Chapter Nine – New Tricks

Thursday 9^th November  

Catherine Collier was conflicted about the relative merits of Universal Credit.  While her new colleagues had nothing good to say about it, claiming digitally had worked moderately well for her. Being able to make and manage her claim online, and to deal with her Work Coach by email rather than tedious and time-consuming trip to the Jobcentre had been very convenient.  At their only face-to-face meeting until today, she and Colin, the Work Coach, had drawn up quite a light touch Claimant Commitment.  Catherine had been upbeat about securing new work quite soon; Colin had evidently seen she was clever and keen enough not to need mindless courses or micro-management.  A quiet man who looked to be approaching retirement, Catherine guessed he was grateful for anything which made his life easier.
    'We're on the same side,' he reminded her, at the end of that first meeting.  'My job is very much like that of an athletics coach - to get the best out of you.  We'll discuss and agree plans, negotiate like adults, rather than me boss you around.'
    That outlook suited Catherine and anyway, she couldn't see Colin as the bossy type.  She wanted the best for herself and her daughters.  It had been a tough year but she felt she had turned an important corner in getting her previous job, even though it hadn't lasted long.  The same agency as had set that up kept an eye out for other short-term opportunities while she browsed online for the way in to a longer-term career.  Catherine kept her journal up-to-date and Colin appraised of her applications and interviews while he forwarded what he felt were appropriate vacancies.  He didn't always seen to understand what she wanted but a few quick  'Colins' each week helped to keep her application numbers up to their agreed target, while leaving her enough to make the best possible effort at those which genuinely interested her.

Today, according to his text, he wanted a face-to-face meeting, to discuss how things were going.  This looked like being a waste of a day.  There was nothing amiss that Colin could fix.  The problem for Catherine was the level of her payments.  The drop from working full-time, even in a relatively junior position, to claiming as unemployed had been far sharper than she had expected.  She knew she wouldn’t get Jobseekers Allowance but she had anticipated getting maximum Child Tax Credit and Housing Benefit to top up her Bereavement Support Payment.  When she enquired about claiming Tax Credits, she was told she was in a Full Service Area and redirected to Universal Credit instead.  This was a little disconcerting but, as that also covered the claim for her housing costs, that seemed fine. 
    She had budgeted through the initial wait for payment using her final month’s wage and holiday pay.  She had met Colin the Work Coach and happily signed her Claimant Commitment.  She had taken on board some of his helpful suggestions and adapted her job search plans accordingly.  She felt up-beat, as if new opportunities were close at hand, waiting to be grasped.  It was simply a matter of time.

However, when her first UC payment arrived in her account, she was taken aback.

‘You’ve paid less than half of my rent!’ she informed the man at the end of the helpline, when she eventually got through.

‘I’ll ask the Case Manager to call you…’

There had been no call from the Case Manager that day, nor the next.  Catherine found an online calculation programme and ran her circumstances through it.  She was dismayed to find their figures for her entitlement came out very close to her actual payment.  Still not convinced, she emailed her Work Coach, querying the calculation of her housing costs.  She knew, she said, that her girls were supposed to be able to share a room but they had lived in this three-bedroom house for five years and the rent was little more than the Local Housing Allowance for a two-bed.  She hadn’t expected to be more than twenty pounds a month short.

He messaged back, pleasantly enough, reminding her that, as her previous job had run for only three months, she was not exempt from the Benefit Cap.  She would be paid no more than five-hundred and twenty pounds per month for her rent, despite the full amount being eight-hundred and fifty. 
‘I’ll be over three hundred pounds short!’ she explained.

‘Only until you’re back to work,’ he reassured her.  ‘That won’t be long.’

Catherine had some urgent negotiating to do.

‘There was no payment at all for the first week; that’s why it’s so little this time,’ she explained to the usually friendly letting agent.  She made an agreement to repay the arrears although Catherine knew at the time she was being over-optimistic.  It was the start of a new school year; there were uniforms, shoes, books and IT to pay for.  After all that, there was no rent money left that month.

The following month, a Notice of Seeking Possession had forced her hand.  She had to catch up a full month’s rent and the agreed amount off the arrears.  This meant feeding the family main meals improvised from the odds and ends at the back of the freezer and produce from her allotment.  As an emergency measure, she cancelled the direct debits to the utility companies to avoid an overdraft.  She skipped the Council Tax payment.  At the end of last month, she had sold their old car to the local garage when it failed its MOT, promising the girls she would get a new one as soon as she had a job. 

