Jobcentreplus Interview

[realscape]

I received an interview letter today from my local Job Centre Plus to attend a mandatory meeting with an advisor. Apparently this is to...

"discuss how we can improve your chances of finding work now or in the future"

Well, here's me thinking that I was signed off sick for a reason. That I am not well enough to cope with thinking about my chances of finding work at the moment. I seem to recall that a qualified psychiatrist, a consultant psychologist, a consultant psychotherapist, and my GP were all contacted with reference to my Incapacity and DLA claims and that those claims were granted on a long term basis in order to take the pressure off me. And now apparently, a completely medically unqualified person who works in the Job Centre says I have to go and tell her what my difficulties are and how that is affecting me.

So, I telephoned her and told her that I will not be discussing my mental health problems with anyone who isn't medically qualified. She says that I don't have to discuss my medical problems with her and that is private and they don't get to know what type of medical problems anyone has, but I have to discuss how my medical problems affect me working. WTF??? How is it possible to maintain my legal right to medical privacy and confidentiality whilst revealing that I have mental health problems and how that affects me working and relating to others. I asked her this question. She says I have to go to the interview to explain these things to her and that afterwards they will decide how often I have to go back, anything between once a month or so or once every few years to help me get a job. FFS I am on Incap Ben and DLA not Jobseekers Allowance.

I said I have no intentions of discussing my psychiatric and mental health problems with her and that therefore there is no point in me attending the interview as I wouldn't say anything and that anyway I don't feel well enough to come to the offices just to tell her that I won't be discussing my health problems with her when I can adequately do that over the telephone. So then she says its mandatory and I HAVE to attend. So I told her that is an intrusion of my privacy, conflicts with the fact that I am signed off sick, and in its own right stressing me out and causing me anxiety which is detrimental to my health and that she isn't a doctor and she doesn't get to say whether I am medically well enough to come or not. We have a circular debate about this.

She says I am not to feel anxious or stressed or threatened about this and that the process is not going to make me feel unwell. I told her she doesn't get to dictate to me what my feelings are and that the conversation we were having in its own right was making me feel unwell and had already stressed me out and made me feel anxious and that telling someone they HAVE to attend or their benefits are at threat is a direct threat and how could that not feel threatening. I told her that I would be happy to attend medical appointments to review my situation with medically qualified people and that other than that, I felt this is intrusive, crossing boundaries and morally incorrect and almost bizarre in light of the fact that I am signed off sick by a qualified person.

Anyway, she says everyone in UK is getting this appointment. I think there needs to be advocacy for mentally ill people. This is not OK for them to do to people in my opinion. She has deferred my appointment until another time in the future but it doesn't feel like a resolution of the problem to me.

Has anyone had advocacy or support from any organisation with regard to this type of problem?

[Eva*]

It sounds absolutely absurd to me. How can she tell you you have to come to the interview when you're signed off sick. How could she assess you better than medical professionals. Do they think doctors sign off people without good reasons and they can look through that in a few minutes and make people work again? How much time might they spend on interviews like that while they could try to help people who are able to work and are looking for an adequate job? It's laughable to imagine you could tell her why you're unable to work without disclosing information about your health problems. She seems completely incapable of thinking logically.

Good on you that you stood your ground. I hope you'll find some suppor on this issue so that you won't feel like this interview is looming over you forever. Good luck with it.

Eva

[pip]

If I get one of those letters, I will be taking an OD and passing it to my CPN to deal with

[Faerielight]

god it makes me so angry that they think they have the right to demand such interviews. I have no faith in the social security system. I was taken off my income support a year ago because they said i was fit for work but was too ill to sign on jobseekers allowance so they took me off that too and said i wasnt entitled to anything. What the hell they expected i should live on i have no idea. I had to get my cpn to appeal and i was put back on income support but it had gone back down to 55 quid a week. The whole thing made my mental health diabolical with the stress it caused. They are bullies targetting the vulnerable and they shouldn't be allowed to get away with it.. Well done for standing your ground.. you are very brave..i live in constant fear of having my benefits taken away from me again. hugs ivy xx

[Betsy]

maybe take a letter from your psych restating everything and that nothing has changed would help.

this isn't the same as yours but i have a son that is permanently disabled. every few years we have to go in and prove that permanent means he hasn't changed. wtf with that? i guess there could have been a divine intervention and miracle but there is no cure for what he has so i dont see why we have to go thru that either. it isnt fair.

its a game they need to do for some certification.. try and play so the benifits keep coming. sorry you have to go thru this.

bets

ps - was glad to see your post as i hadn't seen any from you lately and was wondering what was going on.

