UNDER-TRAINED ADVISERS LEAVE YOUNG JOBSEEKERS “SHROUDED IN SHAME”
Job centres for under-25s should be scrapped as they stigmatise and demoralise young people seeking work, and MP has said. At present, under-trained staff in the “high street holding pen”-style offices are leaving millions of 18-25s feeling “shrouded in shame” as they try to hunt for jobs.
Speaking at a school in east London, Labour MP for Tottenham David Lammy claimed many Jobcentre advisers are “box tickers” who lack the specialist skills needed to advise youngsters. Worse still, they are pushed to see too many claimants, to achieve too many sanctions, and to realise ‘job outcomes’ rather than suitable, satisfying, long-term careers. Lammy said:
“Our job centres do not work for young people. The system is broken and it is time for us to fix it. It is not the advisers’ fault — it is just the nature of the beast. But it is a beast that we must slay.
“The JobCentre Plus system is tired, clunking, and poorly placed to meet the changing needs of young people in a fast-changing labour market.
“We cannot fix the local causes of unemployment with a one-size-fits-all national programme — it is time to get rid of job centres for young people.
“We need a system which emphasises young people’s potential for work, not their need for benefits.
“Our young people are entrepreneurial. They are creative. They are flexible. They are everything our job centres are not.”
Lammy also said it was time to scrap the “damaging” link between Jobcentres and claiming benefits, and spoke about the wider implications and long-term effects on people who remain out of a job, adding:
“Unemployment scars young people for life, leading to lower earnings, lower self-esteem and worse physical and mental health for life, not just for the period of unemployment.
“It is time to wake up and realise that the shame is on us. We have allowed unemployed young people to be seen as a problem to be solved, rather than potential to be nurtured.
“We need programmes that seek to integrate young people into the job market, rather than see them become increasingly isolated from it.
“We cannot afford not to do this. Our generation of politicians will be judged on how we rise to this challenge. If we carry on doing the same thing, we will get the same results. It is time to end job centres.”
But a spokesperson for the Department for Work and Pensions insisted the current system is working well, saying:
“We are absolutely determined to do everything possible to help young people into work and give them the best chance in life.
“Every day, Jobcentre Plus advisers up and down the country are successfully helping young people realise their aspiration to move off benefits and into work.
“Through the Youth Contract we’ve hugely increased the number of work experience placements and apprenticeships to give young people the help they need to find a job, and by offering employers wage incentives worth up to £2,275 we are helping businesses to take them on.
“It’s really encouraging that there are 79,000 fewer young people claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance than there were in 2010, and that the number has been falling for the last 16 months.”
Graduate Fog regularly hears from jobhunting graduates who are disappointed and frustrated at the poor advice and service they have been offered by their local job centre. You also say that your interactions with job centre staff drain your confidence further. Do you agree with David Lammy – that it’s time for a complete re-think on what sort of help young jobseekers need, in order to find?
*SHOULD JOB CENTRES BE SCRAPPED?
If you’ve used your local job centre, what was your experience like? Do you agree that they don’t work for young jobseekers? If your experience was poor, was that down to the “box ticker” staff you spoke to – or is there a bigger problem with the whole idea of a job centres?
Mr Lammy’s criticisms chime with my experience of the job centre. JCP if anything had a negative impact on my job search. I must have come across like some overly aggressive used car salesman in interviews as I was so desperate for a job that would allow me to sign off. I went looking for help and felt demonised and eventually signed off without a job – £50 a week was not worth the humiliation. Ultimately nobody cares.
I certainly agree Job Centres are arbitrary, capricious box-ticking exercises – at 26 as well as under 25 (though at least I get a bit more JSA for the humiliation and have a longer period before workfare). Whether or not you have OK-ish advisor seems to determine everything.
However, the inner cynic in me recalls the embryonic workfare schemes and allegedly dubious training schemes under New Labour – upped to eleven under the ConDems with the threat of effectively increasing the education leaving age to 25 – so I’d rather here the details of what David Lammy proposes first. The claimant and unemployment count under 25 should certainly not be disguised or massaged by pretending they’re all “training”.
