Go on ESA to get help finding a job

I have been self employed for years, paying a self employed NI contribution.

My work is not ideal for someone in a wheelchair, and I cannot see me managing to keep doing it for much longer, I am struggling. I therefore went to the job centre, to see if they could help me with retraining suggestions/finance/jobs etc.

The answer appears to be that the only way the job centre can help me is if I go onto ESA.

Would I even qualify for ESA, having been self employed? How would I put in a claim? I assume I would have to totally stop working?

If I did managing to get onto ESA, how likely am I to get the job centre actually funding me for retraining? Or help finding a suitable job?

Anyone got any comments? Am I off my trolley to even be thinking of this route?

Hi Spirit,

Self-employed contributions do count towards ESA, as far as I can recall. But if you look in the MNP ESA training guide in the members area, you will find full details of which contributions count and won't need to rely on my memory, which isn't always the best when it comes to things like NI.

Making a claim for ESA starts with a sick note from your GP and any work you do other than permitted work would mean you were no longer incapable of work. See the ESA guides and permitted work guide for more on this.

As for help with retraining, I don't know how much genuine support there is for things like that, rather than cheap, one size fits all training courses of questionable value.

Help finding a full-time job might well be available if you are viewed as a likely prospect as that's where agencies get the big money from.

But, I'm afraid that if you're looking for any sort of certainty about what may be available, it probably doesn't exist, particularly with the new governemnt having effectively ripped up all the contracts with Pathways providers and announced they are starting again from scratch.

Good luck,

Steve

I had a bad feeling that the courses that the job centre were so keen to tell me about would be the basic literacy, numeracy and IT that are available free at the local college anyway, rather than something to update the skills I already have and actually make me employable.


Hmmm... back to the drawing board, there must be some way of getting funding to make me employable, even for a married woman!!!