longish info before question:

1) 5 years ago-I became homeless during college. (During school I worked and also through the first and second year of college- i'm not a leech!)

I asked the council for help and I was refused and told that I was 18 years old and not vulnerable enough to be sheltered. I was instructed to go to the local jobcentre and tell them.

Next. I was told by the jobcentre advisor that I had to leave my final 3rd year of education to qualify

for recieving JSA, so I complied. I cried until I looked like a red mitchelin man.

I was told I would not recieve any help for over a month depending

on the outcome of my JSA application. I was then given a telephone number to call and told that I must ask for financial help while I await the Jcentre decision.

I followed this advice and a week later collected a cheque for £68. and was advised on how to manage that amount for food and shelter for the next 3 weeks, I was thankful and did my best to make it last.

Additionally, a few weeks after becoming a Jobseeker, the Jcentre informed me of deductions about to occur to collect back the £68 that they lent me. They collected it all back. And spent my time trying find work, a home, food, clothing etc on the budget I had.

Thats where my real problems began. I would sign on fortnightly only to recieve nothing (and this happened at nearly every other sign on). When I would enquire I would be sent sent on a wild goose chase for days to talk to people in glasgow and several other places. Eventually it occurred to me to ignore my advisors' wild goose chases and just ask her boss. Her boss told me she would investigate, and then later told me that someone had forgotten to put the paperwork through to enable the payment in my direction. So fixed right? No. I recieved nothing and was told 'your next payment is due soon' and refused answers to my questions. I didn't argue or make a scene. I'm not quick enough for word battle or limbre enough to hadouken them all.

So over the last 5 years, i have been a jobseeker infrequently with deductions taken from two places. The JOBCENTRE. and the SOCIAL FUND. The jobcentre have made so many admin errors that they now owe me over £2000. They cannot account for how this 'occured'. I recently found out that the £68 loan i was given was from a seperate agency pretending to be apart of the jobcentre, but is in fact called the social fund. Further this social fund has been taking money from me via jsa. Of course I got in touch with the jobcentre and told them I have borrowed nothing since repaying what I believe is called a crisis loan now.

They told me that they don't know why i am being charged! It's not on their computer system but the instruction to charge me is...

Next, the social fund deductions continue. The latest one is for 300 hundred pounds! I made and appeal to their head office and asked them to do a data trail on these constantly fabricated loans they charge me for, and also for with-holding my benefit due to admin errors, then sending little or no benefit after me chasing them up. They are still charging me, it's gone past the £400 mark. And they will not discuss the appeal with me when I get in contact. After much research, I realised the jobcentre and social fund have our taxpay money going missing A LOT wthin their own facilities. And have no explanations.

My question. how do i get this money back so that i can survive, get some work clothes, and just take care of my needs so that I can just get back on the hamster wheel with everyone else?

I have already contacted many solicitors for help but have been shrugged off.

There is no one to take the blame for this in court. Except for the person in charge of the whole jobcentre operation. My life is being played with. No one has that right. and I believe the secretary of work and education is the right person to sue. What do you think?

NB: It's messy above, I know. did I mention I am homeless again and out of work since the recession. Thanks for reading this mess

Hello and welcome to the forum. This sounds a terrible story, poor you. I don't have knowledge of the agencies you're dealing with, but there are people here who do and I expect they'll turn up later. Some of them work and come along in the evenings. Have you done an sar [subject access request] about the money owed and owing so far? I think that might be one of the things you're advised to do.

HB

Hello Sofia. Hope you're ok and that you'll be able to sign on again on here.

I'll flag this up for ErikaPnP, hopefully she will be able to guide you in this, meanwhile, have you tried to speak to one of the homeless charities to see if they can help you with it all? There must be an advocate somewhere who could help sorting it out!!!

You're not the 1st person who has been overcharged by Social Fund, i doubt you'll be the last one, but it is unreal that it should go on like this for so long.

I can't for the life of me understand why students don't get help with housing benefit. I am French and managed to support myself through university by working in a psychiatric hospital when I wasn't at lectures, AND because i was getting housing benefit, otherwise, I would have been unable to complete my degrees. I have had young people living with us who like you had to quit their studies because they couldn't afford to study AND have a roof over their heads, however once they were signed on (and not finding jobs since they had qualifications!), THEN they were entitled to HB.How is that helping?

We get told that there are too many people on the dole, but then people who want to progress further get no help whatsoever... surely, it would make more sense to at least let them have HB, even if nothing else, and let them study? Fewer people on the unemployment books, fewer homeless, fewer school drop-outs, what's there not to like?

Sorry, I'm letting off steam on your thread, but it makes me so angry.

Anyway, please come back to us when you get a chance and hopefully, someone will have had a chance to help you properly.

PS: Can you tell us if you're a British or Foreign national, and if the latter, your status in this country re visa, permission to work etc?

Hi Sophia, so sorry to hear about what has happened to you with the people that is suppose to helping you , but I am sure this go on all the time and is covered up.

