I know that there will be those in the world at large that won't see the connection, but I think that people here on Ouchtoo will.
Years ago, a lot of horrible things happened all at once and I lost my home and left my job. I ended up in the psychiatric system where the ongoing message wasn't "You didn't deserve to have bad things happen to you" but "You're defective."
I was traumatised by lots of things that happened in the psychiatric system (a lot of people don't believe me when I tell them what I saw in hospital, but MPs did when I gave evidence to a parliamentary enquiry) but more than once got back into work before leaving those jobs. Having lost a job and ended up in hospital, I was discharged and saw my psychiatrist. He was so utterly scathing for losing my job that I swore I'd never try to get paid work again because I wouldn't risk being humiliated like that.
I didn't have benefits. Social Security said I couldn't get my incapacity benefit because I hadn't gone into the office on day one of my claim. Telling them I'd been in hospital didn't help. The mental health team wasn't interested. I wasn't even aware of advice services and they didn't tell me about them. After nearly two months, I ended up breaking down in a DSS office and sobbing on the floor. How was I supposed to recover, to bounce back, when my prime concern was begging to others for food?
In due course, I did voluntary work, but as I moved from one bit of volunteering to another, the DWP became more bureaucratic, and then adding insult to injury was the fear of being prematurely migrated to PIP and UC. So as my existing voluntary work ended for various reasons, I didn't take up more.
And now? I'm someone who still has nightmares, who feels bitter, who still struggles to trust people or feel confident. Years of being humiliated and 'cheated'. Twice in the last four years, arrears of unpaid benefits have run up to over £2k, and on two other occasions, it was hundreds.
Now compare that with how they treat jobseekers. They lose their jobs. The message that goes to them isn't that they've had a raw deal finding themselves jobless but that they're inadequate, unmotivated, scrounging. That must be damaging.
They go through 'back to work' stuff that's often rubbish. They're pushed to seek jobs they won't in a million years get instead of focussing on applying for fewer jobs that they might actually get. Having been told they're not sufficiently experienced and qualified, they get workfare and 'training' that teaches them barely anything and just emphasises that they're the lowest of the low.
All the time it's under threat of sanctions. Even if they've any money in the bank to cushion them to begin with, they won't by the time they've waited for UC.
Why the expletive does the parliamentary committee need any evidence to tell them the expletive obvious, that if you intimidate, harass, humilate, time-waste and starve people, it makes it harder for them to get back into work, not easier?