Social Justice Day for JCP staff - Monday 28/04/14

Social Justice Event

Representatives from ICDAS attended a Social Justice Day event for Jobcentre Plus staff on the 28th or April. The event was for local drug & alcohol services and others to have an opportunity to talk to Jobcentre staff about the challenges their service users face. The idea was that this would give staff better awareness of the issues/challenges that customers/organisations face and also give them an opportunity to improve joint working.

Apart from ICDAS reps, only one drug & alcohol service showed up on the day. SHP and ourselves had the opportunity to question JCP staff about what they knew about working with substance misuse clients and particularly about procedures for people on JSA who are entering treatment. We discovered a surprising lack of awareness among many JCP staff about what the procedures actually are with many of them giving conflicting information.

As a result of our experiences at the event ICDAS has decided to ask service users what problems they are encountering from the Jobcentre when entering treatment. Once we know precisely what the common problems are we will see if there is anything we can usefully do to improve the situation.

For everbody's information, here are three links to the key documents regarding what is supposed to happen.

Treatment Provider Referral Form TPR2

Process Document

JCP Single Point of Contact Document