Claimant Journeys

and

Living?

Living on Sanctions?

Health to LOOK for WORK and kazzam WORK! on JSA/ESA “assessment” rate and ESPECIALLY at sanctioned HARDSHIP level and you WILL just like that be ABLE TO COMPLY

You would also expect that with the intelligence and capability of our age, that with a means-tested benefit, account would be taken of differing circumstances and not entirely blanket policy. Butt that will surely mean then people forced out of the luxury of their current circumsyance, socially demoted, to shared accommodation by means of no choice. As happens. Politics is impossible. It shouldn’t be allowed like that. The answer’s never static, the question’s always shifting… time and place never stand still… and they echo…

as an ESA claimant with lifelong disabling illness and unfit to work since 2009, not fully fit to work since 2011, unfit to work again by end 2012-13-14…

…hopeless!…

SIX MONTHS? … for JCP?service-provider to achieve a target from my erred referral to the Work programme… they ARE going to be throwing all sorts of shit at my head an’all! But you should be better and ABLR to work by now? You would think there had been some assistive adaptive support in this programme… did someone else’s data somehow end up in my field(s)?

how am I judged? by deprived postcode… by how many indices of deprivation by case file throw up… no maths test thank you and fook off! …not by manners, please! … by colour? I am glad to CONsole myself with being a person of colour… mixed up enough as I clearly am … ? by gender, by age … by being the one of six in two days that HAS to be failed so those meeting the stereotypes of disability will NOT have the indignity of a no work permit. it’s a leisure card on two sheets of A4 then. You can shove it Sir! i do wish!!!

It is awful that my contributory record is so thin and lame. I devoted most of my adult life to caring for my family. My son was disabled and could not attend school much of the time. He had no appropriate provision from the state. A great deal of time was spent ensuring my duty to his educational needs regardless of NO disability or carers benefits. Essentially I was also living in service to a partner who worked but did little in the house to help. Waited on. I was then this person’s carer when they were genuinely recovering from injury and unable to work for a time. Then our relationship broke down and i relapsed. significantly. With an unusual symptomatic event from which I began to recover but then had a further relapse of my underlying condition. (that term is mooted with vile influence in itself i fear).

Well I was referred (mandated, i think, sort of agreed so hence volunteered probably, while not well) to attend no less than a secondary-service-provider self-employment “workshop”. There was nothing “workshop” about it in my book. Claimant just needed a business idea to pursue for 6 hours or more a week, a job for ideally or up to ten, to claim housing benefit and MAYBE still some WTC if 16 hours weekly / JSA if less / other incentive moneys. Service providers BONUS incentive target hit … if claimant remains in work / off benefit. I wonder if you’re off benefit for reasons of marriage / fortunate co-habiting, the service-provider still get a bonus, or if you have to be actively contributing yourself.

It was SHODDY, really. No promotional literature so you could take away useful information, see how you would be supported, not even a photocopy worksheet for an initial brainstorm / action plan… no information regarding important legislation concerning operating as a business and legal and ethical implications and responsibilities, other than very loosely about registering wiuth the Tax Office. These days you have to evidence that your self-employed work is for return / you actually have clientele. There are special rules for literary and artistic work that are TOP SECRET CLASSIFIED apparently. cos they ain’t doin’nothin’ that special and you can’t all be making your livings like THAT. You HAVE to have a degree or be pretty with boobies and let an artzy ole codger in your gs… Well, it’s how THAT sometimes seems too… FU! “and being an artist is tricky”. I agree, Tricky is an artist, one for whom I have very much respect.

Of this secondary service providers clients, (newly self-employed people), after a year only 6% of businesses are continuing to trade. Why? Stubborn-mindedness? Non-viability? Nervous and physical breakdowns for the poverty and pressure combined? Are these self-employed persons counted twice for ONS statistics? Are they assumed inactive but prospectively earning within the remaining / next financial tax year?

