Universal Credit 'helpline's' glib response: "Call a friend"

My friend and Honorary Kwuggie Kate Belgrave writes on her Kate Belgrave | Talking with people dealing with public sector cuts blog http://www.katebelgrave.com/:

Learning/literacy difficulties & can’t use online Universal Credit? “Find a friend to help,” says DWP. This is dire

Posted on October 12, 2017

11

Yesterday, I rang the Universal Credit helpline number (0345 600 4272) to ask about DWP support for Universal Credit claimants who have learning and literacy difficulties, and who struggle to use computers. (I’ve posted a transcript of a recording I made of the call at the end of this article).

This is crucial.

Universal Credit is an online system which claimants must manage online. There is a charged-for helpline which people can call if they get stuck. [£33 per hour, Dude Swheatie adds] The charges for this are controversial. People who have no money can’t afford the calls.

This is crucial.

Universal Credit is an online system which claimants must manage online. There is a charged-for helpline which people can call if they get stuck. The charges for this are controversial. People who have no money can’t afford the calls.

10am 11 October 2017:

UNIVERSAL CREDIT: Is that a case of [someone] sort of not being able to do the online procedures?

KB: Yes. [This man] has learning and literacy difficulties and he’ll be moving to [town name removed] which I think is rolling out [Universal Credit later this year]?

UNIVERSAL CREDIT: Right, okay. So, I would normally say unless there is any source of help local, whether it be friends, family in the area that they are familiar with, if they’ve got friends over there… what we would normally recommend is that a friend or family member help out…separate to that, see if they’ve got a local Citizens’ Advice....

 And so I came up with the following placards in response.

"Call a friend" was a feature of 'Who Wants to Be a Millionaire Quiz Show'
Where are the friends with the expertise required to help someone
navigate a tricky Universal Credit online form?
Where are the Citizens Advice Bureaux that are not in meltdown?

The quiz show referred to here was 'Who Wants to Be a Millionaire', hosted by Christ Tarrant. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Wants_to_Be_a_Millionaire%3F_(UK_game_show)

The UN disability committee Chair has described what is going on in the UK regarding the benefit sanctions impact on claimants as a "human catastrophe." https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/uk-faces-un-examination-government-cuts-caused-human-catastrophe/

Enforcing people to do what they cannot do with non-existent help furthers such 'human catastrophe', and it must be stopped. Adapting a sentence from Rabbi Joachim Prinz, President of the American Congress of Jews in a speech made at the same event at which Revd Dr Martin Luther King Jr made the famous [but too little understood] 'I Have a Dream' speech, "Britain must not become a nation of onlookers [in the way that Germany did with the rise of Hitler.]" https://www.haggadot.com/clip/rabbi-joachim-prinz-march-washington-speech-august-28th-1963

We need to get others to join us, to form a 'critical mass' sufficient to
halt the perpetrators of this human catastrophe in their tracks

Placards by Dude Swheatie of Kwug, Human Placard Flower of the KUWG