What the Work Coach is not told - that the client is disabled

I have posted elsewhere about a couple who were pushed on to UC when they got together.(UC Live Service area)

One of them was on IRESA, in the Support Group.

Interestingly, this claimant was summoned to the Jobcentre and told to seek work for 35 hours a week etc etc, as well as being told to go in to a group work-related activity even when she protested that she was not supposed to do any such thing owing to her illness.

I complained, but have been told that in effect it was the claimant’s fault for not telling the Work Coach that she was in ESA Support Group prior to the UC claim.

I am told that the Jobcentre is given no information about the claimant’s previous benefit status - even though there is an existing WCA.

Apparently everyone who comes through the door is ‘fit for work’ and is treated as such until the claimant him/herself produces a sick note.

As far as I can see, no new sick note is needed in this situation and no new WCA is needed either, this person should be exempt from work conditionality because there is an existing ESA determination.

I have asked DWP: Why are the Work Coaches not told this??? Why do they have to take the claimant through an interview without information that the DWP itself holds and the claimant has every right to expect them to know?

The Limited Capabiilty for Work and Work-Related Activity element is also not being paid in this case. nor is their rent element. But the Jobcentre cannot help with this, they are apparently purposely not trained in matters of payment, they are there to assist people back in to work and that’s it.

It is the job of the Service Centre to get the payment right. the same with conditionality changes. Only they didn’t do it.

How can an ‘individually tailored’ service be provided by Jobcentres when they don’t know the facts? The divide between Jobcentre and Service Centre is going to cause more of this sort of trouble.

I wish I were surprised by this but it’s made even more depressing by the prospect of the government pinning the closure of the disability employment gap on work coaches via the inept proposals in the Green Paper, which is effectively the same old stuff with less money to pay for it. The fact the government then rejected the suggestion from the Work and Pensions committee that work coaches would need further training and a regrade speaks volumes.

However, there are two other sides to this. One is that I struggle with the idea that any work coach could negotiate their way through an interview with a claimant and not pick up in most cases that there is a long term health condition, impairment or disability. Frankly that is suggestive of extreme superficiality; gross incompetence and a disconnect from reality. I am willing to accept that it’s sometimes not obvious but many of the questions I’ve understood asked by WCs as reported by claimants suggest that in most cases it would be hard to conclude that there was no disability unless you have been specifically instructed to not come to that conclusion.

The other thing is that of course most people do report the state of their health as it is a significant and often overwhelming concern. Again, not everyone is good at this but I think most are. That then raises the question as to what is raised versus what is recorded.

I have a client who won her LCWRA appeal back (an ESA decision) in October and still has not got the component added to her UC or had her ‘conditionality’ status amended to ‘no conditionality’.  She is now under consideration for a Sanction for missing an appointment (which she should not have been required to attend).  Trying to get these things resolved within the time constraints of a front line advice role is near impossible.  I am finding that even escalation processes are no longer working, and that safeguarding vulnerable people is a minimal concern to the DWP.  You literally couldn’t make this stuff up, but the processes and legislation are so complex it is difficult to raise awareness.  Even the articles in the Guardian which are very well researched and accurate, focus on the 6 week wait for benefit and the rent arrears, not the myriad other administrative nightmares and injustices going on within the system.

I’m loving the fact that the risk of having to claim UC might come under scrutiny for the purposes of determining reg29/35 application…

“We have to treat them as LCW otherwise they’ll be waiting 6 weeks for their UC to go into payment and might starve to death”