benefits

I wonder if you have contacted your MP about your concerns?

Tigress

If a young person misses a signing on date for any reason, they get sanctioned, that is, their benefit gets stopped. They are only allowed to apply for hardship after their sanction runs out, so they are 2 weeks without any money.

As soon as they are sanctioned, their Housing Benefit stops, so thats 200 pounds Housing Benefit not being paid.
One young person was sanctioned for failing to sign on when one of her relatives died, no excuses said the benefits agency, and I mean he died the day she was supposed to sign on.
The girl is pregnant. Another young person was sanctioned for 12 months because he failed to respond to a letter about a job which had gone to his dads address, he no longer lives with his dad.

A young person used to be able to make a claim for benefit face to face at a jobcentre, no more. They need to call a call centre, is this free? No.
These call centres are so busy I have spent 3 hours out of my working day trying to sort out someones benefits issues.

There is one civil servant at our local office who positively enjoys treating the young people I work with like dirt.
.

It is my understanding that if a person misses a time slot for signing they have an "allowance" of extenuating circumstances within a given period of 6 months, of 2 missed signings, which should include bereavement. They are also allowed a "sick allowance" of 2 periods, plus "holiday" periods if they are holidaying in the UK.

The contact centres can be contacted free of charge from the telephones provided in the job centres, granted if contacted from elsewhere there is a local charge rate and the lines can get busy and long waits. A 12 months sanction seems a long time because a letter has gone to a wrong address, did the person inform the JSA that they had a new address?

If sanctions are applied a person is allowed the right of appeal.

The young person didnt have a new address, that was the problem, he was homeless and moving around until he managed to find temporary accommodation with us. Some of the young people I work with have transient lifestyles and are very unsettled and dont know their way around the benefits system.
Young people are also getting passed from pillar to post. I had another young man who had a 2 week sanction imposed on him because he handed in a job application form late.
This sanction didnt kick in until 6 months later. So he was told that he could appeal it which I helped him do. He then tried to apply for a crisis loan and was refused because he was on a sanction. Even when the sanction was lifted he was still refused a crisis loan.
I had to take him an emergency food parcel to his home. Then his electricity went off and he had to get money to put his power back on from a local church.
Many of our young people are on powercard meters so when their money runs out thats it.

He went to his local job centre to try and sort it out, they referred him to the local processing centre, he phoned them and they then sent him back to the job centre.
I might add that his local job centre which used to be 5 mins walk away shut down and he had to walk 3 miles to the nearest one.

The point I made originally is that if one of our young people gets sanctioned, it also stops their housing benefit, eg no income, no housing benefit, which is set at 200 pounds per week so someone missing a job centre appointment can rack them up 400 pounds in arrears.

The young pregnant girl who was sanctioned because she failed to sign on the day of her dads death was told you should have signed on. That was that.

The young man who was sanctioned for a year because he didnt respond to the letter that went to his dads address, this sanction has been lifted but only because he is on a training scheme for now, when that finishes, it will kick back in again.

I know young people are allowed an appeal against a sanction but in my working experience, we have not managed to assist a young person to appeal a sanction, every one imposed by the benefits agency has been made to stand.

Also the young man I mentioned above, the one who was sanctioned for handing in a late form 6 months ago because of this sanction, when he started work which he did last week, he was refused the 28 day housing benefit and council tax extension, which gives young people a breathing space, they get their rent paid and council tax paid for a month until they get their first wage, if and only if they dont have a gap in their benefits over the last 6 months.

Well that sanction also meant there was a gap so as he has started work and has signed off, his last giro, now has to last him 4 weeks until he gets his first wage.

Young people are getting hit from all angles and believe me, some benefits offices in my view are being very hard on young people.
They are very lucky they have staff such as us that can advocate on their behalf, I would hate to think what it must be like for a young person out in the community being treated like this and have no one to help them sort it out.

Red tape can be hard enough sometimes when you know your way around the benefits system.

Yes I am going to be contacting my MP about this issue because there are young people who are being treated very unfairly.

Dear Crystaltherapy,
I have helped a few of my neighbours with their benefit problems, including a guy who had no gas for over a year (central heating/water was gas) and had to wash in cold water one winter,I threatened to go to the papers and got health and saftey involved. So I do have a lot of sympathy for you.
I have had a very good response from joining freecycle.org.They are a website that offers items for people to have free.You are first asked to offer something before you ask for something. People are very nice usually.
I have managed to get a moniter for a friend who cannot afford one as she is a single parent.
Also if when you are ringing the phone numbers given out by the benefits office and they are always engaged .. try finding out where they are,getting the number of the switchboard at that office, and ring them, they can have people Q-ing up waiting for the phone to be answered even if the direct number is engaged constantly.
It helped me when I worked it out. You have to get creative with all the red tape.
Good luck,just remember being there for them has probably saved lives.
Helen