I should noit say it but from anionymous gallery assistants elsewhere it is common practice to count people again if they have left and returned having spent a penny or something…

… what can you say when you’ve been introduced to the potential for “Work Programme!” thinking it’s just a blooomin’ smellin’salts’pell (slipping into…)

… something more comfortable than my human condition would be lovely…

i wasn’t even well enough to be meeting the pressured deadline of writing a business plan within thirteen weeks … i needed some therapeutic activity to build up use of my arms while managing quite excruciating upper back pain. To look for a job for a few hours even required even more energy I jsut did not have, never mind to do any of the work. I really can’t manage my claims well a lot of the time and have far too much faith in staff. If I were working for JCP I’d be very (about losing contracts to local authority) worried to ensure fairness and accuracy and never mind target pressures and bullying managers. My first duty would be equally to the State on whose behalf I was performing the necessary task of the job and the client participating in the service provision. Someone whomever they are and whatever their current “status” might be perceived to be, would be afforded the dignity of equal worth and their best health as far as i might be able. How can JCP possibly be “Investors in people” accredited?

…and i would probably love to work, as i have before… a little enough when able …agricultural labouring, only ever a life class model the once and never again, i forgot to get paid (not kiddin!)…fence-post painting for community service just the once, erm, restaurant/cafe/american style bar-eaterie… industrial cleaning… some other stuff… chambermaid, bar staff, i CAN use a pc and I haven’t been afraid to say so, why should i? i would love to earn money.

I couldn’t do THE OTHER SIDE’s job.

For one they must have to work so quick at considerations WITHOUT QUESTIONING the information from the documents to enable and to facilitate positive and helpful support. There needs to be conversation, discussion, exploration and negotiation. Then there may be a consensus, strategies and structures and perhaps some progress enough at last.

Someone moving from no work or work-related activity at all to any is an achievement and a small progress. Is it realistic to expect moves to self-sufficiency in one giant leap? From sick, disadvantaged, often now impoverished, unfit and unenabled people? I have some problems with ESAvJSA issues as I wholly believe JSA claimants can mostly not have good health themselves unless they can rely on savings OR loans and never-ending debt. I think they (JSA) claimants should be afforded the same dignities of financial support for work-related health costs as anyone else. Sometimes any argument seems like “me! mine’s worse! i need more! i cannot at all…” I might need more but so do a very good many other people and balancing the lion’s share surely means getting a fair share to every person in need … our local economies are at risk of collapse if large proportions of their customer base are on either very low incomes or sanctions and hardship payments.

How many sanctions are being imposed against claimants who simply CANNOT? They have been duped into claiming entitlement to JSA. If unable they should be redirected to ESA. As standard. But that means increasing claimant numbers (and more money in local economies, perhaps including black market economies) and this appears a bad thing. What kind of human being can for a job be punishing needy people like this? Actually forcing people to rely on things like black market activity and crime in order to survive?

Back to self-employment booms?          Actually expecting vulnerable needy people to assign to a “supported” programme of fiddling the rules effectively to shuffle people from one means of dependency to another and along with it greater risk of destitution and failures.

A secondary service provider with a second-rate? third-rate? business “advice and “support” service as a business signatory to MY money, business banking, client details -if I had any!!!; access to MY intellectual property (is not a valid reason to NOT provide informational literature, not even a business card)…

You agree and sign now on the basis of an hour’s spiel only and NO performance data, no nothing much other than “sales patter”… “we offer such a good service… you will have a fortnightly appointment… look for a job … make up six hours work doing… making up kind of stuff…

I watched uncomfortably and had room to say nothing as most of the “workshop time” was “tell me your business idea” and one lady was encouraged to be self-employed making hand-made cards – a trade likely to be earning unlikely 50-75p AN HOUR if lucky. How can that be possible? Therapeutically, as a social activity, a fundraising cottage industry effort, perhaps. As a viable means to earning a decent and reasonable standard of living? With housing benefit and a part-time job?