Her next payment was due on the fourteenth of this month and Catherine had committed it already.  She would pay the rent in full again, plus the agreed amount off the arrears.  She would pay something to her energy supplier.  She would do a big shop.  If what was left didn’t hold out, there was the desperate option of making meals from the out-of-date and dented tins Terry Walker put in the ‘Help Yourself Heap’ at the back of the café, or even asking for a foodbank parcel from the main store.

What was so frustrating was how close she seemed to keep coming to regular work.  She had been interviewed two days before, for an administrative job at the Council.  Once again, the feedback she got was positive, but it was a rejection nonetheless.  Catherine had been bitterly disappointed, but quickly gathered herself together and sat up late, completing another application to the same local authority for a similar post, taking on board some of the constructive criticism she had received.   She had another interview in the pipeline, in less than a weeks’ time.  It was with Wave, the Housing Association, as a tenancy support officer.  It was a slight departure from her previous line of work and paid less than she hoped, but it looked interesting, challenging even, and might lead on to better things. 

Spending some extra days volunteering at the Solent Welfare Rights Project might be just the thing to give her an edge over the other candidates.  She had been in on Monday for a chat and to meet the team, staying for lunch at the Community Café and helping in the foodbank in the afternoon, as they were short-handed.  In return, Paula insisted she have a book of lunch vouchers, ‘on the house’.  She returned on Tuesday morning, partly as a strategy to stay calm before her interview, and saw the UC clinic in full swing.  She spent almost a whole day there on Wednesday, assisting Toby in the clinic in the morning and sitting in on a form-filling interview with Lyn in the afternoon.  Although it meant an early start, Catherine felt that it was good to get back into a work routine and mix with colleagues, rather than spend all day scrolling through jobsites, looking at the same non-opportunities again and again.  They seemed to like her.  In particular, Toby thanked her warmly for her help with the clinic.  Although she was a novice on benefits law, she was handy enough with computers and could give practical assistance to their customers while he tackled the advice issues.

She would have gone in again today too, had she been free.  Instead, she was on a different but equally slow bus route, heading to an appointment with her Work Coach.  The message to come in had followed her email to him, to tell him about her volunteering.  She had responded with a note that it hadn’t been meant as a request to vary her Claimant Commitment; she was still spending as much time as ever looking for and applying for work, in the evenings.

He replied that the appointment was mandatory.

The Jobcentre was conveniently close to the bus station.  If he didn’t keep her long, Catherine could possibly go on down to the Project for the afternoon.  Alternatively, with it being such a bright, warm autumn day, she could go home via the allotment and plant her garlic.  From the waiting area, she could see Colin interviewing a man.  They were both seated in a small partitioned booth across the open-plan office from her.  She took her phone out and checked for messages. 

‘Excellent!’  Short-listed again, this time for a Housing Officer post with Clearwater HA.  The interview was the week after next, luckily not clashing with the Wave one.  This post could be problematic; if she got it, it would certainly force her hand as far as getting a new car was concerned – the Test Valley was hopeless for public transport.  With a proper wage to look forward to, she could borrow for that with confidence and having two interviews lined up would be a good start to her chat with Colin.

‘Hello!’ she said, as she took a seat opposite him.  ‘I’ve got some good news!’

She showed him the text.

‘I see.’  He typed the details into his computer.  ‘Another housing-based job.’

‘It’s where my experience lies.’

‘But you are limiting your options, considering the few vacancies that come up.’

Catherine was inclined to dispute that.  ‘Hardly!  There are plenty of different housing providers and projects in Hampshire and  I’ve been able to get seven or eight quality applications in every week.  As for interviews, I’ve had two in the last week.’  She sighed, recalling the near-misses. ‘It was so frustrating!  Both times, they were really positive about my interview and skill-set, and told me I was a very strong candidate, but not quite the best.  Still, there are two more coming up next week, so keep your fingers crossed for me!’

‘We can’t just keep our fingers crossed, Catherine.  We need a change of strategy.  You’ve been out of work for over thirteen weeks now.  I told you that was our target for getting you back to work.’

‘It’s not like I’m not trying!’  Catherine was annoyed at his sudden negativity.  ‘I’m desperate to get out of this situation.  You know what’s happening with my rent.  I just feel so close to getting back into my old career, to picking up the pieces and moving on with my life.  This opportunity to volunteer could make all the difference.’