I know how frustrating this must be for you and your clients. I work in a small jobcentre so get to know my clients. They are given forms to cover "domestic emergencies" if they have problems which could in certain circumstances cover funerals or bereavement. If they phone before their signing time they are given leaway over signing. Big offices do not have the luxury of getting to know genuine customers from those who are less honest and I have personal experience of working with some nasty power crazed individuals when I worked in the city. The problems arise when clients don't let us know whats happening. We only have 5 minutes to interview clients, and only see them every 2 weeks. Claims are only closed after 5 working days if the clients fails to contact us. From our side of the desk, if the client needs their money their priority is to sign on...they know their money is at risk if they fail to do so.
The government has a huge agenda for saving money and the benefits system is being radically overhauled at the moment. The proposals are for contracting out to private industry in the future and clients will have to attend these agencies to sign and may even be told to go to a job. Income support and Incapacity benefit is to change to Employment Support Allowance from Oct next year. It is all geared towards stopping people benefit hopping and eventually getting everyone off benefits,closing small jobcentres and opening up distant contact centres whose lines are always engaged. Frustrating for both parties.

Hi Crytsaltherapy

I have had various dealings with the jobcentre over the years and it seems to vary a lot between different jobcentres how fairly and humanely they treat you. It sounds like you're dealing with one of the bad ones. I had an issue a few years ago where i was signing on with my boyfriend and he hadnt got any ID so they refused us any money for weeks...anyway we went to the CAB and they had a book of the Jobcentres rules and regulations which stated that it was illegal for them to leave anyone desitute,without money for i think it was over one week...it might be helpful for you to get a book like that or go to the local CAB...anyway they also said that it was wrong the JC didnt need ID they could just ask security questions to make sure he was who he said he was.As soon as we went in quoting the CAB they went running around for us and gave us a giro that day.It scared them a lot to have their own rules quoted back to them. They basically just discriminated against my bf as they didnt like the look of him and because he was a traveller. They even failed to pay him on his birthday when we were due a payment!!

One thing which does still infuriate me is the fact that if you are NFA you have to attend the JC every day and you only get roughly half of the amount you'd get as someone with a fixed address. We ended up selling the Big Issue for quite a while before we could get an address to sign on at it was more reliable money and less hassle. I really empathise with people still in this situation it took a lot of time for me to manage to get a place that was really my own.

Definately sure the CAB could help you or some JC books to reference.

What a great job you do

Anna x

The sanctions are causing us mega problems. I know that if someone is sanctioned they can claim hardship benefit but by the time that benefit is processed they are already in hardship.
I also work with young people who are moving into their own tenancies and have had 2 young people recently turned down for community care grants.
You have to be signing on for 26 weeks with no break before you qualify for a ccg.
So if someone is sanctioned it also affects their entitlement to a ccg to furnish their home at a later date.

So young people are being forced into homes with not a stick of furniture, sometimes no family support. Nothing. No wonder young peoples tenancies break down.
We have a link with another authority who can (sometimes) give us £300 vouchers to use in a shop where reconditioned goods are sold so they can get the basics but thats dependent on budgets also.

Surely the Job Centre could give a one off grant to young homeless people when they move into their own home, even if it were for said 300 pounds.
Some people get, some people dont, there seems to be no logic to it, qualifying conditions or not.

Unfortunately some job centre staff are far more respectful of young people when we go with them. I am aware not everyone in the civil service treat young people poorly but there are some people in our local job centre who are atrocious to the young folk I work with and thats really not fair.

How can young people save for a home off 45 quid a week when we expect them to put power in their flats, buy food, pay the water charge, basically live.
If someone doesnt get a ccg or a budget loan its bare floorboards for them.
The system is flawed and it is all about saving money, these new rules must be saving the Government millions of pounds per year.

I have one young lad who has moved in with his 16 year old girlfriend. I know the whole family as they are all on benefit. He is volatile but ok with me. He applied for a CCG and kept phoning our Social fund dept (which is 100 miles away) and they'd hang up on him. He was getting majorly P*ss*d off to say the least and was getting threatened with calling the police unless he calmed down (my team leader is a "hitler"). He asked to speak to me and I phoned on his behalf and was told immeditately he would get £*** money. I have worked in benefits for 26 years and am so frustrated with the way the system is going I would take redundancy in a minute. Like everything else it is now target driven - people are "points" towards job entry targets.

Advice

Just a thought.

Firstly, do go to the CAB, or a Welfare Rights Advice centre (we have one in Nuneaton in Warwickshire). They will fight your corner for you, and as someone has already said, they will quote the DSS's rules back at them.

Secondly, they might be able to advise if the young people you're working with are eligible for charitable grants. There is a book called "A Guide to Grants for Individuals in Need", or a computer package called "Funderfinder" for individuals, which might be at your local library. Either way, the CAB should be able to advise.