[jai]

Real

thanks for posting what must have been v harrowing by the account you gave. I am baffled, the amount flaws in their plan are glaringly obvious to all of us here. It is with interest that i will be watching them implement this. If it is about weening out those that beat the system and genuinly are committing fraud , surely there was a less expensive and more appropriate way to deal with this. It seems sad to me that a whole section of society that are already vulnerable are going to be put through further ordeals for the countries bean counters. Clearly they can happily afford whatever provisions would be neccessary for their loved ones in the event that health issues overshadow and blight everyday abilities provide for oneself.

the whole thing is making me sooo angry i can nt tell you, not bad enough that we are all assigned to living in cyber space and in anonymity as a result of noone giving a fuck, we now have to throw off the mantle of shame and allienation that has suited the nation so well for so long in the name of fucking money.

Lets hope that along side this great new initiative comes some really great new support, you know more care workers for the mentally ill, more clinic hours, shorter waiting lists, doctors and nurses that dont treat you like crap, the norms at job interviews going out of their way to be helpful and considerate...

ooooooops sorry, i just slipped into an ideal world where mental health issues were viewed and treated like physical health issues

stupid fuckers....

jai

[realscape]

Thanks for the replies. Eva, Pip, Ivy, Jai.

It is absurd and nonsensical, ha, the British government for you. If they take my benefits off me I will kill myself and I will make sure that everyone knows why - being as I feel suicidal enough at any given time then that would be the last straw.

I phoned Mind and they said they do have some sort of advocacy but not in this specific area (cheers Mind, what exactly is it you DO do?). They said phone CAB. So I will. Meantime, I will be writing to express my opinion to the Job Centre Plus people directly and copy it to my local MPs and everyone I can think of.

[pip]

Spoke to my CPN (briefly)

and mentioned this.

She said the plan is to have therapists connected to jobcentres

as 40% of people off sick is due to stress.

She didn't think it would happen for years

and said she would deal with my letter.

If she writes to them,

I will get her to copy Tony Blair,

and everyone I can think on in.....

Maybe even the papers.

Bastards.

She is phoning me back re me in an hour

[Betsy]

feeling left out as i got no thanks even tho i responded. maybe i shouldnt respond to you?

[jai]

urgh.....MIND no info on this, bollocks that is rubbish, there was a whole debate about this subject months ago on the radio with a rep from MIND discussing the possible effects and how it might be dealt with...

unbelievable...and the debate and the minister implementing this said it would nt come into affect til 2010 when it had been properly researched and considered.....hmmmmm

suddenly we have been thrown 4 years hence?

[orangesoup]

I had to attend one of these meetings when I first when onto benefits, and have not had to attend one since.

You don't have to talk about your illness. All it is really, is them outlining what help and support they could offer you in regards to supporting you back into work, or training, when/if you feel able and up to it. Mine was literally a few minutes long, she could see I was anxious, and didn't press me on anything. If you have a support worker they could go along with you if that would help?

Sorry this has caused you so much stress and worry hun.

(((((((Real)))))))

[pip]

Oh,

I am such a twit!!!!!!!!!!

I think I had one of those initial meetings

CPN came with me and when the girl asked me a quest

I just looked at CPN and she answered.

That was when I first got benefits.

Don't remember what was said

I prob wasn't even listening!!!!!!!

[mrs tree]

I just replied what happened to me on jai's thread real...

I agree it just adds to stress ....

I also got one last year to see an advisor as hubby gets i.support i told them there was no point me going as i was on incapacity and not well enough to work...i never heard about that again....

hope this stays away

Mrs T

[realscape]

feeling left out as i got no thanks even tho i responded. maybe i shouldnt respond to you?

Hi Bets

Sorry, I only just re-checked this thread and saw your response which came up before Jai's but for some reason when I was posting I didn't see it. Anyway, thank you for your response. I was away doing family dysfunctional dynamics for a few days and not feeling too great at the mo. I will prob write something about it when I feel more connected back to my usual life and this site. As soon as I got home there was this lovely letter from the Job Centre so I posted about it straight away, I haven't really caught up with myself or what others have written on other threads yet though.

