The DWP has put me (I'm on universal credit right now) on a new scheme called 'restart' with out consulting me about it. Does anyone here have experence with the restart scheme?
The DWP has put me (I'm on universal credit right now) on a new scheme called 'restart' with out consulting me about it. Does anyone here have experence with the restart scheme?
It is a catch 22 situation. Having degrees + experience makes an individual overqualified yet having neither makes you overqualified. It doesn't help that most employers barely train staff - nowadays you are automatically expected to know everything and this benefits employers as they don't have to spend money on training resources. Either that or you have small teams doing double (or triple) the work for low pay because again, employers want to save £££.
Another couple of similar schemes / refreshed names which are live currently:
(England & Wales):
- Connect To Work (part of the Get Britain Working Strategy), and
- Local Supported Employment (LSE) ...which may be advertised as though it is a local council initiative ...but the forms rapidly make it clear: they are actually Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) forms for a DWP-funded programme.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/connect-to-work
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/local-supported-employment-guidance-for-local-authorities
(Numerous - forms involved, including one of which is an 18 page pdf for the person looking for employment to complete!).
These initiatives are intended to support people who are disabled / with learning disabilities / have experienced a mental health issue / are Autistic / face barriers to employment.
However, whoever designed the application / onboarding process and the associated forms and online questionnaire clearly did not receive that memo!
That's the problem with having a degree and being overqualified.
The job centre insists you take any job to get you off benefits and look for a better job while doing the c r a p one.
The employers won't employ you for the same reason. They're afraid you leave as soon as you find better work and they have to rehire and retrain again.
Unfortunately if you have a degree and applied to work in fast-food or retail you'd be too "overqualified", especially as the employer knows you wouldn't stay long term. Job centres don't really have much options for people with degrees, they stick you in minimum wage or zero-hour roles because they most likely have higher turnover. I randomly looked at sites for jobs out of curiosity and besides retail/fast-food, you often see jobs in health care or warehousing that pay minimum wage or maybe £2 above.
The modern job market is very difficult to navigate and it is a wonder why people can't get anything these days.
Exactly, every Scheme is the same - just rehashed. Although, Workfare is another awful one as candidates work for their benefits, not a proper wage. From articles I've read on it, mostly retail or charity stores take advantage of benefit claimants and promise them permanent jobs, only to tell them they won't get one. Then it is back to square one where some 3rd party company sends you on another useless course.
I did go on a Work Skills course once when on benefits after 2020 (although I chose to do it to see what it was like) and nothing new was taught about looking for work - it is the typical process of looking for jobs which match your skills, tailoring CVs and cover letters, using STAR in interviews etc.
After graduating from university I attended a CV workshop as-well and it was the same - stereotypical advice that has been heard before. The member of staff who delivered the course recommended contacting hiring managers for feedback after 2 weeks or so when following up after interviews but most employers never give feedback - even when I used to do recruitment in my previous role it was the same process.
Not as such, IIRC from some research it is a way for 3rd party companies to place you in courses which don't help with finding consistent employment. The problem with these schemes is that they don't address unemployment issues - you are more or less a number and once you get put into a job, that fills the daily or weekly quota and that's it.
My previous job was a Kickstart Scheme (then after 6 months a permanent job) as an admin assistant for a care provider and I left in Sep 2023 for a full-time council based role as a receptionist (which I am still at today). From personal experience my Kickstart job was awful due to poor management, not only were you expected to take on a lot of responsibility for minimum wage, you had no guarantee of a permanent job.
I unfortunately witnessed a lot of dodgy practices especially relating to management pocketing money for employee expenses (which they used to fund holidays IIRC), that and over 20 Kickstarters were sacked for failing to work when it was the management's fault for not giving work in the first place. I was in charge of managing this group and continuously pushed management to place candidates in shifts but they would turn their nose up and say "NO" to all of them.
