Background to the Research

• Whilst research into unemployment has included work on some of the kinds of information that the unemployed require, little attention has been paid to the ways in which this information is delivered to claimants.
• This chapter presents the findings of a project which mapped the sources and kinds of information available to those unemployed people served by a DHSS local office in Belfast in 1987/8.
  

Research Approach

• In-depth interviews were carried out with a number of counsellors in the statutory and non-statutory sector and with 70 individuals attending Jobmarkets.
  

Main Findings

Counsellor perceptions of the unemployed

• All counsellors saw the most important category of the unemployed as long-term unemployed men. Problems of absence of employment opportunities, problems with benefits, debt, budgeting, demoralisation, boredom, risk to health and loss of identity and social isolation were identified as issues by counsellors for this category of the unemployed.
• Young people were felt to be a group with special needs by all counsellors, especially the lack of hope and the absence of any experience of employment.
• For all counsellors, the only real solution to the needs of the unemployed is paid employment.

Counsellor perceptions of counselling the unemployed

• One set of counsellors tends to see unemployment in terms of improving employability in the increasingly competitive labour market; they emphasised the need for unemployed people to improve their skills.
• Some counsellors were pessimistic about the labour market; for this group counselling meant exploring alternatives to paid employment, alongside offering moral support, boosting confidence and promoting self-help.
• Within the statutory and non-statutory sectors, some counsellors presume that help can be given directly to the unemployed, others that help can be given so that the unemployed can help themselves.

Counselling activities

• The Open University offer seminars in which participants are encouraged to think more deeply about their situation and to take a pro-active approach in gaining the skills and knowledge to resolve many of the difficulties that arise from redundancy and unemployment.
• The Jobclub offered small groups of people, who had been unemployed for 6 months or more, a short course on job-search techniques, backed up by the use of resources in order to do this. Belfast Jobclub had an estimated success rate of between 60 and 65%.
• Statutory agencies offer personal counselling, these include personal interviews with DHSS staff, Jobmarket staff and staff in the Restart programme.
• Three basic styles characterised counselling in the non-statutory sector - local centre drop-in facilities where people bring well-defined problems; counselling sessions that review a person's entire circumstances in an advice centre, and those that offer this service in the form of an outreach programme in the community.

The unemployed and counselling

• Most of the unemployed expressed the need for more information from local social security offices. They stated this information should be tailored and delivered in order to meet their particular individual needs.
• Interviewees indicated frustration with the length of time for problems to be resolved by DHSS staff and the amount of bureaucracy involved. This meant, at least for some claimants, that the DHSS was not somewhere to get information but to give it.
• Despite a high degree of demand for information/advice, self-declared take-up rates suggest few claimants used available services. Of the 70 interviewees, 41 contacted their local DHSS office for information/advice after signing on. Only 26 had contacted statutory agencies other than the DHSS and 20 non-statutory agencies.

Job search and the unemployed

• In terms of finding work, the Jobmarkets were criticised in terms of the kind of employment they provided information about and the ways in which this information was offered or withheld. Claimants were sceptical that Jobmarkets were in a position to offer information that would lead to an actual job. Equally they had concerns about the quality of these jobs in terms of pay rates, skills, job-security and whether it would be full or part time.
• Many older claimants felt that the Jobmarket targeted particular categories such as the young or those seeking part-time work. Several of the unemployed felt that Jobmarket staff were apathetic towards helping them find work or were gate-keepers who filtered applications even before they got to the prospective employer.