Skip to content or view mobile version

Home | Mobile | Editorial | Mission | Privacy | About | Contact | Help | Security | Support

A network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues.

CDG - the lying continues

Alex Heath | 29.03.2008 11:49 | Repression | Social Struggles | Workers' Movements | Liverpool | Sheffield

The lying at CDG has evolved from little white lies to massive big black lies.

CDG (aka Careers Development Group) are under contract to DWP to provide New Deal training courses for the unemployed. Attendance is compulsory, the unemployed have no choice. If they refuse to attend they will be sanctioned and face loss of benefits.

I am one of those who have been forced by my local Job Centre to serve a 13 week sentence at CDG.

At first I was pretty appalled, then towards the end of my sentence, I was offered something that made me think, maybe they are not so bad. I even wrote an article on Indymedia UK to that effect.

 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/02/390471.html?c=on

Now, having had more experience of CDG, I realise I was wrong, very wrong, to praise them, and I am more than happy to eat my words and say I was wrong.

CDG are nothing but a scam and a bunch of liars. They are defrauding the taxpayer and the sooner their contract is terminated the better it will be for both taxpayer and the unemployed who are forced to attend these courses.

Should you dare to criticise CDG whilst still there, they will fabricate false allegations to throw you off the course, if necessary forcibly eject you from their premises, then tell the Job Centre a pack of lies to have benefits stopped.

CDG have been running a smear campaign against Keith Parkins because he has stood up and told the truth, because he spoke out against the bullying, because he intervened on behalf of clients and tried to stop the bullying.

As you may have seen there have been a number of articles that have been written about CDG on this very site Indymedia UK with which I agree on, with the one exception of my first article, with which I don't agree now.

 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/11/386689.html?c=on
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/12/388044.html?c=on
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/12/388504.html?c=on
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/01/390153.html?c=on
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/02/390471.html?c=on
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/02/390638.html?c=on
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/02/390901.html?c=on
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/02/391396.html?c=on
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/02/391397.html?c=on
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/02/391531.html
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/03/394933.html

But what's with the change of heart you may be asking yourself, well this article will explain everything to you about the reasons why I had a change of heart and now loathe CDG and wish to see them closed down.

It has been a few weeks since I have completed my thirteen week course at CDG Basingstoke I feel that some things needed to be mentioned about what is going on at the centre. In doing so, I will expose yet another of their scams, forcing people onto training courses to look as though they are doing something. More opportunities for kickbacks, yet more costs to the taxpayer.

One of the two things that I should mention is that the staff at CDG Basingstoke including the elo (external liaison officer, responsible for job placements) despite what they have been saying about staff morale being high and job outcomes every few minutes are getting other companies to do their dirty work for them by forcing clients to do other courses with fear of sanctioning of some sort if clients refuse. One of the these companies that CDG have approached is Angels HR.

 http://www.angelhr.org/

This company does a five day training course on how to be a care worker what CDG say to the clients that go on this course is that the course is in five modules and are all on DVD plus clients cannot fail the course in the event that a client fails the course, clients redo the module or modules that they failed on.

The second of the two things that I should mention is the fact that the elo at CDG tried to force another client, whose name I will not mention, to act as a snitch and and spy on their behalf, to phone me twice in the same day to find out what was going on, and were not even going to pay for the phone call and he had not even entered his front door.

The client they asked to do their dirty work had himself been forced to attend a course with threat of sanctions if he refused.

I believe that this is an invasion of people's privacy and a breach of human rights as they were trying to find out what was going on with myself at the time before where the elo tried to force myself onto this course which was starting the following week when they were fully aware that it was my final week at the centre and would have to do a reclaim the week that Angels HR were going to repeat this course again due to staff sickness.

However when I arrived at Angels HR branch in Aldershot on the 25 February 2008 to start the course it had been cancelled what the manager said was that it was because they were not going to spend a week's worth of the course on one person the manager said also that CDG were informed of this turn of events beforehand and had booked me for the same course the week before.

When I contacted the manager of CDG Basingstoke on the same day of this turn of events and told her what had happened she said that Angels failed to make contact with the centre at any time prior to this courses start and admitted that they did not book anyone from CDG for the course the week before to further add insult to injury the manager of CDG then said "What has this got to do with us".

