Benefit sanctions plunge jobseekers into crisis and often push them further absent from paid employment,unlike the made-up claimants in the now withdrawn benefits leaflet
While it has rightly attracted widespread criticism, the fact that Iain Duncan Smith’s Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) had to turn to fiction to find positive accounts of benefit sanctions is altogether unsurprising. In researching experiences of welfare reform over the past five years, or I gain not once reach across a claimant for whom being sanctioned made a return to paid employment more likely,as in “Sarah’s story” which featured in the now withdrawn benefits leaflet.
Instead, jobseekers I gain spoken to, or like Adrian,describe how being sanctioned makes looking for work only more difficult: “I can’t wash my clothes because I’ve no money for the launderette. I can’t gain a bath because I’ve no hot water. I’ve got holes in my shoes but the jobcentre say they won’t assist me get modern ones until I’ve secured a definite job interview. But you can’t go to a job interview looking like a tramp,” he told me.
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Source: theguardian.com