{"id":479328,"date":"2025-10-07T01:33:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-07T01:33:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/479328\/"},"modified":"2025-10-07T01:33:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-07T01:33:09","slug":"stretched-job-centre-staff-struggling-to-get-disabled-people-into-work-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/479328\/","title":{"rendered":"Stretched job centre staff struggling to get disabled people into work"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Saul Cahill, a work coach at a busy job centre in Gateshead and another PCS Union rep, says people with health conditions and disabled people are often the most difficult to support into work. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He says delays in other services like the NHS mean it can take longer to find someone suitable employment.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">One person he has been supporting, who he says has been &#8220;really engaged&#8221; in their search for work &#8211; despite having a long-term health condition which means they are not required to do so &#8211; has been in his caseload since he started four years ago.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Many employers are simply not able to accommodate some disabilities, Saul says, while time constraints also mean he can not help them as much as he would like.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I might be sitting with someone who is, on paper, doing all the right things and doesn&#8217;t seem to be getting any response,&#8221; he says.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I&#8217;d love to sit down with them [and] go through the job applications together, and that&#8217;s not necessarily possible.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;People get very frustrated.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Around 1.6 million universal credit claimants are in what&#8217;s known as the &#8220;intensive work search&#8221; category. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">They are fit and able to work, but are either not working or working with very low earnings.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">These claimants require significant support from a work coach, including meeting weekly for the first 13 weeks of their claim, and either weekly or fortnightly after that.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Almost 300,000 intensive work search claimants have been job-seeking for more than five years, 18% of the total.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Saul Cahill, a work coach at a busy job centre in Gateshead and another PCS Union rep, says&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":479329,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3092],"tags":[51,897,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-479328","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jobs","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-jobs","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115330312303437891","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=479328"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479328\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/479329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=479328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=479328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=479328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}