Another gentleman in the room at this self-employment workshop was a psychologist. Perhaps more an observer than a potential client of this secondary service provider. (Says she, the participant who also observed, chose NOT to thank you and LEFT.) He had been sat a couple of rows ahead of me sometime before at an art lecture or screening or something. He had asked a question, having very professionally introduced himself to the panel first (and thus audience, myself included). He said the same thing of his profession at both so you have to hope, an honest man.

I’m paranoid now you see. Remembering the day carrying a lightweight mini oven off the bus and thinking that fella in that van waiting as you got off took a snap! Then you’re thinking that little tin-pot mini-oven weighs nothing like the stonking magnet in a microwave oven them tools at gestapo-state-jcp-fraud-bodge-co ARE gonna make that look like… I DO actually keep receipts and stuff… including thankfully, as mad as the rest of the world believes I must be, the PACKAGING >>> just need to find evidence and organise it… they (the other side) do that gOOd… nice and stylish … well-framed and ordered… horrendous!

“HE is GOD! HE is WAR!”

I heard singing class songs on the radio today.

I have now eaten a day’s ration in one place setting… I had and did nothing at all much all day… ‘toons some… not seated at all all day, and it’s a hole in MY bucket not a HILE!… flip! I’m always getting into such a trouble with words type affair….they shouldm eb barred…

…this is sposed to be a creative blog about…. erm,,, photography problematiX … all images in my blogsas will be “my own”, but i insist I do NOT do photography by any means or method… one contradiction amongst many in my case full of butterfly dusk … i have “merriy-mary-quiet-contrary” dis-ease… it’s about that too…

… nope… WAS supposed to be about the frustration and hopelessness of the ESA-WRAGsnags … as one of these impossible work-shy try-shy resistance-to-capital-loss-assumed claimants who has no other means and no viable choice but to claim income-related Employment Support Allowance.

To claim JSA a person must be available AT ANY TIME in the whole week, for FULL time activity and sustained effort ie. FIT for work FULLY.

To encourage and promote the idea of a “Fit Note” rather than “an Unfit Note”… to provide “Pathways to Work” but to “ARCHIVE” my previous file … falsify the record (or have a dreadful drop-down menu error if salt and peppered with too generous benefit of the doubt) -unwell struggling claimant fails to spot that NOW it appears you have moved from the support group (never in it) to the WRAG (always innit). Time limit to challenge error of fact passes. JCP”CSM”/”DM” breathes a weighty sigh of relief. Book-cooking claimant number phew, how-many-more?, stage2, commence.

Work-focussed interview number Two (One before for Pathways to Work 2010, ARCHIVED?) (One – May – one of Three, 2012. Attended. FINE. expected I was understood. Supported. Unsure.

WFI no:2 (call from JCP “Personal Advisor” is absent/unwell/something, appointment cancelled. FINE, saves ME bus fare when i forget to claim it back)

WRI no:3 Attended. FINE. JCP “CSM” had a problem with DEAFNESS. She alkso had a problem with her attitude and that I had FAILED TO ATTEND a previous WFI. I forot the cancelled one and assumed the previous one i attended wasn’t recorded. I’d not had to sign for my bus fare that i’d been refunded which i found incredibly strange.Now at this non-interview INSTRUCTIVE attendance there was no conversation, I was not ASKED any questions. Anything I did say was ignored or misconstrued and NOT corrected or amended in spite of anythign I said. I was DICTATED TO that I would be returning to work in admin and there are reasonable adjustments that can be made – with NO discussion of my NEEDS in ANY workplace, my employment history, experience, skills, DIFFICULTIES due to DISabling persistent chronic and acute illness … NOTHING equating to any kind of employment SUPPORT at all … but it’s what plenty of others are saying  … AND it was incorrectly recorded that i would like to start an arts business having said i wanted to be self-employed working in/with art, (my meaning was as remedial therapeutic measure that could perhaps be turned to revenue generation but NOTHING worth writing an actual fixed business start up plan for , not having sufficient health/capacity … just a case of can i spend any hours making, if i can, can i make anything to sell? to start with a couple of hours here and there and try and build up tolerance for upper limb activity. It’s quite problematic not being able to sit down much to do things. Luckily i don’t watch telly for the last nearly five years for neurological and optic pain. I tend not to look at my screens as little as posi#ble so some undeliverate mistakes are not typos as i spotted them and like them better as they are 🙂