‘Only if you continue limiting yourself to that very narrow range of public service jobs.’  Colin tapped away at his keyboard.  ‘I’m asking you to broaden your search to include retail and the care sector.’
Catherine frowned.  ‘Why?  I don’t know anything about working in either.’

‘And I’m going to recommend that your target for applications rises to twenty per week,’ Colin continued, overlooking her query.

‘Twenty?  I can’t put together twenty decent quality job applications in a week!’

‘You can manage that easily, if you use Universal Jobsmatch to apply for work where there are more opportunities.  I have jobseekers who apply for twice that in a week.  You only need to forward your CV to them.’

‘I suppose that won’t take long, if I'm not tailoring it or writing a covering letter.’  That flew in the face of Catherine's usual practice.

‘Looking for work is your full-time job – remember?’

‘Of course.'  Catherine felt demeaned by that.  'But time I spend applying for jobs I know nothing about and won't get is time I then haven’t got to spend on applications for better ones.’

‘And yet you have time for this welfare rights project?’

‘I’m updating my knowledge and learning new, transferable skills, aren’t I?’

Colin applied himself to his computer again.

‘There’s a course about care work starting next week.’

‘I have two job interviews next week.’

‘You could attend most of it.’

Catherine had no wish to do so.  ‘Or I could concentrate on preparing for my interview and gaining useful work experience.’

‘I’m going to mandate you to do this course.’

‘Colin, really…!’  Catherine started to argue, but she  knew that getting angry or upset wouldn’t help the situation.  She collected herself and smiled at him.  ‘Let me do it next time it’s on, if I need to.  It would be silly to attend odd elements of it rather than the whole thing.  I might miss the very parts that would be useful.’  

‘Okay.’  He clicked away.
Catherine was unclear where she stood.  She tried to clarify matters. 

‘So I’ll go to my interviews next week, keep applying for housing-related and other work and, as long as I’ve done my job-searches, I'm fine to help out at the Solent Welfare Rights Project?’

Colin didn’t look up.  ‘There’s a short introduction to care work course too.  When did you say your interviews were?’

‘Next Wednesday and Friday.’

‘Perfect.  This is Monday and Tuesday.’

‘Next week?'  She could do without that.  'That’s not a lot of notice.  I was going to sit in on a PIP tribunal.  It would be a really useful insight for this support worker job.’

‘You have to be ready to take up work immediately.’

‘This isn’t work, though, Colin.  It’s just a course - and it’s a course on something I’m not likely to get work doing.’

‘You certainly won’t if you don’t do the course.’

Catherine stuck to her guns.  ‘I won’t be taken on anyway, because I have no experience of that type of work and anyway, I’m over-qualified.  I have an economics degree and the Institute of Housing Diploma.’'You don't have to put those on your cv.'  Colin printed out the details of the two-day course.  ‘It’s mandatory,’ he said.

Catherine looked at the details of this apparently inescapable training programme.

‘It’s in Basingstoke!  How am I supposed to get to Basingstoke for a nine o’clock start?’

‘It’s less than ninety minutes’ travelling time from your home, according to my app.  How would you get to a job there?’

‘I would borrow the money and get a taxi to the station and then take a train to Basingstoke,’ she replied.  ‘This isn’t a job, though.  I’m not getting a wage for it.  I’m going to need travelling expenses.  I don’t have that sort of money left.  I’m down to my last ten pounds.’

‘They will refund you, if you give them your receipts.’

‘I cannot afford taxi fares and peak hour rail fares up front, two days running, before my next payment arrives.’  If it had been for an interview or a real job, she would have found the money.  She would have talked to the bank, or even Aunty Ruby.

‘You can’t afford a sanction either.’

‘You’re going to sanction me?’  Catherine was appalled.

‘I’ll have to refer your case to a Decision Maker.  They might sanction you.’

‘Why not send me on a course nearer home, and after I’ve been paid?’

‘We need to move you on from your current work-search regime.’

‘By sending me to Basingstoke, to do a pointless course?’

‘Are you refusing?’

‘I’m negotiating.  I thought that was how we did this - like grown-ups?’
'You need to start taking concrete steps towards new career choices.'
'Alright, I'll go.' 
Catherine remembered that her Child Benefit was due on Monday.  That would probably pay the fares for the first day.  Colin had better be right about the refund.