't "care" as he would have to do them anyway if he lived alone). The temporary carer would stay with me for up to 72 hours, until either Steve was back at home, or a longer-term solution could be put in place.
The Occupational Therapist has done well for me too. A lot of the simpler bits and bobs I need, Steve or I have already purchased, but she's got me things like a swivel bath seat that helps me get into the tub safely to have my shower. She'll come back for another visit next month to see how I'm getting on and think about what else I might need. Most of the things she wanted to prescribe, I can't have, because it's a privately rented house and the landlord might object to permanent objects like grab rails and level access and a stairlift being installed. But, she's writing down officially that she thinks I should have them, which might help with the DLA appeal and will be a head-start if we ever get our own place.
On a different level, I applied for an admin job. I made it to interview entirely on merit (I made it clear that I was NOT applying under the "two ticks" scheme) and from there got onto the shortlist, but didn't get the job in the end. I'm a bit disappointed. It would have been nice, it would have suited my skills more, and I'm keen to get out from where I am at the moment. However, my current job isn't unbearable, and it's not like there'll never be another part-time admin job advertised ever again. The feedback was positive but not in a vastly useful way - apparently my application, qualifications, experience and interview was all fine, there wasn't anything that they felt I should improve upon, and I'm the second choice, so they'll call me if the first choice passes it up or can't provide references.
Of course they might have just said all that to make me feel better. Who knows. For now, it suits me to take it at face value and think yes, I was good, someone else was better, never mind.
We went to the wedding as planned, which was a total success in every sense. We caught up with a few familiar faces from the darker corners of the internet, as well as meeting a few new ones, and had an absolutely lovely time. The weather behaved itself, so the ceremony took place with gorgeous sunlight shining through the windows and making the bride look even more beautiful. It was very relaxed, and everybody was happy. Technically I caught the bouquet, but we should probably bear in mind that I was the only one trying and it was tossed directly to me from a distance of about two feet, very theatrically, for Steve's benefit. Steve, for his part, pointedly ignored the whole thing. Bah.
I got to see Pip and the Littlun, who is now The Boy as he is more than waist-high. I can't believe how much he's grown! He'll be four soon. We played with his trains and read a story, and spent a lot of time doing a sort of counting/sorting game of his own invention with little ludo pieces. Seeing Pip was good. I have missed him an awful lot since moving away. We really could have done with an hour to chat like grownups, maybe next time.
There's been other stuff too - going places, seeing people. I can't remember it all and this post already has too much variety in it. It was a good summer. Hopefully there is still a little bit more to come.
On with the excuses, well, I had a week or so at the beginning of August where I couldn't seem to phrase anything right. After that, I kept telling myself I would blog later, which never came.
Two things are notable for having NOT occurred. First, I still haven't heard anything more on the Remploy problems. They were going to investigate it internally, but then my MP stepped in via the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) and now contact is supposed to flow via the MP and the DWP. Which it isn't. In mitigation, my MP is the "anti-fraud" minister (see "we are determined to catch those taking money that does not belong to them") which probably makes it difficult to suddenly reverse mindset to a non-claimant whose problem is that they are being offered and declining to accept money.
Second, I haven't organised that proper week away at the coast and I'm no longer convinced that I want to. There seems to be an awful lot going on at the moment and I get the strong impression that my presence would only exacerbate matters.
However, I HAVE been doing lots of things.
I've applied to Social Services for help and they have done really well - preliminary assessment over the phone same-day, a home visit from a social worker to do a full assessment the following week, a home visit for a financial assessment the week after that, then it was a home visit from somebody from the Rowan Organisation to talk me through the options for Direct Payments and whatnot, and finally a visit for assessment by an Occupational Therapist.
This level and speed of response would be pretty good even if they'd just turned around and said "no, you're not eligible for any help, care, equipment or services, and even if you were, you'd have to pay the full cost." But amazingly, and despite all the horror stories I've heard from both service users and providers, they've really come through.
The social worker has assessed me as needing 7 hours of personal care and 3 hours of social care per week. The financial assessment means this will be funded by social services. The Rowan will help me use Direct Payments to hire a PA to help me. They will help me find a suitable Personal Assistant (PA), do criminal records checks, assist me with holding interviews, and help with the paperwork (eg taxes and NI for my PA). It's all ready to go and there is just one problem - while Steve agrees with the idea of me getting the help I need, faced with the reality of it he found that he has difficulty with the idea of someone coming into his house. I don't have the balls to just go ahead with it without his consent but hopefully we'll work something out soon, as it's really quite upsetting to be struggling and going without while knowing that I don't have to.
