People working is generally considered a ‘good thing’ by government. But that doesn’t always work out. Some people end up unemployed and this is generally considered ‘bad’. This is my understanding of economics in the form of a weak opening paragraph.
So you would think that the government would be keen to get those who find themselves unemployed back into work and contributing to the economy again. They make a lot of noise about wanting to fight unemployment and get people back into work.
But for some people, getting into work isn’t that easy, particularly if you’ve been made redundant.. If you’ve spent the last twenty years of your life working on a very specific machine in a factory, it might be quite hard to find another job that uses your fairly limited experience. You might be a great employee, but if all you know how to do is one thing, you need to hope that some jobs come up to do this one thing pretty sharpish, or you’ll end up spending a lot of the day watching the Jeremy Kyle show, a fate I wouldn’t wish on anyone.
This means that for some people, the best way back into work is to increase their experience, there are a few ways of doing this, but I want to focus on training.
Retraining someone whose skills base may be limited and job specific gives them a far better chance of getting back into employment. Those who have been away from education for an extensive period of time (a nice way of saying older people) may be less familiar with computers and many of the programs that we take for granted in the work place nowadays, such as Excel and Word.
But for some people, there is a very specific problem blocking them from training – benefits.
If you are on a training course, you are not entitled to jobseekers allowance as you are not ‘actively available for work’.
For many unemployed people, job seekers allowance is their only income. This is what they need to be able to afford things like food and electric. For some families it is already a stretch to make ends meet from one week to the next. Tell them that the government is willing to train them with new skills to help them back into the work place, many will bite your hand off, tell them that they’d have to forgo benefits while they do it, and they’ll tell you it’s not possible.
How are they meant to go without any income for a few weeks while they do their training? How are they meant to afford to feed their kids or themselves, or get the bus to the college, or pay bills during this time?
I’m not even talking about long term courses. I mean short courses, only a few weeks long. It may not be a huge amount of money that would have to be sacrificed, but when you already don’t have much, it can be a big gap. But these courses can help those who find themselves unemployed, or have been for a while and want to change their situation, back into the work place and off benefits which cost the taxpayer far more in the long term than they would for the length of the training course.
One of our Assembly Members has recently had correspondence with Jim Knight MP, Minister of State for Employment and Welfare about the issue. His opinion is only a course that is worthwhile should be funded (fair enough) but that Jobcentre Plus staff would therefore have to make a judgement on the appropriateness of the course and that such decisions would be ‘largely arbitrary and unsound’. Because obviously giving no-one a chance isn’t an ‘arbitrary and unsound’ decision itself. Even those on training courses through ReAct are not able to get benefits, despite the fact that this is a government scheme!
The decisions made by staff would be anything but arbitrary. By talking to the claimant, assessing what the course offers and what local opportunities would be available, appropriate, informed and rational decisions on whether the claimant should be paid benefits during this time could be made. Or do you just not trust the Jobcentre staff to do that Mr Knight?
Take someone who wanted to do a beer brewing course for example. You might get thousands of people requesting that they be allowed to keep their benefits to do this course who are just timewasters who want to play with beer and should be refused. But if they happen to live in a town with a large brewery, maybe that should be funded? Advisors are in a position to assess each applicant on their own merit, according to their aspirations and talents, not just on the basis of everyone ‘not being worth it’ that seems to be happening at the moment.
By blocking access to training, the government may be saving a few weeks worth of benefits per applicant, but helping to keep them on benefits longer. People should be given as much support as possible to get back into work, not hindered because the government won’t put faith in staff to make appropriate conditions. Money is a massive block to training for many people and the government should be trying to fight this wherever possible, not building it into the benefits system.
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