I would also say, don't blame the Labour government for the shortcomings of the power-crazed individuals at the DSS. We are all responsible for our own behaviour, and as therapists we do well to remember that. There is a saying "it doesn't matter who you vote for, the government always gets in" and those people are the civil servants. It's the reason why nothing really changes in this country: we might elect politicians but the people with the real power are the ones we don't elect.

Grants website

Now how's this for synchronicity!

I've just had an email telling me of a new website called turn2us, which aims to help you find grants, and also calculate benefits.

The address is: www.turn2us.org.uk

In fact, I've just been on there myself and found a charitable trust that may help me with my holistic therapy course fees.

Hope this helps!

The poorest people in society get hammered the most. Benefits are supposed to be a safety net, they arent for many.
Its the Government who have made the rules about young people not being eligible for housing benefit if they are at uni or doing a full time course at college.
So if someone presents to us at uni and homeless they have 2 choices, stick with the situation they are in or leave university.

I have emailed and written to my MP over this matter more than once, I also did a course with my employer in London where some young people met MPs and this situation is raised.

Of course people have a responsibility to sign on but as I said earlier, some of our young people move around so much letters go astray.
Also we are a fairly small staff team and we dont have the time to run and manage a project, deal with referrals, the day to day stuff, groupwork, youth work, keyworking young people and everything else that crops up, we can only do so much. We work with 46 young people and for example, simply moving someone into our housing and doing all the appropriate paperwork can take half a day.

We do advocate as much as we can on the behalf of young people but we are restricted as due to data protection many agencies wont deal with us even if we have a mandate from the young people saying they have given us permission.

Also, when one person ran out of money for power because he had been sanctioned, he presented at the CAB, who then phoned and decided to bend my ear, at 4.15 on a Friday afternoon asking me why I wasnt giving this young person the money out of my own pocket.
I had spent 2 working days trying to sort out his issues. I am afraid I have had a few experiences where a young person I have been working with presents at the CAB, tells them one side of a story and then the CAB, having jumped to conclusions, have then proceeded to not only tell me my job but believe every word a young person has told them before they speak to me, even if it hasnt been accurate.

I am aware that not everyone is like this but it doesnt help sometimes when you work with someone 24/7 and you have people who have met them once or twice telling you how to do your job and having unrealistic expectations of the service you can provide for said young person.

Sometimes joined up working really doesnt happen which is a crying shame.

I also know of plenty people where I live who claim every benefit they have going and have a very nice life on it but these people dont seem to ever be the young people that I work with. They seem to get the raw end of the stick at every turn and I do think the fact that they are in temporary accommodation can have a bearing on how they are treated by some individuals.

Only tried to help.

Sometimes joined up working really doesnt happen which is a crying shame.

I also know of plenty people where I live who claim every benefit they have going and have a very nice life on it but these people dont seem to ever be the young people that I work with. They seem to get the raw end of the stick at every turn and I do think the fact that they are in temporary accommodation can have a bearing on how they are treated by some individuals.

Fine. Now I know you only wanted to sound off. I shouldn't have got suckered in and tried to help you and your clients. Even an acknowledgement of this would have been nice.:mad:

No I didnt just want to sound off actually. Ive been working with young people for 15 years and I think if I had just wanted to stand up and shout about things I wouldnt have managed to do any quality work done in that space of time.

The point I was trying to make about my local CAB was that on 2 occasions, staff there have tried to advocate on young peoples behalf which has resulted in half a story being told by said young person at the time (as can happen) and worker believing said young story ( as also can happen), which caused me no end of problems. However, I am also quite aware that every indvidual works differently and what might have happened with one volunteer and one young person might not have happened with someone else.

Ive actually used that CAB myself in times gone by. As for suckering people in, that wasnt my intention in the beginning. It was merely to highlight the way some people are being treated.

Yes I said we dont always have the staff to go and sit with young people at the benefits agency because thats the truth. We have 5 staff and 46 young people.

In an ideal world it would be great if we could go and advocate in person for every young person but sometimes times are stretched, staff go off sick, people are on holiday, we are trying to do 101 other things.

As for welfare rights officers, I would love to use such as service if we had one locally, we do have something called money matters but they work 2 weeks in arrears on appointments.

We do everything we can for the young people we work for, I managed to gt one young person 300 quid to spend in furniture after he got refused a ccg and he was delighted.

If I was only sounding off, I would just be sitting on my backside going on here about the injustice of it all, I wouldnt have put any effort into trying to secure that young man money for furniture.

The only point I was trying to make was from locality to locality, there are differing degrees in services, staff and sometimes the quality of service you get from established advice centres.

I dont try and sucker anyone into anything, and if you knew me personally which you dont, you might not have made that comment to me.

Hello again Crystaltherapy

Just an idea maybe you could set up an online petition i think you might be able to do so fairly easily on www.Care2.com

I do understand the stuff you are facing having dealt with it on a personal level I still wonder today how on earth i managed to live on £45 a week its not right to expect people to live on that amount. i think i lived on toast and pasta then..

Anna x