The first direct experience of the WP for all customers but one was via a ‘referral letter’. For ESA (sickness benefits) customers, the first letter was for a ‘work capability assessment’. As customer ‘Manny’ (male, 50s, ESA)60 explained:
MANNY: I found that [referral to the WP]… Oh it was, erm… it was confusing.
JDJ: In what way?
MANNY: Well, I’m thinking now. They send you a letter out first of all. And it’s… I didn’t know what it was. I had to get my son to look at it. I thought it was from the doctor. But my lad says no, you know, it’s from the Jobcentre and they want me to go up for a test. See if I’m still alive. For JSA claimants, the letter was a direct instruction to attend the WP centre:
JDJ: So the Jobcentre referred you?
AMOS [30s, JSA]: Yeah. They told me in there, then you get your threatening letter saying you’re over here [the WP centre].
Nine customers mentioned negative feelings, particularly confusion and fear, upon being referred to the WP. As customer ‘Selena’ (30s, ESA) explained:
SELENA: But, yes, I got informed by letter that there was an appointment that had been made for me to come over here. And it was like… I started seeing it on the news then of course, all of this.
JDJ: The Work Programme?
60 Customer biographical data will initially be shown in the main text. Where the same customer’s
responses are used again, this data will be in a footnote. Where a name is traditionally male or female, this also indicates the sex of the participant.
139 SELENA: Yes. And I thought, oh, wow, do they mean me? I have to do that? It’s slave labour, isn’t it? That’s what they’ve done. They’ve sent me onto a slave labour scheme. You know, I thought wow, how can they do that?
JDJ: How did that make you feel?
SELENA: Obviously it made me feel really bad. I was shocked. And it was really the last thing I wanted to be coping with at that time, but I thought, well, it can’t get any worse from this point. I have to just bite it and do it. Three customers noted being upset by the referral letter because it involved leaving the house for the first time in a long while. Customer ‘Sarah’ (50s, ESA), for example, said: “How did I feel? I cried. When I got the letter, I cried.” Only one customer, ‘Annemarie’ (40s, JSA), expressed initial positivity at being referred:
ANNEMARIE: Erm, you know I didn’t even know that there was this thing. I didn’t know that it actually existed as a programme or an opportunity or anything. Not until the Jobcentre said I’ve got to come over here. I was like, yeah, alright, I’ll give it a go. Why didn’t you mention it before? I mean I’ve been signing on for a year and it’s not been mentioned to me. I would have probably given it a go before then.
While most customers were mandated to the WP, it was also possible to volunteer. Only one customer, ‘Silvio’ (40s, JSA), said he had done this:
SILVIO: Yeah. I didn’t get sent, I volunteered for it. […] I made a stupid mistake. I wish I’d not done it now […].
One customer spoke of being too ill following an accident to even understand what his referral was:
JAMES [20s, ESA]: […] I’m not used to working with all the benefits system, right? It’s not my world, I’m a worker. And all the letters are just piling up. All the bureaucracy. But the one thing I don’t think… you wouldn’t think… is that they’re just going to kill off my benefits, right, if I miss some stupid appointment with some place I’ve never heard of. I mean, I’m crippled, I’ve got a wife and kids.
First Arrival
First arrival at the centre could also be a stressful experience for many customers according to one staff member, ‘Holly’, who had once been a customer herself:
140 HOLLY: No one wants to go somewhere where it’s just hostile. I know it is hostile for a lot of people. I felt that myself when I first came in, that’s how I know. And we’re still getting people who come in and sit there crying. They don’t even know what it is.
JDJ: They see it on the telly.
HOLLY: I blame that for a lot of it. If you watch the news before coming here, you’d think you were going to be clapped in irons. That’s how I was. You don’t get any information. There’s nothing in the letter, and it makes it seem like you’re in trouble, so a lot of people think that, like it’s a disciplinary hearing.
JDJ: Some think that?
HOLLY: More than you’d think. You’d think that from the letter. Half think it’s to do with fraud investigation, the other half think it’s a joke, then they don’t have to take it seriously. I have to say, well, it’s between… you do have to take it seriously, but you’re not being disciplined, you’ve been asked to come in so you can get help.
One customer, however, who was well-informed about the WP, and also highly critical, felt that it was, at least in part, an exercise in disciplining the poor:
JAMES:61 And that’s [WP] a big fraud, right, where the company is paid billions by the government to do something that it doesn’t do, but they keep doing it? And to keep a lid on it they’ve got people starved into submission to it at the bottom of the pile. So that is my general take on the overall scheme. It’s bollocks.