Half Term and JSA

Just my luck wasn't it, that I had to cancel my week in the Bahamas because I had to sign on and prove I'd been jobseeking, in order to get my £67 which gets me and my boy first class these days ha ha haaaaaaaaa. Still not funny.............

You know my thoughts. My son was ill on the tuesday. Imagine I had to take a day off work! Couldn't though could I? I had to be a nurse (which isn't a job if it's your own child you are tending)

Signing on during a school holiday is bad luck. It could have been the week before or after but no. Oh well.

It was a fellow single mother who was checking my claim and I really felt for her by the end of our interview. Her 14 year old was with a childminder. She didn't want to be where she was.

The guy I had a few weeks ago was off (looking after his kids?) but apparently, although I'm meant to be with another woman, this man wants to see me next week, he wants to 'help' me. What he wants is to put me on the Work Programme and I shudder to be honest with you.

I might do it though, not because I want to, but because I can write about it. I mean, people don't really know what this Work Programme is about. It could be like the abandoned Back To Work for Lone Parents pilot which was good. That was only a week though and this one may be 16 hours a week over a month. All I know, from the outset, is I may have to ask an hour off to go to my son's class assembly.....

Oh well, jobs applied for in order to receive my £67:

Membership assistant for Lone Parent charity. Not heard back so we can safely assume I didn't get that one.

Political journalist for a... for a what? Got the link on www.direct.gov.uk and it said the website was under construction. It also said it was 20 hours a week, Monday to Friday 9-5. Made me think it's perhaps my Dream Job boss now working under a different name

Graduate researcher/journalist for healthcare company. Well, I am a graduate. Does it count if it's not a terribly recent graduation. Pay is £1000 a month for a 38 hour week.

Where will the Work Programme send me for 'experience'....

There are so many awful places to go...

Read this and weep/consider yourself fortunate.

(Oh and half term was great. Didn't do much which was plenty!)