Anyway, sorry, of course your response is always welcomed with interest and your points and advice is usually spot on. Sorry to hear how hard it is for you and your son, its so horrible for them to put you through that. Unfortunately, I am now in complaints procedure about psychotherapy madness and told psychiatrist what I thought of him so possibly blown the possibility of sympathetic support letters out of water. Although they do think I'm mad and antisocial and dysfunctional as a result of those things. :wacko:

[Betsy]

i'm sorry real... just had a hyper sensitive paranoid moment.. i shouldn't have posted.

good luck with your thing. you really end up handling things well. calling the absurdities of the situation to the powers that be.. that is a good thing.

really i am fine.. lol.. i should have invisiibled my self and then wrote me up for being too sensitive! plus i know i don't know the uk system we have our own (but different) f'd up systems here.

bets

[realscape]

Bets, tis better to be oversensitive than undersensitive in my humble experience.

You have made me giggle thinking of what it would be like if we all had the powers to be retrospectively invisibling posts - nothing'd get writ, leastways, it would be very confusing with things appearing and disappearing at a strange rate. :lol:

[pip]

(((Real)))

Sorry, I was/am pretty wrapped up in me just now.

I hope you are ok

Pip

x

[Betsy]

lol real.. that would really make us question our sanity wouldn't it.. lol

hey, did u see that?

bets

[lostsoul]

hmmmm. ok, well i had one of those meetings and it was basically a case of them saying what do you have and me very vaguely outlining it. then they asked me whether i was in treatment and whether the treatment had worked for others. they also asked me if i was planning to go back to work or what things they could do to help me go back to work. but it wasn't like pressurising or anything - they were literally JUST asking. it is merely an information gathering session and not that intimidating or accusatory at all.

to be honest, the questions were invasive, but at the end of the day, the people asking them ARE part of the system (i mean the people at the job centre), and as such, need to play their part within it. whilst you might not agree with it, that IS how the system works, and if you don't play the game (and as bets said, it's better to play in the long run) then you risk losing benefits. for me, that is more stressful than going to the interview, so i went, and i took it with good grace. yes it was a bit stressful/ unpleasant, but i can't have it my way, so i have to do it theirs.

if people want to get into advocacy, well ok. for me it's too much stress. if i could handle writing people letters and having hostile conversations with people on the phone, then i wouldn't need benefits anyway, cos i could get a job. my path is the easiest one lol. the other thing that comes to mind is that the government are paying me money. i think they have the right therefore to request various proofs as to why they are giving it to me. whether this is requested by a jobcentre member of staff or a medical professional is irrelevant to me. at the end of the day, if i am willing to discuss my problems with a doctor, why am i not willing to talk about them at the jobcentre?

if someone is paying me money for something which CAN change (and mental illness is not always permanent) then they have the right IMO to ask for interviews to catch oup every so often on a person's surrent status.

i agree however that they could do these interviews perhaps by other means - like have someone arrange to visit with the person and their psych/careworker/therapist etc, instead of having it take place at a jobcentre. i do think that it's a bit offputting talking to someone who you know doesn't know about pd's, which can be difficult to explain at the best of times.

good luck real. i hope you find a solution you're happy with.

xx losty xx

[jai]

Losty i hear you on all of that. I agree accountability is something of the hot potatoe that gets idealised and devalued according to whose hiding the countries dosh. They are really about to inflict misery on many with the decision to stop ib ,call it something else and get the sick back to work. One person actually said on the radio, that those with pd's have no right to sit on benefit....now that is just one opinion, offered by a mental health nurse, i may add, but more of those and it will be legal to cull us lot in the name of rationalisation of services.

I never kick up a stink with the man that pays my way , on the other hand dont feel empowered or well enough to do so. Hence this decision is ultimately going to me and the rest of a large vulnerable group even more at risk.

So, yes we do have to provide ongoing proof of our fucked upness, but not in order to withdrawer without much warning our lifeline of income.

[orangesoup]

I agree with you losty, I am quite submissive(is that the right word?). Well I just go along with whatever they say, as anything else is just too stressful. And yeah they are the ones that ultimatly have the decision to carry on giving me money, or to try and take it away, which for me would possibly be the worst thing that could happen...I just couldn't cope with that. I don't want to bite the hand that feeds me.

So I just go with the flow...It's not like they call me in every week for a meeting and try to force me back into work...But I do think its fair enough to check up on us...Because there are people who are perfectly fine, and sit on benefits because it is easy, and unfortunatly they make it so that everyone has to be checked up on.

As for people with pd's not being on benefits...Well, most of us don't just have a pd, and have other diagnosises along side it. And as a group we are usually quite unstable and get stressed easily...Those things(and many other things on top) are not condusive to holding down a full time job. I do genuinly hope that there will come a day when I am able to work again...But until I am well enough, that just isn't an option.

