Date: 20 September 2009
Working Links contacted Alan South after hearing him on Radio
4’s Faces of Recession as we genuinely thought we could help him
find a job – his story and profile sounded similar to that of the
type of people we help into work day in day out. At that
point, we were unaware of where Alan lived.
Working Links disputes that having said we could help Alan, we
subsequently left him in the lurch. When he visited our offices, we
sat him down and talked him through how we might be able to help
him and the kind of support on offer via our programmes; we
followed this up through emails and phone calls some 30 times and
gave him advice on his CV, together with interview technique, which
he declined.
During our meeting it came to light that the Jobcentre that Alan
was registered with fell outside the defined geographical remit of
the Employment Zone contract we operate for Brent and Haringey. To
overcome this, it was suggested that he could re-register at the
Tottenham Jobcentre that was within the right geography for him to
be referred to us (though we acknowledge the fact that it was
further for Alan to travel).
Alan decided he did not want to re-register at a different
Jobcentre. This unfortunately meant we were unable to help him
further due to the nature of the contract under which we
operate.”