A genuine attempt to provide real training, to actually help people find work (which the Job Centre certainly doesn’t do now) or real full-time jobs on at least NMW to under-25s would be better. At present, the climate of fear of being set up to fail and sanctioned or put on a workfare scheme is such, that I try to keep my head down at the Job Centre rather than asking for “help”.
Did nearly do a financial services type training course (which sounded fishy, but maybe I’ve just got to cynical?), but had 3 weeks of part-time temp work come along so took that.
@Former JCP Claimant: Yeah I’d sign off if I could. But can’t, since I’m trying to stay in the city I’ve lived in for 6 of the last 7 years, rather than move back without a driving license to more dire job prospects in parents’ houses in rural areas where I know very few people (where I technically would be staying in a spare or guest room anyway). Even at a parents’ house, I’d still need to sign on to service overdrafts from uni.
If I ever win the lottery, I’ll be shredding or burning the Job Centre booklet and perhaps be rather more vocal about past mistreatment in employment 😉 Then do all the travelling I’d love to do with my free time now if I could.
DWP: “Every day, Jobcentre Plus advisers up and down the country are successfully helping young people realise their aspiration to move off benefits and into work.” –
How Orwellian. I know a very small number of people get work through JCP or Work Programme help or schemes, but has anyone on here ever been helped into work by an adviser? One of my hour-long advise appointments was spent discussing the history book I was reading whilst waiting.
DWP: “Every day, Jobcentre Plus advisers up and down the country are successfully helping young people realise their aspiration to move off benefits and into work.” —
A public relations piece of puff that seeks to transpose their interests with yours. As anyone facing un/under-employment will most likely testify the two are not necessarily the same.
They have little interest in helping people into meaningful employment. Instead, they redefine success and seek to cajole and coerce the unemployed into meaningless short term ’employment opportunities’ so that they have a steady stream of people off benefits for a little while to make their statistics look better.
Real training costs money which in my experience, most will not provide or provide in such scarcity that it fails to meet demand. Instead we get ‘schemes’ to occupy people for the reasons highlighted above.
Well having spent three years training to be a journalist with top grades in both qualifications and then going straight into an unpaid work placement through the jobcentre to gain experience until a job came up I was told by an advisor maybe its time to look for a new career! great advice and motivation boost for new graduates!
Job Centers and HR Departments only have two tick boxes: Are you an algorithm robot? Do you know how trade financial derivatives? Clearly, that is what the economy wants Algo Bots and Financial Derivatives. The UK Government does not need humans anymore and they can simply print money to solve their problems.
Job Centers may have good intentions, but they do not understand what is happening to the UK economy. If a young person chose to move off benefits into work, they would be worst off. In other words, they are better off not working than actually finding a job.
The last thing you expect from JCP is a job. They are a poorly run organisation and treat everyone like they are scum and worthless even the genuin ones that want employment. Even the way they structure your CV hinders your changes wuth their termonology they use irrelivant to individuals job roles. I have an A level in math and an Honours Degree and still get asked if i want to go on a Maths and English course to gain a NVQ level 2. Times need to change and help for young people needs to be more achievable.
Is anyone else out of work and without any friends? I spend entire days on my own. I’m losing my mind and don’t know what to do for the best.
I’ve been out of work most of this year, but stayed in my uni city (and just about managed to stay here), precisely because – as well as not wanting to move back to the sticks – I knew people here who had a few more years left at uni.
I find this website http://www.meetup.com/ helpful in meeting new people in Birmingham – some of whom are unemployed or (amongst the recent grads) in low paid work themselves, unlike CitySocialising (which had more well-off members, went to upmarket places and charged a fee).
I realise if you don’t live near a city, can’t afford the travel it may not help much, but thought I’d mention it. Some of the meet-up events are just in pubs, and I’ve managed when skint to keep out of the round system and drink a half-pint very slowly supplemented with free tap water 😉