[lostsoul]

i don't know what will happen with my benefits. it's kinda tricky.

i am telling my T that i am better, so she has written all that down. my psych is informed accordingly. next time i need a letter, i don't know whether my T/psych will provide one. at the end of the day, i am genuinely better, to the point where i probably don't even qualify for the diagnosis bpd anymore, but i do meet avpd, and i do have a diagnosis of cyclothymia, and more's to the point, still don't feel i can work.

i think you have to be very canny - when it comes round to letter time, you betcha i'll be throwing a crisis to ensure that my diagnosis is not officially changed and my benefits are not affected.

i know that despite whatever they call my problems / inabilites / shortcomings and sometimes outright failures, i am at the end of the day different beyond belief from most other people. i can do all the therapy in the world, but i need my safe place - i need to be at home or on familiar ground and by myself a lot of the time. any more than that and i fall to pieces. i don't give a stuff if other people agree/disagree with that - i know it to be true. so the rest is game - the rest is putting number one first.

i'll do whatever i have to do to ensure that i am not pushed around, and bizarrely, that seems to be mroe easily achieved if you play the game as it is, and not how you'd like it to be.

x

[mrs tree]

I guess the problem is if i was well enough to sit and chat with some woman i don't know in a place i had never been i would prolly be thinking about its time to go back to work.....

The fact you are signed off for a period of time is suggestive of wether you need help...I am signed off indefinately but definately don't want there help till I am ready...

Mrs T

[realscape]

Lost, I am finding some of your remarks offensive.

For anyone on Incap Ben or DLA who feels fine about discussing what type of job you are looking for, then good for you, you are far far in a better space than me. In fact, I dispute that you should be on Incap Ben in the first instance if you are contemplating what type of work you are looking for. When you are put on jobseekers allowance and being offered placements by the government and having your money stopped if you don't accept them and you feel that you can cope with that then you are on a different planet than me and are 10 million times more stable and sorted than me. It is for the best that you aren't on Incap Ben for much longer because you prob shoudn't be on it anyway if thats where you're at and at least you can reduce the numbers how they want.

I personally think that people of all types of disability need advocacy and support for this problem in order to prevent them from being slid out of benefits and becoming stressed and anxious more than their mental health problems already make them. The government is quietly moving everyone on Incap and DLA into being jobseekers. This is disrespectful to people's medical needs and over-riding medical professionals opinions and a denial of the whole notion of social welfare. I am not playing a benefits game, I am ill. I will still be ill when my benefits get cut off. Then I will be ill and homeless and penniless. That would be a bit of a false economy. With the right help and therapy, I could have got to a better space in my thinking by now but I had wierd abusive therapy and have no support at the moment. I never wanted that, I wanted to get better and stronger. Now all I want to do is kill myself. I am so close to acting on it. How can I go to the jobcentre and tell that to some woman who is a careers advisor there to find me a job when I am signed off sick for at least another two years. It doesn't make sense. From the privacy of my own home, I can make the phone calls, I can write about it here. When I feel well enough. I can try and find out if there is any advocacy for people like me in this situation. But Lost if you think that makes me well then I am baffled. I call 'well' being able to get up, get dressed, use public transport, go to a centre of beuarocratic pen pushers to talk about what job I want. And then be sent to interviews. That is normally called being a jobseeker.

Lost, I can assure you that if you attend a jobseeking appointment you will be coerced into looking for work and slid onto jobseekers allowance. The point is, if that suits you, then that is fine, you are quite well, you will get the right help to place you into a job. If the thought of having to do that is making you feel anxious and insecure and threatened and suicidal then really you are ill. As I am. Which is why I am signed of semi-indefinitely. My friend is signed off permanently and was told she needs lifetime therapy but she is also having to go to one of these interviews. There is a nonsensical aspect to it. How can a doctor say this person is too ill to work and an unqualified staff at a jobcentre say this person must come and discuss working?

Lost, my hostility relates to repeated and severe sustained and traumatic abuse from parents, authority, and medical professionals in my childhood. Your denigrating it is as offensive as denigrating someone who has any other type of trauma or OCD. I get hostile when things don't make sense, when i feel that authority is abusing me again. This is happening now, and it is very triggering for me. I was told that I was being signed off to give me space to recouperate, to be left alone, to gather my thoughts and get well again. I only just got DLA granted for at least 2 years and now I'm being told I have to go and discuss getting a job. I literally can't cope with that.

[pip]

I am with you real.

The thought of it makes me feel sick

and suicidal

Pip

x