This was infuriating as it said that CDG had admitted this had happened and had just turned around and said that since it had backfired they didn't want anything to do with putting clients on this particular course. It also said that the manager was trying to cover the evidence up that places them in the involvement in the first place and were possibly aware of this event beforehand and failed to make contact with myself.

Furthermore when the Jobcentre was informed about these events with Angels HR they said that CDG need to improve their communications with companies they approach so events such as this would not happen at all because they are putting clients on these courses while they are on their thirteen week course at the centre in Basingstoke and CDG should also be responsible for the event happening in the first place.

What has happened is a clear breach of the guidelines issued by DWP for provision providers.

 http://www.dwp.gov.uk/supplyingdwp/what_we_buy/provider_guidance.asp

There was no prior discussion with me to discover whether the course was of any use to me or even if it was what I wanted to do. I was forced to attend.

What I describe here in my last week, is only the tip of the iceberg of what is going wrong at CDG. I fully agree with all the previous critical comments on Indymedia UK (and elsewhere such as SchNEWS). I only regret writing on Indymedia UK in support of CDG, which gives a false impression of CDG.

Bullying at CDG is rife. All the time they are threatening clients with sanctions (i.e. stop benefits), making clients afraid to speak out.

Whilst I was at CDG, no attempt was made to place me with a company where I would have a realistic chance of meaningful employment.

Overall I think that the government should be checking these training companies out first rather than pouring money into them and saying that they will stop Jobseeker's Benefits if they don't do these training courses so in that way these sorts of companies should not exist at all.

Why is there no monitoring by government, DWP, local Job Centres? Many clients have complained to their local Job Centres, and yet the same Job Centres are still sending Jobseekers to CDG, with loss of benefits if they refuse to attend.

CDG and similar training companies should be shut down, their contracts with DWP terminated. If, like CDG, they are a registered charity, their charitable status should be withdrawn.

Alex Heath

Comments

Display the following 9 comments

  1. Why Not wear your free government suit and turn up to one of their events — work-shy-scrounger
  2. Enough please! — Employee of CDG
  3. pathetic response from CDG — Keith
  4. Interesting — Alex
  5. Just a thought — Spyeye
  6. sick individual — Keith
  7. Although — Alex
  8. Interesting news — Alex
  9. Job Centre Intervention — Alex
Upcoming Coverage
View and post events
Upcoming Events UK
24th October, London: 2015 London Anarchist Bookfair
2nd - 8th November: Wrexham, Wales, UK & Everywhere: Week of Action Against the North Wales Prison & the Prison Industrial Complex. Cymraeg: Wythnos o Weithredu yn Erbyn Carchar Gogledd Cymru

Ongoing UK
Every Tuesday 6pm-8pm, Yorkshire: Demo/vigil at NSA/NRO Menwith Hill US Spy Base More info: CAAB.

Every Tuesday, UK & worldwide: Counter Terror Tuesdays. Call the US Embassy nearest to you to protest Obama's Terror Tuesdays. More info here

Every day, London: Vigil for Julian Assange outside Ecuadorian Embassy

Parliament Sq Protest: see topic page
Ongoing Global
Rossport, Ireland: see topic page
Israel-Palestine: Israel Indymedia | Palestine Indymedia
Oaxaca: Chiapas Indymedia
Regions
All Regions
Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World
Other Local IMCs
Bristol/South West
Nottingham
Scotland
Social Media
You can follow @ukindymedia on indy.im and Twitter. We are working on a Twitter policy. We do not use Facebook, and advise you not to either.
Support Us
We need help paying the bills for hosting this site, please consider supporting us financially.
Other Media Projects
Schnews
Dissident Island Radio
Corporate Watch
Media Lens
VisionOnTV
Earth First! Action Update
Earth First! Action Reports
Topics
All Topics
Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista
Major Reports
NATO 2014
G8 2013
Workfare
2011 Census Resistance
Occupy Everywhere
August Riots
Dale Farm
J30 Strike
Flotilla to Gaza
Mayday 2010
Tar Sands
G20 London Summit
University Occupations for Gaza
Guantanamo
Indymedia Server Seizure
COP15 Climate Summit 2009
Carmel Agrexco
G8 Japan 2008
SHAC
Stop Sequani
Stop RWB
Climate Camp 2008
Oaxaca Uprising
Rossport Solidarity
Smash EDO
SOCPA
Past Major Reports
Encrypted Page
You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.
If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

Global IMC Network


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech