Remember the placement I’m doing? *EDITX2* in OD

Yeah, it can best be summed up by the following letter:

Dear Sir/Madam,

I am what is referred to as long term unemployed. As such, I have been sent by the job centre to a place called A4e. You may have heard of it, the person who does the television series The Fairy Jobmother used to work for them.

As part of my placement there, I have to do something called work boost. This is a four week work placement, the idea being that I get relevant recent experience in an industry I wish to work in and it, in return, gives me something recent to put on my CV. It, in short, is designed to help me get back into the work market. It’s not too dissimilar to what Iain Duncan Smith is proposing for long term unemployed.

Every time I have spoken to my Personal Careers Coach about my work boost, I have said the same thing. I want to do retail work. If you looked at my CV, it would show that I have plenty of retail experience and all I would need is basic training and I’m good to go.

I am at A4e for a period of one year which started on the 7th of January 2010. This means that they have to get me on my work boost so that I finish before 7th January 2011, when I finish with A4e. Now, it is true that they did try and sort out my work boost at the beginning of November but I was unable to do this for various reasons.

I am due to start my work boost on the 29th of November. What have they got me doing?

Construction.

After months of me saying that I would like to do retail, or office work (which I’m not wild about but would be willing to do) they have decided that the best thing for me to do is.

Construction.

I have nothing against construction workers. My father is a heavy plant operator. Construction is a noble form of employment. It’s just not for me. The way I know this is that if it were, I would have years ago asked my father to help me get into the industry.

I’m not really sure which was more embarrassing. It was either being sat in that room, after being told it was construction I was doing, thinking they’ve put me on this because they need to get my placement done and there was no retail placements available at that time, only to discover that other people in the room were on a retail placement or when I asked someone about it later and they informed me that there were no retail placements left when I was put forward for it only for me to reply that I had been asking for retail for months only to get this.

It may actually have been having to explain to my mother that I would not be home for Christmas in order to do a work placement that would have absolutely no impact on my search for work.

It’s not as if I can refuse to do the placement. Such a refusal will result in me losing my benefits and therefore having absolutely no money to live on. As much as I don’t want to do this, I have to.

I don’t blame my current PCC for this situation, as the first time I spoke to him as my PCC was to complain about what was happening. But, if anyone wants a reason why it’s so hard for long term unemployed to find work you can blame it on two things as far as this experience has taught me. The current economic climate is the first. The other? Situations like my one. Whereby people are forced to do placements supposedly designed to help them get back into work but really just for the sake of doing the placement.

Yours faithfully,

William Forbes
Middlesbrough

I dropped a copy of this off at A4e along with the following note:

To whom it may concern,

You will find stapled to this something which is obviously a letter. If you read this, you will see it details my experience thus far with yourselves concerning my work boost.

Why did I write this letter? Simple. I want the situation changed. It’s not much to ask for, to do my work boost in an area that actually interests me, yet it seems like I’m asking you to give me the Holy
Grail.

If I do not hear back from yourselves by 3pm this afternoon concerning this, a copy of the attached letter will be emailed to every single national newspaper from the Daily Star to the Financial Times. It will also be sent to A4e head office and Sir Stuart Bell in his capacity as MP for my constituency.

If/when you wish to contact me about this, you can either phone me on the number you have for me or you can email me at [email protected]

Yours,

William Forbes.

I’m culling the email addresses I need at the moment.

Will

*EDIT*

They’ve just phoned. Their solution? I find myself a work placement. They fucked things up for me and I’ve to sort it for them.

Bugger that.

I’m going to phone them back about 3 and if they haven’t sorted anything I’ll be sending the letter with an amendment to the effect they wanted me to sort it for them, despite the fact that finding me a placement that I want is their job.

Will

*SECOND EDIT*

About 1pm, I got a call from someone at A4e. They had just discovered that I would prefer to do a retail based placement (which I had been asking for for months) rather than a construction course and it just so happens that someone from a local charity asked about getting someone for one of their shops (gee, what a coinkidink!). So I’ve filled out the paperwork and it’s on.

Yay!

And I don’t have to go back to A4e until Jan 4th so I’ll definately be back up the road for New Year.

Woot!

Will