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One of the things that struck me when I was a literacy tutor on a government funded programme, was just how at the mercy of their advisor/case worker's social attitudes the clients were. The level and kind of assistance offered and the tone of that offer can vary greatly.
If you claim benefits and try to use the systems and provisions in place for jobseekers, and your home address is in some notorious shithole there's a strong possibility you'll be met with a degree of suspicion and prejudgement. If you don't have the right wardrobe and mannerisms to overturn that preconception very quickly, you might get short shrift, or patronised, or you may face outright nastiness.
If you have been doing rather well in life, have worked for years in a well-paid managerial post, or have been lecturing in a university and you find yourself between jobs during an economic downturn, and you're seeking assistance whilst trying to find a way back in, or retraining/reskilling, you may face a different set of prejudices. I've known case workers who've had real chips on their shoulders about education. One, I swear, took grim delight in 'bringing them down a peg' and rentroducing them to 'the real world', by which they meant they'd got to the point in their claim where they have to take any job, even if its shovelling shit naked on the high street for public amusement*. Or they'd passed the milestone that means they have to go on some ludicrous fucking 'Job Seeker' course, where they'll be taught the arcane mysteries of writing a resume using MS Word, and how to write a frakking application letter, by a well-meaning 24 year old volunteer and her hard as nails, eagle-eyed supervisor. Whilst there, they'll be cajoled, patronised, bullied and discarded all in the span of 6 weeks.
Right...that turned into slightly more of a rant than I'd intended...
*not really
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