Wednesday 27 March 2013

Beware the Savage Jaw

They'll split your pretty cranium, and fill it full of air

And tell that you're eighty, but brother, you won't care

You'll be shooting up on anything, tomorrow's never there

Beware the savage jaw

Of 1984

Those of you who have taken the time to read George Orwell’s “1984” will remember the story of an oppressive society dominated by deceit. A society where facts are distorted to meet the needs of the government and where the people are forced to accept this rule blindly and without question.

I recently reread this outstanding novel and could not help draw huge similarities between the society Orwell predicted and the current state of the Welfare to Work industry. No doubt those readers working in that sector will have gasped in horror at such an outrageous statement, but indulge me for a moment and allow me to explain.

Just like Orwell’ society, the Welfare to Work industry depends on adherence to four central mottos:

Ignorance is Strength

War is Peace

Freedom is Slavery

Long live Big Brother!

Now, let’s look at those mottos and see how they apply to the Welfare to work industry.

Ignorance is Strength

Central to the running of the variety of provisions supplied by the industry is the need to obscure facts. Many years ago, I read a marvellous book entitled “Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics”. In the book the author outlined how statistics can be used to the advantage of the person reporting them. Take for example the following two statements:

1. The lifetime risk of Alcohol Dependence is approximately 15% in the general population. In any year, 5% of the general population will actively be suffering from Alcohol Dependence.

2. The lifetime likelihood of being free from any form of alcohol dependence is now 85% in the general population. In any year, 95% of the general population will be from all signs of Alcohol Dependence.

Technically both say the same thing, but the conclusion reached by the reader would be quite different, depending on which one was read.

It is the same with the “statistics” offered by the W2W industry. Take the figures released a couple of months ago about the “success rate” of the Work Programme. The figures disclosed would suggest that delivery was achieving nothing. Indeed, the evidence would go so far as to suggest that as many people would have secured work without any involvement with the sector. Nonsense, screamed supporters of welfare to work. You haven’t given us time. Wait until another year has passed and you will see how things have improved. But isn’t that a little like a 35 year old inexperienced athlete saying ‘if I’d had another hundred metres I would have beaten Usain Bolt’?

The government are quite happy to go along with this subterfuge. Indeed, they have a vested interest in maintaining the illusion that the broad spectrum of programmes are delivering well above target – even if it isn’t true. What they don’t tell us is the number of providers who fail, the number who are forced to give back their contracts and the number who consistently fail to reach targets.

War is Peace

A browse through the web pages of Indus Delta or the Department of Work and Pensions would soon give the reader the illusion that the vast majority of long-term unemployed are time-wasting, work-dodging, lazy individuals who do all they can to obstruct the ‘support’ offered to them by providers. Whistleblown mail has come into the hands of this blogger confirming that both JCP and the providers ‘attack’ clients from the underlying assumption they will do all they can to avoid work.

As a result, casework is undertaken in a spirit of hostility, where the client/ customer/ service user is brow beaten into accepting the authority of the provider. From the start it is not set up as a help-providing environment but as a controlling one where the client is obliged to do as the provider demands of face the threat of a loss of benefit.

Take the case of Geraldine, a mother of two who had been out of work for ten years. When told she would be referred to a Work Programme provider she was excited, believing it would be a certain route to helping her find work. Nine months on and she continues to see her caseworker, who in turn regularly offers her jobs that have expired or are unsuited to her qualifications (she has a degree and masters from Cambridge University in mathematics). Lately, and in desperation, the caseworker has been offering her vacancies in the caring sector. She dare not complain. If she does she might be seen as hindering her chances of work … and so she continues to keep the peace, because if she doesn’t, she fears she might lose her entitlement to benefit.

Freedom is Slavery

Within every family there are rules – we all grew up with them and we have them in our families today. They range from the simple ‘take your shoes off before entering the house’ to the more intense, such as ‘children should be seen and not heard’. But one of the greatest rules is ‘thou shalt not talk about the rules’. Over the years a number of people have criticised the Welfare to Work industry and their comments are usually dismissed and ridiculed. Media inquiries into the workings of the industry have generally been ignored and their conclusions buried.