You must be living from day to day financially therefore have no money to spare for SAR (which costs £10) is there a Citizen Advice Bureau near you or a community law centre these are all free but you will have to make an appointment with them to see an adviser. Do go and see one the above free organisation as soon as possible and get things sorted out for yourself.

Take care and best of luck

Hope to hear from you again, with some good news.

Hi Sophia In which area of the country do you live ?

Allwood, I know there are cases where the sar fee is waived sometimes. Maybe someone could comment if this is one of them please?

HB

The Department of Work and Pensions, or DWP for short (which jobcentreplus is a part of) do waive the fee for their SAR's - this is stated on their SAR forms.

The Social Fund is not a hired agency or in the private sector. It is indeed a part of Jobcentreplus, it's not a seperate entity though Social Fund is not placed within the same office as benefit claims will be. The Jobcentre and the Benefit Delivery Centre which deals with your JSA will not be able to answer in depth queries about your Social Fund Loans and vice versa because they only have basic access to each other's computerised systems, where they have access at all. This is why they can't tell you anything about the Social Fund loans, because all they receive is an instruction to make deductions from your benefit to repay the loan. Sadly it isn't uncommon for over recovery to take place on Social Fund loans, it's something I see regularly - but it can (and blinking well should) be challenged and sorted out.

What you need to do is submit a SAR for information on all activity on your Social Fund account - it appears that you have already done this. And you have asked for an audit trail (same thing as a data trail). An audit trail request has to go to a Security Officer because an audit trail involves looking into information in the computer system that no longer appears on the computer system, and this can take a hell of a long time to be completed.

The easiest way to explain is this: In public aucthorities like DWP every single keystroke entered by every single member of staff is logged and can be tracked back to each individual member of staff. If a member of staff was to go in and change information on your record (such as delete for the sake of this example), it couldn't be seen by any member of staff accessing your information, because it is no longer there on the computer record. However it is still there, only hidden. It's like your PC at home. If I delete an icon on my desk top and then empty my recycle bin, the item has only gone from view. It's still on my hard drive and can still be retrieved. (This is exactly how the police can recover information from people's computers when they think they have deleted it). Well, alteration or deletion works much the same way in DWP. Although the staff can't see it, it hasn't gone completely. Now, only specialised security officers (and there is in my experience sometimes one who is officer for several Benefit Delivery Centres) can access this information. Because of the depth they have to search for this information it can take forever for an audit trail to be completed, though if submitted as a SAR under section 7 of the Data Protection Act, they should retrieve and send you the information within 40 days.

The other thing they will need to do is to locate all application forms and offer letters for the loans. Each loan has a number which corresponds to the application. Most claims will be in remote storage in a place called Heywood; the Social Fund will need to request these files back from there too. Every loan from the Social Fund must be signed for. If I make a claim for a loan from the Social Fund, they will consider my application and make a decision on entitlement. If they decide that I am entitled, they will send me what is known as an "offer letter". This letter offers me the loan sum and states something to the effect of "I accept the loan of £XXX. I understand that this is a loan which must be repaid. I agree to payments being taken from xxbenefit at a rate of £xx per week to repay the loan" - it's not worded exactly like that, but it gives an idea. I'd then have to sign that offer letter and return it before the Social Fund can release the loan to me. So, in order to prove the loans exist the Social Fund would need to provide every offer letter for every loan with your signature on.

They can also in some cases (though this largely depends on the time passed) get back any giros which have been cashed, view the signature on the giros and see where they were cashed - each giro for each loan has a unique serial number. So if someone made a claim in your name (which doesn't happen often but in these days of ID theft is becoming more common) they will be able to compare the signatories on any giros/offer letters against other documentation you will have signed in the course of your claim to establish if there are any similarities between the signatures. If it is suspected upon viewing any cashed giros that someone had made fraudulent claims in your name, the DWP can forward the documents and giros/offer letters to a forensic handwriting analyst to examine the signatures, and of course there is the old fashioned way - fingerprinting. As you haven't had any loans other than the one for £68, they aren't going to be able to prove it because they can't have any evidence where no loan exists. As I said the computer entries never disappear entirely so they can always be traced if there have been muck ups on your record.

They should talk to you about it whilst it is in dispute, but they won't be able to give you any information or be able to make a decision in regard to the loans until they have the information themselves - as explained above this can take some time to gather together, particularly where there are several claims in dispute. If you get no satisfaction from this, your MP should be able to intervene on your behalf, or they can do it now if you like to try and speed up the process if at all possible.

Now, when they get all of the paperwork and cannot prove anything they have to refund every penny they have taken from your benefit for the loans which cannot be proven. Once that happens, I would suggest that you ask that your case be referred to their special payments section for consideration of a consolitary payment for maladministration.

Sorry I was not aware that the DWP supplied SAR free

I got the impression from Sophia that she was living a hand to mouth existance and needed immedate help.

Hi Allwood,

It does appear that way, yes and you gave very good advice about going to an advise centre.