Should The Charity Sector Be Advertising For Volunteers On Employment Sites?

One thing that's bothering me right now is the number of adverts that I wade through as part of my job search. I'm not talking about paid jobs because they are supposed to be there... I'm talking about voluntary roles. More specifically, I'm talking about Do-it.org.

Do-it.org is a website where the charity sector can advertise their voluntary roles for members of the public to apply for. It is given free advertising from the Department for Work and Pensions, with work coaches advising claimants to look on there for voluntary roles that they can do to help them to gain experience of the workplace environment.

As far as equal opportunities go, it doesn't have the best record for equal opportunities in my book, with disabled people being automatically declined a chance to demonstrate their ability to carry out the role before they are rejected from the opportunity outright.

In all fairness, charities used to have a website of their very own that they could use to recruit volunteers - until they screwed it up by setting the length of time that their ads would be live for to the maximum value allowed, then leaving them there until they expired.

Anyone who is genuinely looking to volunteer is only going to put up with doing so much ringing around to be told "Sorry, we've filled that role" before they give up bothering with that particular website entirely - especially when you consider that these people are now some of the poorest and most vulnerable in the country. It's not fair to have them use their benefits to waste time calling for a voluntary role that was never available in the first place.

I strongly suspect that this is the reason why charities have now resorted to advertising their voluntary roles on websites that the unemployed are using in their attempts to find employment. Even though they are usually clearly marked as voluntary roles, I fear that there is a chance that some people could actually confuse voluntary roles with paid roles because I'm not ashamed to admit that it has almost happened with me! The only thing that made me realise my mistake was the charity's logo on the side of the advert.

Another potentially negative impact on this practice could be that jobseekers just stop looking at all employment opportunities that involve the charity sector as a whole because they are so used to seeing adverts for volunteers that they automatically disregard them now. This has the potential to have a negative impact on both the jobseeker and the potential employer.

It's for this reason that I think that we either need a filter to filter out voluntary roles, or we need to shift the advertising of voluntary roles away from the very websites that the unemployed are forced to use to demonstrate that they are meeting their commitment of looking for work.

Merry Christmas On Universal Credit

For this post, I want to invite you to Christmas with me!

There is no Christmas shopping to do, you won't see a tree or a string of tinsel anywhere in sight... and you certainly won't be tucking into a turkey at my dinner table. Why's that, I hear you ask? The answer is pretty simple in that we just can't afford it!

We are barely scraping by right now, with less than £200 to support 2 people for 2 weeks. That's right, almost a quarter of our household income is gone by the time we have paid for £20 gas and £20 electricity. We all need heat and light to get through the cold, dark winter.

I've had to deviate from my claimants commitments and restrict my 60 minutes travel to work time because I can't afford the bus and train fare to travel out to interviews in the cities around me. I had pinned all my hopes on a Christmas temp job in a High Street supermarket coming through - at least, then, we might have had a decent shot at a comfortable Christmas this year... but, sadly, I got my rejection email this morning. I don't blame them, though, even at the interview, I was mentally doubting my own ability to do the job for the two weeks that I would have been contracted to do it for - though I didn't let the interviewer in on that fact.

I woke up today and applied for five more local jobs that I know that I'm not physically able to do, but I have no other choice than to do this because I've been referred for a sanction for the past 6 weeks and my work coach has told me straight that this pattern is going to continue every three weeks until I either "do enough to find work" or sanction out of the benefits system for three years. Given the fact that I am physically unable to do half of what is demanded of me, I don't hold much hope of ever being able to "do enough", so I accept the latter and am now reduced to telling her to refer me for a sanction at every meeting I attend.

I tried going to my MP's office because I am desperate for someone just to hear me and accept that falling over/collapsing puts me at a disadvantage for stand up jobs and my hearing impairment will make jobs that require me to use a telephone difficult - especially when I have an ear infection in both of my ears. At times like that, I struggle with face to face communication, never mind trying to communicate over the phone.

I learned that my MP's receptionist supports not telling employers about your health conditions when they ask for them at the interview - apparently, you can do that to prevent them from turning you down for a job just because of your health conditions - however, in cases like mine, there comes a time when I'll have no choice but to tell them because it potentially places myself or my colleagues at risk of injury or death. I wonder what will happen to me then... will I get sacked because of the way that I will struggle to do the work required of me without taking a lot more breaks than an able bodied person and are they even required to make reasonable adjustments because DWP can't wait for me to get the issue investigated and diagnosed?

My Christmas will be spent in the same way as the other 364 days of the year, I'll no doubt be sitting right here applying for jobs and protesting about the unfairness of Universal Credit. The only thing that takes away some of the sting is the knowledge that I am not the only one who won't be having a Christmas this year.

I read articles where people are encouraging people to donate to food banks etc... and it takes all that I have to not scream that this won't help all of us. Some people are too proud to resort to using the likes of the food bank (if they can even find it, that is - some food banks are in pretty obscure places and aren't marked by any signage... my food bank isn't even on Google Maps). The thing is that there are still people in our communities who will go without this Christmas. These are people who would be entitled to help from the food bank, but they find the process of having to list their income and expenditure to be a humiliating process... exactly the same process that also renders a claim for hardship out of their league, too.

We need to find a non means tested way to reach out to those who are struggling to make ends meet so that we can all access the help that we need when we need it because it certainly is humiliating to have to go begging for food, never mind having to also have to prove why you need enough food to give yourself one meal for 6 days - because, let's face facts, these people aren't eating three square meals a day.