Training was also lacking, myself and an ex-colleague who is a friend of mine and a former Kickstart candidate had to rely on our senior admin for training (even though they only did 20 hours a week due to childcare); my senior tried the best she could to train us but there was pressure from management to do it all. If she wasn't in, my ex-colleague and I had to use trial and error to figure out what to do half the time. I used to train admin staff myself even when I was fairly new to my role and once my team decreased due to colleagues leaving, I trained permanent staff who got £2+ more than me and had no English speaking skills (to note after Dec 2022, the care homes my managers liaised with at the time outsourced shifts to their own staff and there was next to no work so some permanent staff on visa sponsorships got placed in admin). I had a lot of stress issues and was signed off due to depression, caused by this job and bereavement. To sum up, managers didn't care and were fixated on instant results + clawing back money by charging staff for their own training, travel, DBS and even uniforms.
I had a friend who was also on a Kickstart Scheme job and IIRC she quit because she never got paid on time (I also had this experience + at least a year's worth of missing pension contributions and had to report to ACAs). From experience, the Scheme benefitted employers because they could get away with hiring younger people on the cheap and rotating between groups of candidates which was happened in my previous workplace. Also, younger people tend to be easier to exploit.
Yes it's all show over substance, they can say they're doing something about youth unemployment without ever actually spending any money on it or tackling why some people are really out of work and have no training or education.
The government renamed old schemes and relaunched them as brand new initiatives.
I think I was on one of those too! Not a lot changes does it? I think there are probably a lot of people who live in places with little work who would love a job, but can't afford to move to where the work is and why should they have too?
When I left school I was put on a YOP (Youth Opportunity Program scheme).
I was sent on something similar a few years ago, I don't think we ever got to fully write a CV as I've had a career tangent rather than a career path. The also knew I wasn't fit for work and that I'd be reapplying for the incapacity benefits I'd been kicked off of a few months previously. I remember being on YTS (Youth Training Schemes) schemes back in the day, they were pretty useless too.
I was in a similar situation with them. I have a masters in Statistics. At my first appointment they asked me what kind of job I was looking for, I said statistical research, statistician etc. They said they had nothing like that. Would I be interested in McDonald's or Primark?
There is also no privacy in these places or respect, I could hear other people's conversations. Another feeble and ill man in his 60s was also asked what kind of work he was looking for, he said, "I'm diabetic" the advisor shouted at him, "ARE YOU ON MEDICATION? WELL TAKE YOUR. B L O O D Y MEDICATION AND YOU'LL BE FINE."
They are kind of stuffed if they are hoping to rewrite my cv to get me a zero hours contract style burger fliping job. My last 3 jobs were all very technical and profesional. No way to 'sell' them as something that would look atractive to someone looking for a shelf stacker. Plus they have the PhD on my cv to consider. I'm reminded of terry pratchet who wrote “Getting an education was a bit like a communicable sexual disease. It made you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and then you had the urge to pass it on.”
Only in my case they can't even push me towards teaching because of the lack of a teaching qualification.
One example is travel expenses. The official guidelines (in 2021) said that since these appointments were in addition to normal job centre appointments, the provider would reimburse our travel expenses at the public transport cost.
In reality, if I didn't ask for the money, they never offered. When I asked, they never said no, but often had an excuse not to pay. Such as they had no change in petty cash, no time! Next appointment is waiting.
No offence taken (thank you), and I’ve no doubt that’s true.
I’ve shared the links on the basis that, personally, I always prefer to know all about what should happen / how it should work - even if only to help inform a later complaint, if the support doesn’t end up meeting the expected standards.
[Note to mods: I accidentally flagged my own reply whilst trying to hit edit - sorry!]
I don't have experience of it, but you might find the Government's guidance for providers helpful (last updated just yesterday) in understanding various aspects of it from the provider's perspective:
GOV.UK - Restart Scheme - provider guidance
There's also some information about it for jobseekers themselves here:
