Sally Goes To A DWP Assessment.

As soon as the woman comes out of the lift she said, “O my god” because there were 10 of us waiting outside the door. She rushed into the room and yanked tables around and then clicked her tongue and waved to make us hurry in. “Have you got the form? No that’s not the right form.” Even when it was. She reminded me why it isn’t so bad not having to work, she reminded me why I hated working with people like her.

Three men had been sent to the wrong college. One woman had been sent at the wrong date, it was all written down they hadn’t made the mistake but they had to come to the wrong place on the wrong day, and then had to make new arrangements. About 6 of us hadn’t been told to bring a particular bit of paper, we’d all been referred on the same day by the same person but it was our fault and so the 6 of us couldn’t register for the course that day, we had to come back with the form.

The computer assessment was alright, and then we had to go up to be told where to go next. There was another form to fill in but nowhere to sit. She was sat down, I had to stand, it reminded me of being at school. She gave me some dates and asked if I could do them. I told her about my sons appointments with the doctor and she said “You have to attend all of them.” So I asked her, “Why did you ask if I could do all the dates, why didn’t you just tell me I had to attend all the dates?” And she just said something about having to attend all the dates.

She had an assistant who was nicer, she was Japanese I think, very polite, very calm, and then this mad old bitch in charge of her.

Some of the men panicked, one had to leave, he said he felt unwell, A couple of others had never used computers so just clicked ‘next’ for 15 minutes and then left. The rest of us just got on with it. It was something I had to do, it could have been alright, it might be alright depending on what it leads on to and if the Job Centre allows me to attend all the days. I don’t know what I have to do about signing on, ‘cos you have to sign on and you have to be at this place 9-5.

Cause of Death: Individual Civil Servants.

Please read this demolition of the Work Capability Assessment  by the LSE.

"There are also increasing stories of suicides committed by people left without any means of income fighting and winning appeals, only to find they are called for WCA reassessments shortly after. As part of the recognition of the increasing trend of those going through assessments to take their own lives Job Centre Plus staff have been issued with guidelines on how to deal with people who they think might be suicidal because of the WCA testing."

Well, Dole Office staff were also issued with guidelines on how to identify and deal with people who might be susceptible to loan sharks. They don't have the time. A majority don't have the inclination. I had an extraordinary, Kafkaesque conversation with a DWP operative last week on behalf of a non-counselling client. After listening to the long list of reasons Why Not, I attempted an empathic response along the lines of, "It sounds as if you might be under a lot of bureaucratic stress." Fully 10 seconds passed in silence. I sit opposite a clock and counted! In your next formal phone call I challenge you to leave a 10 second silence. Her eventual response was this:

"That's nothing to do with me. If she [the client] doesn't turn up I'll stop her benefits."

And then she put the phone down.

It makes me a less than perfect counsellor but I don't care what pressure this person is under. "Just Doing My Job"is also known as the Nuremberg Defense, and like the other very ordinary individuals who did a job to feed their families, even if that job was dropping pellets of Zyklon B into air vents, you cannot process disabled people through demeaning, painful processes and not expect to be involved in abuse. You cannot be involved in a system that for many years has been responsibile for suicides without knowingly being involved in abuse. Then again, I know that a person who works in this kind of system is also being abused. And then some wretched machine part will come out with this kind of statement, which makes me lose all understanding again:

"We are sorry to hear that Mr Deighan has [killed himself]. I understand that you are dealing with his affairs. We have looked again at Mr Deighan's Income Support claim and found that he was paid £160.55 too much Income Support. . . the amount is recoverable from the estate of Mr Deighan."

I have a strange acquaintance with a man who works at my local JobCentrePlus office. It's highly boundaried because he knows I disapprove of his job and because I've told him I would rather someone like him did the job than the callous horror on the end of the 10-second silence. He often seems desperate to talk and knows that this would make his life complicated in all kinds of ways, not least the likely outcome of whistleblowing  (I don't know whether to laugh or cry or take up arms over this dripping-with-hypocrisy page.)  He's getting visibly older by the day. He always has the option to leave.

Thinking Allowed

An extraordinary interview with the social science researcher, Tracy Shildrick. People who depend on others to provide them with food and clothes 'without exception' do not describe themselves as poor but blame each other for being 'feckless.' Ms Shildrick and her fellow researchers were surprised by the levels of poverty they found and with some of the attitudes of the people living in poverty, which for me describes the chasm between the poor and the not-poor.

Here's the report the interview is based on but I strongly urge you to listen to and hear the rather shocking conclusions.

If you do no other work on poverty this month, please listen to this.

Stress of Poverty Changes the Brain

I'm mildly deflated by the election results and so can only muster up the energy to refer you to some interesting research from 2008.

Hey ho.

Keeping it simple.

 Here’s a wonderful video from the official 'No To AV' team which demonstrates just how confusing and complicated the Alternative Vote system is, far too difficult for you to grasp – not that you’re stupid, even celebrities have a hard time understanding it.