The social worker also said we could have an emergency plan, in case Steve is hospitalised or has a family emergency or something. The "In Your Place" scheme means that if something like that happened, a temporary carer would be sent to the house to stay with me and fulfil Steve's role - not just the active personal/social care things, but also supervision, and doing the things that I can't do but am assessed as not needing help with because I live with someone who can be reasonably expected to do them, like cooking or going to the supermarket or changing the sheets on the bed (the idea is that these things aren't "care" as he would have to do them anyway if he lived alone). The temporary carer would stay with me for up to 72 hours, until either Steve was back at home, or a longer-term solution could be put in place.
The Occupational Therapist has done well for me too. A lot of the simpler bits and bobs I need, Steve or I have already purchased, but she's got me things like a swivel bath seat that helps me get into the tub safely to have my shower. She'll come back for another visit next month to see how I'm getting on and think about what else I might need. Most of the things she wanted to prescribe, I can't have, because it's a privately rented house and the landlord might object to permanent objects like grab rails and level access and a stairlift being installed. But, she's writing down officially that she thinks I should have them, which might help with the DLA appeal and will be a head-start if we ever get our own place.
On a different level, I applied for an admin job. I made it to interview entirely on merit (I made it clear that I was NOT applying under the "two ticks" scheme) and from there got onto the shortlist, but didn't get the job in the end. I'm a bit disappointed. It would have been nice, it would have suited my skills more, and I'm keen to get out from where I am at the moment. However, my current job isn't unbearable, and it's not like there'll never be another part-time admin job advertised ever again. The feedback was positive but not in a vastly useful way - apparently my application, qualifications, experience and interview was all fine, there wasn't anything that they felt I should improve upon, and I'm the second choice, so they'll call me if the first choice passes it up or can't provide references.
Of course they might have just said all that to make me feel better. Who knows. For now, it suits me to take it at face value and think yes, I was good, someone else was better, never mind.
We went to the wedding as planned, which was a total success in every sense. We caught up with a few familiar faces from the darker corners of the internet, as well as meeting a few new ones, and had an absolutely lovely time. The weather behaved itself, so the ceremony took place with gorgeous sunlight shining through the windows and making the bride look even more beautiful. It was very relaxed, and everybody was happy. Technically I caught the bouquet, but we should probably bear in mind that I was the only one trying and it was tossed directly to me from a distance of about two feet, very theatrically, for Steve's benefit. Steve, for his part, pointedly ignored the whole thing. Bah.
I got to see Pip and the Littlun, who is now The Boy as he is more than waist-high. I can't believe how much he's grown! He'll be four soon. We played with his trains and read a story, and spent a lot of time doing a sort of counting/sorting game of his own invention with little ludo pieces. Seeing Pip was good. I have missed him an awful lot since moving away. We really could have done with an hour to chat like grownups, maybe next time.
There's been other stuff too - going places, seeing people. I can't remember it all and this post already has too much variety in it. It was a good summer. Hopefully there is still a little bit more to come.
Tuesday, July 08, 2008
Bloggers 1, MP 0
Two weeks on from the latest episode of the Remploy saga. Several thousand people have read that post, mostly thanks to links from prominent bloggers including Wat Tyler and NHS Blog Doctor.
As well as writing about the issue on my blog, I contacted my MP via the incredibly useful and informative They Work For You website. And the ball rolled...
The result of writing to my MP so far has been a pale yellow letter which arrived this morning, three lines thanking me for my correspondence and telling me that the matter is being raised with a "ministerial colleague" at DWP.
The result of blogging, however... the "Quality Matters" team at Remploy have seen my blog. They then did enough detective work to find my email address (not difficult given the amount of information they hold about me, but slightly more complicated than just clicking an 'email me' link) and sent me a nice email telling me that they are taking it seriously and starting an investigation. The investigation will be led by "a senior manager" from outside the department with whom the issues originated. They've given a timescale and provided me with a Service Level Agreement. They also replied immediately to my request that I be contacted by letter or email rather than by telephone. Even despite my usually high levels of cynicism, I'm feeling quite hopeful that the issue will be noted and taken seriously and maybe even avoided in future.
I also found out this morning that my MP is actually (sort of) connected to the DWP. He's one of the MPs who appears in this BBC News story which does a sterling job of confusing suspected or "potential" fraud, and overpayments due to cockups by the DWP, with actual Criminal Benefit Fraud as wilfully and successfully perpetrated by Very Bad People. Sigh.
As well as writing about the issue on my blog, I contacted my MP via the incredibly useful and informative They Work For You website. And the ball rolled...
The result of writing to my MP so far has been a pale yellow letter which arrived this morning, three lines thanking me for my correspondence and telling me that the matter is being raised with a "ministerial colleague" at DWP.
