and you wonder why I get so pissed off at times ...

email to Jobcentre Plus via Government Equalities Office


Dear People

I received a telephone call from Jobcentre Plus today: I tried to email them, but, my are they shy about giving email addresses for complaints about themselves! It might have been the "local office" that phoned me, but they don't give email addresses either, and I'm too wound up to want to phone anyone, even if I get the right office and even if someone picks up the call eventually.

I did email the first "Jobcentre Plus" that came up in Google, but it turned out to be a different company; the directgov site gives zero information about how to complain about any part of itself.

So here's what I wanted to say to them:

******
I’ve just had a phone call from Jobcentre Plus –

She: We sent you a form on October 4th and haven’t had it back yet.

Me: If it came in small print, I would have sent it back with a covering letter saying that I’m visually impaired and need large print: I always do.
[I checked my correspondence log after this call: it did arrive and I did send it back, using the SAE provided – I don’t know who’s got it, but they don’t seem to have passed it on.]

She: We need your pension details; the provider, and the amount.

Me: The provider is the London Borough of Tower Hamlets; the amount I don’t know cos they use small print too.

She: I'll send you out another form

Me: If it’s in small print I won’t be able to read it; that’s why I sent the first one back.

She: We can’t do large print. Isn’t there someone who can help you fill it in?

Me: No. I live alone and have no friends or family
[not true, but I certainly have none within calling distance. Besides I object to other people knowing private details of my personal life]

She: All you have to do is fill in the details.

Me: But how can I fill in the details when I can’t see the form?

She: You can put them on a piece of paper but you have to sign the form on the back.

I gave up at that point. How am I going to know what details are wanted if I can’t read the sodding form?

“We can’t do large print” in the 21st century? “Can’t be bothered”, more like.

I don’t know how many people work for Jobcentre Plus (I did try a Google, no luck), but as it covers all of the country, I’d imagine there to be several thousand employees.

None of those several thousand people seem to have heard of the Disability Discrimination Act, which has only been law for about ten years.

Even though visual impairment is the fastest-growing disability, none of those several thousand people has apparently ever thought that they just might be able to do something to meet the needs of those disabled people – and conform to the law.

Especially as the DDA says that organisations “must make reasonable adjustments” to enable the disabled to interact on a more equal footing (or less unequal, at least) – and putting a letter or form into large print is hardly unreasonable.

Whoever’s reading this: how would you feel if you had to let your relatives, friends, or the bloke next door know personal details about yourself? Just so that a national government agency can protect its staff from the arduous effort of having to think?

I don’t buy “we can’t do large print”. I’m sure you’d find that you could – if anyone ever bothered to try.

If it’s any consolation, you’re not alone: it took five years and an official complaint to get the Rent section of my council to get past “we can’t do large print”. Odd how quickly they found that they could do it once the complaint hit their desks.

To tell the visually impaired that they must have their personal and private correspondence read to them, as if they were children, that they must let others, even family (sometimes, especially family!) know the intimate details of their personal life, is humiliating, degrading, soul-destroying ... and most of all, completely unnecessary as well as completely illegal.

Any letter, form, booklet or other communication that you send me in small print is going to be sent right back to you. One day maybe your people might just get the message.

I’m fed up with having to grovel for even reluctant semi-decent treatment. I’m sick of having to beg cap-in-hand for even a semblance of normal human understanding and a willingness to bend even a micron to meet the needs of the visually-impaired.

If Jobcentre Plus really is completely incapable of transforming documents, forms, etc, into large print, then please say so in writing, clearly and unequivocally. My legal friend will know what to do. If such an admission is not forthcoming, I shall assume that Jobcentre Plus can do large print, but simply chooses not to – and my legal friend will know what to do with that, too.

If I sound fed up and stroppy, guess what? I am. I’ve been fighting this battle since 1992, when my vision first failed: I’m so tired of having to beg ever-so-‘umbly to be treated just as if I were a real person.


While I'm writing to you ... I am medically retired from work because of an inoperable injury to my lower spine: I am officially unfit for work. So why does Jobcentre Plus keep harassing me? (Granted, you stopped sending me "let's get you back to work" booklets [in small print] after I wrote asking you to take me off your disabled-hate-mail mailing list, and explaining why) - but I am officially incapable of work, so what does Jobcentre Plus have to do with me now? Or I with it?

[my name] [Ms]

*****
You can see why I didn’t want to say this over the phone! Apart from anything else, it wouldn't have been fair on whoever just happened to pick up the call - not their fault.

****
from Jobcentre Plus website:
When you contact Jobcentre Plus, you can expect to:
be treated with respect
be given the right information
be dealt with on time
access services easily [irony, I presume]


[my name] [Ms]

PS: you might get your webmaster to relabel the home page of your site. Saving it to favourites as "Home Page" is hardly informative: whose home page? and there's "do you want to overwrite" all the other "Home Page"s from all the other professional [sic] websites that do this?