With Chancellor George Osborne’s latest plans
concerning his intentions for the long term unemployed having been announced
yesterday (Monday 30th September), right now the idea of becoming
unemployed is even less attractive to us than it normally is. However,
sometimes we have to be realistic. If the worst does happen and you do lose
your job, you need to find out what benefits you are entitled to as soon as you
can; there’s no point in you languishing without any cash support in hopes
you’ll find a job quickly, if we’re being honest, the job market isn’t always
that kind these days.
So, if you’re like most of us and you either
haven’t ever had to sign on, or you haven’t signed on since your post uni days,
when you were green and looking for someone to give you a break, you’ll be a
little rusty when it comes to the process, and well, everything’s changed
anyway. Things have radically changed over the last few years as technological
advances and government initiatives have streamlined the process to save time
and money and make the whole thing more efficient.
These days you no longer have to fill in a
paper form; the whole process has gone online. If you go onto www.gov.net/jobseekers-allowance you can get
instructions on how to start your process, as well as access to the online
form. The online form will take you around half an hour to complete and will
take you through several areas including your personal details, details of your
work history and a benefits calculator for how much you are entitled to.
Once you have completed this form, you will
be contacted either by phone or more often these days by text outlining the
details for your first appointment at the job centre nearest to you, where you
will go to confirm the details of your jobseekers allowance agreement. It is
possible that if you have a reason that the jobcentre deems acceptable e.g. you
already have an interview that clashes with the appointment time, then you will
be allowed to change the appointment, but it has to be an acceptable reason.
Then you get to the appointment. It’s
actually a straight forward process. You get to the job centre, you get called
over by your appointed adviser, and then they sit you down and go through your
jobseekers allowance agreement with you, which outlines your obligations which
ensures that you can receive your benefits. This agreement usually concerns the
minimum amount of hours that you will spend a week devoting to your job search,
and also an agreement to record this job search down either in writing or via
an internet programme known as ‘Universal Jobmatch’. Then you sign, and wait
until your claim is processed, and then you get your first payment, which is
usually backdated to the day you submitted your online form.