Take for example some of the responses I have received as a result of questioning the broad opinions and practices of providers:

Tacticus … Why are you in the employment support industry? Your constant arguments are tiresome, totally unprofessional and are becoming an embarrassment to the profession.

Tactitus .... MOVE AWAY FROM THE KEYBOARD. Keep it out of reach (I appreciate it may need surgical removal). You do not have to respond to comments. Your hands are controlled by your brain. They do not have a mind of their own. Self-control is key.

Interestingly, the Indus Delta webpages have been ‘edited’ and some of the more personal comments raised against me have been removed. No doubt regular readers of my comments will recall them with some disgust.

The bottom line is that freedom of expression is not welcome in the sector. Far from being a broad church of ideas, it is a narrow-minded right-wing oligarchy intent on promulgating the policies of a Thatcherite government. All this under the pretence of extending social welfare when the reality is that it is for the great god of profit.

Long Live Big Brother

Once the ‘customer’ has been referred to a work programme provider they are inducted into the process. This will include the usual overt passing on of information designed to help them understand how WP will work in their lives. The more covert process is to ensure the ‘customer’ realises that the caseworker, along with JCP have the capacity to pull their strings in any way they choose. If they fail to comply they can face the loss of benefit. Equally, if they dare to complain (assuming they are made aware of a complaints procedure and this blogger found a significant number of cases of clients not being informed) the client is likely to be pigeon-holed as a troublemaker and parked.

‘Tammy’ is a Service Desk manager who had been unemployed for 16 months. During that time she had started a correspondence course designed to help him obtain a place at university to study to become a nurse. For a variety of reasons she felt it necessary to complain to her provider about the way she was being treated. Until her complaint they had frequently cancelled appointments without notification, offered her jobs out of the area or requiring her to travel for over two hours each day, and suggested her course inhibited her chance of taking work and informed her that unless she stopped it, the provider might be forced to refer her back to JCP to face sanctions. This is despite her making it abundantly clear she would take any job and work her course around her work hours.

Tammy’s case is not unusual. Rather than using motivational and/ or cognitive behavioural processes recognised within other fields, providers use pressure and sometimes gentle bullying to achieve their end. Why? The answer is simple – the vast majority of staff working as caseworkers have had no formal training in motivational change. Many come from a sales background and use those techniques to coerce clients to do what the caseworker sees as being in their best interests. It is a travesty. How can an entire industry, earning so much government money each year justify delivering programmes with untrained and frequently incompetent staff? They have no excuse – other than to explain it as a desire to make more money.

And let’s take a closer look at these caseworkers – are they really there to help the customer? Or is their role precisely the same as Orwell’s ‘Thought Police’? An army of pro-provider staff whose sole aim is to monitor client thought processes and guarantee they do not stray from the mainstream. If the client begins to question or desire to have a say in their future they are deemed troublesome and risk sanctions.

True there are some caseworkers who genuinely care about their clients, but the good ones soon realise they are facing an uphill struggle and so they leave the sector. Welfare to work has been around for a number of years, but look around the staff and see how many fieldworkers and trainers have been in the sector for over ten years. Nurses, doctors, social workers, teachers stay working on the coalface throughout their careers. Very few Welfare to work staff will do the same.

It needs to end. What is needed is for the government to have a radical rethink about the way it helps people back into work. They need to decide what they want, how they want it delivered and who they want it delivered by. Once this has been decided the government should set up a monitoring body capable of removing contracts and sanctioning providers. It should also have the capacity to register staff working in the sector and demand a minimal standard of training.

But none of this will happen because just like Orwell introduced the concept of Doublespeak to hide the truth from the populace, so the Welfare to Work sector have created Dolespeak, where lies become truth, where coercion becomes help, where bullying becomes support and where incompetence becomes professionalism.

It needs to come to an end, but with the Tories and Labour now entrenched in a core belief that Welfare to Work is the best way forward, despite evidence to the contrary, we are a long way away from sacking the providers.

But don’t give up hope – IT WILL HAPPEN.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Wikio - Top Blogs - Politics