What’s another year?
Ally started a Fetac Level 5 course in Portfolio today. Last year she studied Art and Design (also a Fetac Level 5 course) in the local Technical College, partly because she was quite young when sitting the Leaving Cert, and partly because she wanted to do something in Art but was unsure what area she wanted to study in. She put in a lot of hard work throughout the year, passed her exams with distinction, and, as a result of doing the course, realised her interests lay in the area of Graphic Design. To give herself the best chance of securing a college place next year, she enroled on the Portfolio course.
Ally has been on Unemployment Benefit since finishing the Art and Design course. She hadn’t any success in securing a job for the summer (despite handing out several CVs and filling in many online applications). It is incredibly difficult for a young school leaver with no work experience to find work. Only yesterday she was prevented from submitting a Primark online applicaton form because she didn’t have three valid work references entered into the work experience field. God be with the days when ‘babysitting’ counted for something.
So, obviously, she was delighted to find out she was entitled to Unemployment Benefit. It meant she had some money of her own during the summer.
She called into the Social Welfare office today to tell them she was starting college.
They signed her off Unemployment Benefit and told her she was entitled to nothing!
Absolutely nothing!
If she had been 78 days unemployed she would have been entitled to a Back To Education allowance. She was just 14 days short.
So, she can return to college where she will have to pay college fees, buy books and equipment, fork out for college tours and God knows what else, and have practically no money for another nine months
OR
she can receive €100 a week for the honour of sitting at home while ‘actively seeking work’.
Ally opted to return to college and do her portfolio course, and I’m really proud of her. But I can’t understand the logic behind making her financially worse off when she’s being pro-active and trying to better herself.
It seems to me that if she had made the decision to take some time off for a year and twiddle her thumbs, she would be rewarded with fifty-two weeks Unemployment Benefit and be entitled to the Back to Education Allowance that she now can’t get. Are we daft not to take advantage of this? After all, what’s another year?
One Response to “What’s another year?”
Leave a Reply
The unfortunate thing about your tale Susan, is that it is being replicated all over this land of ours. There is absolutely no thinking going on at the higher levels of Social Welfare, at higher levels of Dept of Education; or for that matter at any higher level of civil servicedom anywhere in Government. There are so many tens of thousands of people out there that would bring so much to society if they were only given half a chance; I count myself lucky that I got back into education in 2008 just before Ajay and the boys arrived in town! There are so many who want to ‘re-create’ themselves and are literally begging to get back into education and then back to work that it is scary.
Those of us who are in the education system are trying to relay back to those who SHOULD listen the multi beneficial side of the whole story. But THEY are not listening.
The unfortunate thing about your tale Susan, is that it is being replicated all over this land of ours. There is absolutely no thinking going on at the higher levels of Social Welfare, at higher levels of Dept of Education; or for that matter at any higher level of civil servicedom anywhere in Government. There are so many tens of thousands of people out there that would bring so much to society if they were only given half a chance; I count myself lucky that I got back into education in 2008 just before Ajay and the boys arrived in town! There are so many who want to ‘re-create’ themselves and are literally begging to get back into education and then back to work that it is scary.
Those of us who are in the education system are trying to relay back to those who SHOULD listen the multi beneficial side of the whole story. But THEY are not listening.