Now Elderly JSA Claimants Have To Grovel To Use Jobcentre Toilets

The brilliant Kate Belgrave has the full story. Extract below:

I attended a first JSA signing-on session last week with Tony, who is aged 60. These inaugural signon sessions at this jobcentre are not held as private, one-to-one meetings. People must attend these sessions as part of a group.

This is a big problem in itself, because people don’t always want to reveal their private information in front of ten or 12 strangers. People must fill in their claimant commitment forms as part of this session. They have to write about their histories and work experience, and not everyone wants to ask the questions they have about these things in front of people they don’t know. People might be ex-offenders, or have long gaps in a work history because they have serious drug and alcohol problems. They may have problems with their reading and writing. On this occasion, one person asked me if I could spell out several words for their form.

Anyway. The toilets. Someone in the group asked if there was a public toilet in the building. The adviser who was running the session said No. There was a public toilet at the jobcentre once, but apparently needles were found in it from time to time and the jobcentre closed it. So – that was the end of that. It was simply a case of Too Bad. No alternative was offered. There’s actually a public toilet at the library just round the corner (I am getting on years and so am kind of familiar with the location of pretty much every public latrine in the parts of London I frequent), but nothing was said about that.

This is the sort of thing really gets on my wick. It seems small, but it isn’t. There’s a real vengefulness here. In any other setting, an effort would be made to solve the problem and offer people an alternative. But the normal courtesies aren’t extended to people who claim JSA. Quite the reverse. People who claim JSA are expected to put up with discomfort. They can wet themselves for all anybody cares. The fact that nobody had any choice but to attend the session and stay at it was neither here nor there. And there is no choice. People have to attend these signon sessions if they’re going to get unemployment money. If they don’t attend and stay, they can’t get JSA. The sessions are long – this one went on for more than an hour and people had to wait a while for it to start, so it probably lasted an hour-and-a-half all up. Add on another half-hour for the walk or bus ride there and you’re getting past a couple of hours.