Work Programme Returners

At my last monthly Seetec appointment I was given an appointment for the jobcentre about a month or so in the future. I was told it was a small group session in a small sort of mini-office where us Work Programme types used to go to sign.

I arrived a little early and was let in at 9:00am which was the time of the appointment. There were five of us in the group meeting with an advisor who identified himself of one of a group of three advisors who deal with us Ex-WP people.

The first thing he did was talk about what we could expect the different options for what we might be expected to do but you guys know that daily signings, various courses and/or 30 hours a week Community Placements which is controlled by Seetec FYI.

After this the next thing was that the advisor handed us all Claimant Commitments and asked us to look over them and after assuring us that we could negotiate it asked us all to sign them. I said I was not happy to sign at that time and you could tell the advisor was less than pleased but after a while I think he realised that I wasn’t going to budge so told me to take it away for the first proper appointment. He also said something about legally I have to have a signed CC before my first appointment so maybe he might be setting me up for a wrongful sanction.

The Claimant Commitment also has the Jobseeker Profile on the back of it but makes it clear that it is not part of the CC. Then we were told that it was mandatory to go to this site www.s2sacademy.com and do one of the modules. I can’t put into words how condescending this site is, it reminded me of some of those videos from the 90s that Seetec using on their Elvis site.

Then we went on to talk about My Work Plan. There was a heavy move almost badgering to try and get us to use Universal Job Match. Then he went on to talk about the fact that steps were no longer acceptable which didn’t make a lot of sense but served to try and scare the crap out of us about how much time we spend job searching.

Oh we got taken on a tour of the Jobcentre’s computers and how to use them which requires use of our emails to sign on mention of whether not they record everything we do there also of interest is the fact there are no phones at the Jobcentre now so if you want to call someone and don’t have credit you’re shit out of luck, the advisor saying “well everything is online now”.

The last thing of interest was being told to bring in my CV which I have no problem with but I will not be leaving them with a copy after all the rubbish I went through at Seetec. Hope this helps for people coming up to the end of his sentence on Work Programme.