Deaf Job Seekers and the DWP

Iain Duncan Smith - SoS at DWP

I signed on this week as unemployed and have become a shiny new cog in the glorious Heath-Robinsonish munificence which is the Department of Work and Pensions [DWP].  Iain Duncan Smith [IDS] is Secretary of State at DWP.  It would take weeks and thousands of words to adequately describe the Dickensian nightmare IDS has created at the DWP.  Steve Bell of the Guardian has captured it - the DWP culture and IDS himself - superbly in his current 'If..' strip.  Take some brief time-out to go there and find yourself laughing and crying at the same time.


My local Job Centre+ [that 'plus' symbol always makes me smile] processed me this week and re-engineered me into the shiny new Coalition Cog that I am now.  And they did this with their computer systems down/crashed, or perhaps they were being polished by A4E work experience placements.


In the midst of a lengthy script, I was told/warned I needed to let them know if I was going to be late for my 9.21 am sign-on slot.  Apart from raising an eyebrow, James Bond-like at the precision of 9.21 am, I asked how a deaf or hearing impaired 'customer' [smiles again] could advise JC+ of having fallen under a bus on the way to signing on.  Consternation and confusion all round.  When I suggested 2-way text messaging as being readily available and suitable for most deaf and hearing impaired people, the reaction was akin to that one would expect when breaking wind audibly at the £250,000 dinner table in Downing Street.


I was assured by the staff that the issue would be looked at.  I gently pointed out that, as a public body, the DWP and its many glorious parts - and those parts now privatised and in the hands of such as A4E - were required to provide deaf and hearing impaired people such as myself with the same level of access to and interaction with DWP as is enjoyed by all non-deaf and non-hearing impaired citizens.  This did not seem to be a nugget of knowledge which had been passed on to DWP staff through equality main-streaming training.


Knowing what it is to struggle in a public sector body to get equality made reality from the bottom up, I have since submitted a Freedom of Information [FoI] request to the DWP and asking them to list what 2-way communication options they have in place nationally for engaging with and being accessible to deaf and hearing impaired people, and asked them to list what similar arrangements they have in place in local JC+ offices across the country to enable equality of access for JC+ 'customers'.


I will share the outcome from this FoI request in a future blog.