Early experiences of being on the dole

I'd become disenchanted, but after over ten years of solid work in the social care field I naively thought I'd have no problem finding work. I signed on in the meantime.

When the first money came through it took a full five minutes for me to realize the money was supposed to last TWO weeks, not one, as I had first assumed when I saw the giro. I did find work, although what followed was five years of sporadic employment, hardly any of which I liked especially. This was interspersed with periods of enforced idleness and being constantly broke.

I was a cycle courier, I ran a second hand shop, I worked for the local bus company. What was really happening was a gradual slide into full-time continuous unemployment, and when you're unemployed people just don't want to know.

You can bang in as many applications as you like, however the minute the prospective employer sees THAT gap on your CV that runs up to the present day you go onto the "not interested" pile. Maybe folk just assume you're sat at home watching daytime TV?

Then there's the rigmarole of signing on: endless form filling repeating information the system already has and blank-faced job centre staff who are trained to suspect you of trying to defraud the state. As if one would go to such extraordinary lengths, given the amount of time one has to spend in the job centre and the housing benefit office in order to obtain benefit. Benefit one is entitled to, benefit that will only cover your most basic spends, only if you are fastidious in your budgeting; writing detailed lists of all your necessities.

You give all the pertinent information to the first member of staff, you repeat it all to the person they pass you on to, they send you away so you can write all this information down on the relevant forms, you go back to the office a few days later and repeat it all over again and a member of the job centre staff will enter certain pieces of information into the computer. If all goes well you will get your money.

What this process does is, it takes up an inordinate amount of time to achieve a very simple outcome and is multiplied many hundreds of times all over the land. This generally leaves the customer - we're all customers now - feeling rubbish; left out, skint and on their own. The whole business is demoralising and dispiriting. It's not all bad, there are places out there: church groups, unemployed workers groups, places for the homeless, that very much give you the feeling that you're not on your own. I must say, there are not that many, but it's got to be worth looking.