The result of blogging, however... the "Quality Matters" team at Remploy have seen my blog. They then did enough detective work to find my email address (not difficult given the amount of information they hold about me, but slightly more complicated than just clicking an 'email me' link) and sent me a nice email telling me that they are taking it seriously and starting an investigation. The investigation will be led by "a senior manager" from outside the department with whom the issues originated. They've given a timescale and provided me with a Service Level Agreement. They also replied immediately to my request that I be contacted by letter or email rather than by telephone. Even despite my usually high levels of cynicism, I'm feeling quite hopeful that the issue will be noted and taken seriously and maybe even avoided in future.
I also found out this morning that my MP is actually (sort of) connected to the DWP. He's one of the MPs who appears in this BBC News story which does a sterling job of confusing suspected or "potential" fraud, and overpayments due to cockups by the DWP, with actual Criminal Benefit Fraud as wilfully and successfully perpetrated by Very Bad People. Sigh.
Saturday, June 21, 2008
Naughty Remploy
The other day, I got a letter from Remploy. Here's a direct quote, with my flags in brackets:
"To enable us to validate your employment status (1) we require further evidence of your registration and job start. Therefore, we are writing to ask you to sign the enclosed documentation (2)(3) and provide us with a copy of [list of documents such as my work contract, payslips, etc]....
... We understand the inconvenience this gives you and to address this, we will give you with a £50.00 giro (sic) on receipt of this pack/evidence." (4)
To take these flags one at a time:
(1) Validate my employment status? Why? With whom? What for? The only people who need to know about my employment status are the DWP (who know), the Inland Revenue (who know), and me and my employer (who definitely know). My work is valid, my tax is valid, my NI is valid, what other validation could I possibly need? And why have they dressed it up in officialspeak to make it sound like it's something important and necessary while conveying no useful information?
(2) The "enclosed documentation" consists only of the signature pages of several forms. I have the parts of the forms which say "I confirm the above information is correct" (a couple also specify that I understand that the information I give may be checked by the DWP) but I have no idea what the above information may or may not consist of. In other words, there is no opportunity for me to actually read what they are telling me to sign. What?!? How can a company whose raison d'etre is dealing with "vulnerable adults" possibly get away with encouraging people to sign things they have not read?
(3) The dates which have already been written into these signature pages are all "27/10/07". The Jobcentre DEA didn't even begin to refer me to Remploy until our sole meeting which was 3 days after that date - and Remploy didn't contact me until early December, by which time I was happily employed. In other words, they are encouraging me to falsify evidence which, if it is checked with the DWP, will be proven false. With my signature on it.
(4) Is it just me who thinks that £50 is rather a lot of recompense for the "inconvenience" of four signatures and a few bits of paper? Even if I had to hire someone to do it for me and sent it by courier, it wouldn't cost me anything like that. Given the extreme dodginess of the false dates and the not-enclosed documentation, one might even go so far as to consider the possibility (*avoids lawsuit*) that this may, by some people, be considered tantamount to a bribe for falsifying documentation...
With all this in mind, I decided to call Remploy to find out what the hell they thought they were playing at. After a short time, the woman whose name was on the letter phoned me back (woman? Yes. I should probably point out that to the best of my knowledge the male Remploy employee who was trying to help me find a way around the hours/NI problem a few weeks ago was not involved in this at all).
First she told me to just sign the boxes indicated and pop it all in the prepaid envelope and she'd take care of the rest, nothing to worry about, and then I'd get my £50.
I told her I understood that much, but before I started signing things, I wanted to know what it was that I was actually signing. She said they were just doing some admin for their own purposes, it's nothing I need to worry about, I just need to sign the forms, and they'll give me £50.
I asked why I was being asked to sign documents I had not been given to read, she said she was just trying to save on postage costs (they're offering £50 per person and they're worried about an extra 50p postage?!). By this time she was getting really annoyed with how awkward I was being and told me that if I was going to insist on being sent the full documents then she could do that, but really, there's no need, it's nothing I need to worry about, I just have to sign the forms and then they'll give me £50.
I told her that the dates were false. She tried to explain that they had to backdate things. I told her that her false dates could be easily proven false by the DWPs own records as they predated my original referral, and that I wasn't going to sign false documentation. At this point she changed tack to "okay, fine, don't sign the forms then. Just put them through a shredder and forget about it." I find it interesting that she specified that if I wasn't going to return the paperwork, I should destroy it. Maybe, despite her incredible lack of understanding of acceptable (never mind best) practice, she's really hot on data protection... or maybe she doesn't want me to show it to anyone. Oops.
She didn't seem to get that this sort of thing just wasn't on, or why I didn't want to participate, or why I felt organisations like Remploy should really know better.
£50 is a LOT of money to me (half a week's wages! more than a week's food!) and it really is quite difficult to effectively turn down free money. I suspect there will be others who have been sent this kind of letter who've decided that £50 is £50, and cheerfully signed away.