I had been so unwell that i did not even spot that my atos medical report was based on having had an assessment mostly focussed on my fitness for work due to a “lower back problem” … I had never been unfit for work for simply “a lower back problem”, it was never the reason I was unfit for work. I had injured my upper back and there were abnormal findings for my upper back noted on the report. The only diagnosis given by my doctor for my unfitness for full-time work however related to my lifelong neurological condition and its impacts. This did not even feature as significant in the nurse-led interview.

I didn’t even notice this at the time of my tribunal hearing which lasted 15minutes with me too unwell to recognise verbal prompts as questioning and failing to answer, stinted by the suggestion i was becoming angry when i was struggling to verbalise and trying to assert what i felt was a valid point and it wholly explains WHY on earth the tribunal was failing to consider anything other than sitting, standing and mobilising. Nothing else.

Now I have a court judgement that says i can do a job fine, with reasonable adjustments that have been decided on the basis of THE WRONG condition in some behind closed doors process with no regard to or exploration of, no relationship with, the claimant. Like a bloody game of “Sorry!” … you’ll do next to any of us whatever it says on whatever target card you’ll pull out of your lucky hat this time?

A judgement states that standing may cause me some discomfort but I’m fine to sit down. I actually have big problems sitting as my legs go numb and i have functional loss affecting my control of my legs. Nothing too serious after and for up to an hour or two after usually, though i also have more back pain and extreme stiffness from sitting. I tend to hardly ever sit down if my legs will stand up and stand still or move me around some preferably… i can’t sit at a desk much… a table’s not so bad for a while but i need to stand if i can AND keep moving enough, but often not much… I have my computer set up to stand at as it’s easier to work at and causes me less pain and saves my energy by not sitting down and standing up again.. Now no employer will allow me to stand for as much of any shift i might manage any day or night i might be well enough to turn up, which is how i’d need work to work for me to manage twelve hours or so a week, maybe. Maybe more some weeks. I’ve struggled to sustain a regular consistent two to three fixed hours a week for some time until the point of near complete collapse.But IF I can manage a good-long-hours-in-week effort then I will be very very slow at tasks for the exhaustion i’ll feel even before i start from having got up, ready, out, there and to manage a weak’s 20-40 hours, I cannot sleep, I have to chuff on and get them over with in one bloomin’ go…. work does NOT work like that either. Unless you’re self-employed. I’m not. I’ve not been well enough. I’d be glad whenever I am but I’d need a job first to be able to afford to live. I have only ever managed to hold a job or commitment for months at atime and never been able to sustain full-time activity. I am supposed to have, by way of the Equalities Act 2010(?) or something, “protected characteristics” for “lifelong disability”. But other persons decide “this does not meet my expectation” (ie their own personal view of the acceptable stereotypes of disabled people and how they present.) Flippin’ annoyin’ all this.

Why anyone thinks “ESA is easy” … it’s not, it’s a nightmare. I feel I am expected to give way to a stereotype of you will be given medication never mind the side-effects, strapped into a wheel-chair and never mind the worry of work or welfare you j’ave to BE the workload provision for some poor JSA claimant who’s HAD to sign a zero-hours care work contract to fiddle them off the figures.

CIRCULARITY>

I have no idea if i’ve been and gone already ei…ther(e) now… so, I cannot go THERE!