For me, this argument demonstrates a technique that we all use to some extent to disempower each other. “They want to bring in this new fangled way of doing things but it’s so complicated that you won’t understand what They’re doing until it’s too late. The way we do things right now isn’t perfect but it is simple, and that’s how you like life to be.”

The temptation is to follow that line in explaining unfamiliar concepts to people who might be resistant and threatened, particularly concepts that ask us to look at the way we are in the world, and change.

Some months ago I wrote to the BACP about the cost of accreditation. For people on benefits it’s £110, for people not on benefits £220. The UK average wage is £499 a week so is it reasonable to expect someone who isn’t on benefits to pay £998 for accreditation? Because this is equivalent to what the BACP expect people on benefits to pay.

Of course, the BACP first ignored my letter, then misunderstood it to mean that I was asking the cost of accreditation for a counsellor on benefits, then said they’d answer ‘in due course,’ then told me that these were standard rates. There was absolutely no interest in the subject. Just keeping it simple, because we like things simple.

In a world of woefully increasing simplicity some of the most thoughtful people I come into contact with are counsellors. The majority of us are able and willing to engage in contemplation at a deep level; we’re becoming more used to concepts of privilege and passing but I wonder just how many white, straight, able-bodied, above-average-income counsellors really do get it. Frankly, I’ve never expected much from the BACP, they’ve always seemed far too concerned with status over anything else and have done more than any other group, including government, to make counsellor training and practice less accessible and more expensive.

But we join them. We jump through their hoops. We say we adhere to the Ethical Framework. The BACP itself doesn’t adhere to the Ethical Framework, it publicly humiliates counsellors who have a complaint made against them, makes counselling a preserve of the high-incomed and doeesn't have the manners to address a direct challenge to their principal of Justice

A commitment to fairness requires the ability to appreciate differences between people and to be committed to equality of opportunity, and avoiding discrimination against people or groups contrary to their legitimate personal or social characteristics.

In doing so (as I have done) we give them power so that we don’t have to think for ourselves. Consequently all employers now want accredited counsellors (even though the BACP’s own research shows that more complaints are made against this group than any other) and the BACP has become the entire professions de facto governing body.

The subject is paradoxical but where there’s paradox, there’s power. On one hand it is supremely simple: people who are poor are directly and indirectly discriminated against within counselling. On the other hand it is complex and problematic: could the BACP use a principal of proportionate paying for its services? How might that work? How do you and I address the fact that people who have very little experience of counselling often counsel people with desperate problems?

Or is it true that counsellors do, in fact, like to keep things simple and don't want any new fangled, complicated nonsense getting in the way of keeping things just as they are? Is counselling another industry, like car making, banking or construction, just using the language of reflection and philosophy rather than actually practicing it? Does counselling have anything a little more genuinely human to offer itself? Or not?

Nothing About Us Without Us Is For Us.

The Poverty Truth Commission has published its first report

"It is crucial that we understand the roots of what poverty is.

First, it is structural, being systemic to the distribution of power, resources and educational opportunities in society. Second, it is a form of violence that comes from a deficit of empathy between those who have much and those who have little. Third, it is intergenerational, with its life-crippling seeds getting passed on in early childhood. And fourth, it is sustained by blindness to the full humanity of one another, showing it to be a pathology of the rich and not just a deficit of the poor. 

These four drivers are so fundamental to the human condition that they require not quick fixes but an evolution in human consciousness and in how we see our national identity. To walk this path we must allow ourselves to be challenged by Truth - the truth of where we and our world stand, the truth of where we know we are called to go, and the many truths of how to bridge that gap. Truth is an active power for change. Reconciliation is what brings us back together again in our common humanity. Both spring from the sharing of community. Truth and reconciliation are about seeking that which gives life. Life as love made manifest."

Alastair McIntosh Commissioner

We call on the people living in poverty to be involved in shaping and delivering anti-poverty policy. We challenge governments to involve directly involve those who struggle against poverty in designing, implementing and evaluating solutions to poverty.

We recognise the wisdom, knowledge and expertise of people living in poverty - the real experts without whom limited progress will be made. We challenge people who are struggling to overcome poverty to share their struggle and to work together with others for lasting change.


We challenge those concerned with injustice not only to talk about those who are marginalised but to support them to bring about change.

Where do you place yourself in relation to these words?

Why am I being lectured about social mobility by people who were born at the top?

Useful peice from Susanne Moore in todays Guardian

Huge income disparity ensures a complete slowing down of social mobility. The rich don't see the price we all pay. Nor do they care about the returns made on the investments that the state makes in its citizens. The state that provided my education and housing for a period of five years enabled me then to work and pay taxes for the rest of my life. Without that support I would not have been able to work and support my children as I always have. Mobility for me came from access to education, housing and childcare. It was that simple. The super-rich, however, may bypass the state altogether and, as is now clear, exist beyond the reach of government. They are untouchable.

Social mobility is fine in theory, but in practice we live in a society where it is becoming more and more difficult for many to move at all. Nudging is not nearly enough. The reality of deepening inequality is horrible paralysis. The numbing of chance is never a fine thing.