I don't want to have missed out for nothing. I have to do something with this, "alert the proper authorities" or similar, but I don't know where to start or who the proper authorities might be. Remploy, so far as I can ascertain, is government-owned and government-funded, and I don't know who they answer to or how to complain. I did ask about their internal complaints procedure and was told that a complaint would come straight back to that department to resolve - in other words, it wouldn't go any higher up the ladder and no one would be held accountable for bad practice.
I know I'm asking this a lot lately, but what would YOU do?
"To enable us to validate your employment status (1) we require further evidence of your registration and job start. Therefore, we are writing to ask you to sign the enclosed documentation (2)(3) and provide us with a copy of [list of documents such as my work contract, payslips, etc]....
... We understand the inconvenience this gives you and to address this, we will give you with a £50.00 giro (sic) on receipt of this pack/evidence." (4)
To take these flags one at a time:
(1) Validate my employment status? Why? With whom? What for? The only people who need to know about my employment status are the DWP (who know), the Inland Revenue (who know), and me and my employer (who definitely know). My work is valid, my tax is valid, my NI is valid, what other validation could I possibly need? And why have they dressed it up in officialspeak to make it sound like it's something important and necessary while conveying no useful information?
(2) The "enclosed documentation" consists only of the signature pages of several forms. I have the parts of the forms which say "I confirm the above information is correct" (a couple also specify that I understand that the information I give may be checked by the DWP) but I have no idea what the above information may or may not consist of. In other words, there is no opportunity for me to actually read what they are telling me to sign. What?!? How can a company whose raison d'etre is dealing with "vulnerable adults" possibly get away with encouraging people to sign things they have not read?
(3) The dates which have already been written into these signature pages are all "27/10/07". The Jobcentre DEA didn't even begin to refer me to Remploy until our sole meeting which was 3 days after that date - and Remploy didn't contact me until early December, by which time I was happily employed. In other words, they are encouraging me to falsify evidence which, if it is checked with the DWP, will be proven false. With my signature on it.
(4) Is it just me who thinks that £50 is rather a lot of recompense for the "inconvenience" of four signatures and a few bits of paper? Even if I had to hire someone to do it for me and sent it by courier, it wouldn't cost me anything like that. Given the extreme dodginess of the false dates and the not-enclosed documentation, one might even go so far as to consider the possibility (*avoids lawsuit*) that this may, by some people, be considered tantamount to a bribe for falsifying documentation...
With all this in mind, I decided to call Remploy to find out what the hell they thought they were playing at. After a short time, the woman whose name was on the letter phoned me back (woman? Yes. I should probably point out that to the best of my knowledge the male Remploy employee who was trying to help me find a way around the hours/NI problem a few weeks ago was not involved in this at all).
First she told me to just sign the boxes indicated and pop it all in the prepaid envelope and she'd take care of the rest, nothing to worry about, and then I'd get my £50.
I told her I understood that much, but before I started signing things, I wanted to know what it was that I was actually signing. She said they were just doing some admin for their own purposes, it's nothing I need to worry about, I just need to sign the forms, and they'll give me £50.
I asked why I was being asked to sign documents I had not been given to read, she said she was just trying to save on postage costs (they're offering £50 per person and they're worried about an extra 50p postage?!). By this time she was getting really annoyed with how awkward I was being and told me that if I was going to insist on being sent the full documents then she could do that, but really, there's no need, it's nothing I need to worry about, I just have to sign the forms and then they'll give me £50.
I told her that the dates were false. She tried to explain that they had to backdate things. I told her that her false dates could be easily proven false by the DWPs own records as they predated my original referral, and that I wasn't going to sign false documentation. At this point she changed tack to "okay, fine, don't sign the forms then. Just put them through a shredder and forget about it." I find it interesting that she specified that if I wasn't going to return the paperwork, I should destroy it. Maybe, despite her incredible lack of understanding of acceptable (never mind best) practice, she's really hot on data protection... or maybe she doesn't want me to show it to anyone. Oops.
She didn't seem to get that this sort of thing just wasn't on, or why I didn't want to participate, or why I felt organisations like Remploy should really know better.
£50 is a LOT of money to me (half a week's wages! more than a week's food!) and it really is quite difficult to effectively turn down free money. I suspect there will be others who have been sent this kind of letter who've decided that £50 is £50, and cheerfully signed away.
I don't want to have missed out for nothing. I have to do something with this, "alert the proper authorities" or similar, but I don't know where to start or who the proper authorities might be. Remploy, so far as I can ascertain, is government-owned and government-funded, and I don't know who they answer to or how to complain. I did ask about their internal complaints procedure and was told that a complaint would come straight back to that department to resolve - in other words, it wouldn't go any higher up the ladder and no one would be held accountable for bad practice.
I know I'm asking this a lot lately, but what would YOU do?
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