DWP: fake psych ‘test’ training given by unqualified ‘experts’

Reblogged from The Skwawkbox:



Please share this widely. I think it’s big again.

The saga of the DWP’s fake psychometric test, forced on unwitting jobseekers under threat of ‘sanction’ (immediate cessation of benefits), continues.

After a series of conflicting denials and admissions, and finally an outright admission that jobseekers were ‘directed’ (instructed under threat of sanction) to take the test, I’ve received another remarkable FOI response – this one primarily about the qualifications of the people who ‘coached’ Jobcentre Plus (JCP) advisers how to select the jobseekers who were directed to take the test.

Psychological experiments require stringent ethical and quality controls, carried out by qualified and registered psychologists. The Division of Occupational Psychologists (DOP) of the British Psychological Society (BPS) has been in uproar about the fact that the DWP’s ‘test’ was not properly validated or administered, and the DWP’s senior psychologist is under investigation by the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC – please forgive all the acronyms, but they’re really unavoidable in this case!) over the maladministration of an unvalidated psychometric test.

This was the context for my latest Freedom of Information request to the DWP. The Department had responded to a previous FOI asking what training was given to the JCP advisers who selected jobseeker ‘lab rats’ for Downing Street’s Behavioural Insights Team’s experiment. The DWP had responded that the training for the test was

part of a facilitated Coaching Session under Building Resilience. Advisers would decide using their knowledge of each individual claimant whether 

they felt it would be beneficial for the claimant to complete a ‘My Strengths’ test. The sessions were delivered by experts and the sessions are for coaching and take on the form of a seminar rather than a lecture, hence lack of a script/materials.Naturally, I wasn’t satisfied by such an obviously vague response, and wanted to know who these ‘experts’ were and what their qualifications were, so I submitted a new FOI to the DWP to that effect. This led to the newest, remarkable response, which you can view in full here, but the key parts of which are shown below along with the questions I asked:

Q: Who were these ‘experts’ [who 'delivered' an informal coaching session to JCP advisers - so informal that there are no notes or written handouts!]?

A: The experts were members of the “Behavioural Insight Team in the Cabinet Office”

Q: What are the qualifications that make them expert?

A: The lead facilitator is a Psychologist in the Cabinet Office.

This is hugely significant, for two main reasons.
First, while the DWP’s chief psychologist is under investigation over this matter, it’s been unclear yet whether the ‘test’ had involved a psychologist at all, or had simply bypassed any qualified involvement. Now we have it on record that a psychologist was involved in this unvalidated, improper, coercive experiment on vulnerable people – but one from the Cabinet Office, not the DWP. Whoever that was, and whoever they report to, needs to be investigated for malpractice too.

Second, and particularly, the BIT’s experts clearly had no qualifications whatever. If they did, the DWP’s response would have used them: ‘the BIT experts were qualified and registered psychologists/psychiatrists/psychotherapists’ or whatever. Instead, they answer a question I didn’t ask, by telling me that the ‘lead facilitator’ (whatever the hell that is) was a psychologist. It’s an evasive answer, clearly designed to cover for the fact that they made a false claim in their previous FOI response. I will be challenging this evasive response!

Q: Please provide a copy of their notes for these sessions – it is implausible to suggest that they all carried out the sessions without any notes or prompts whatever. [The 'sessions' referred to relate to the previous FOI, which asked how the people mandated to complete the 'test' were selected.]

A: As the sessions are for coaching and take on the form of a seminar rather than a lecture, script/materials are not used. I have attached a note which they can refer to which provides an overview of Building Resilience (see separate attachment).

Now we move from the absurd to the ridiculous. These ‘coaching sessions’, supposedly given by ‘experts’ to JCP advisers to prepare them for the rigorous, delicate, vital task of selecting human guinea pigs for a psychological experiment… consist of nothing more than a description of the purported aims of the test. Here it is in its entirety, o you can see whether there’s a single word about how to select candidates or the care that should be taken in doing so, which is what I had asked about:

Building Resilience: Strengths

Why?

It widely accepted that increase resilience and positive approaches are important to people in work but we’ve all seen Jobseeker’s Allowance claimants whose morale and self-belief visibly decrease during their time out of work. How do we remedy this?

Often Jobcentre advisers tackle this informally, doing the best they can to improve their claimant’s morale; the best advisers will use resources available on the internet for the claimants to support themselves. The claimant experience in a Jobcentre tends to focus on the weaknesses people have and how we can help them; this is similar to healthcare (think of the language we use like ‘diagnostic’ interview) but it can be more effective to aim for being ‘healthy’ rather than ‘not unhealthy’ – which can lead people to focus on what they are bad at. A light touch approach can stop these issues before they cause harm to people.

How does it work?

We all know confidence in your own abilities is fundamental to finding work (see this article from MEP Seligman as an example) – believing you have something to offer an employer will drive how you sell yourself in your CV, application or interview. In our Jobcentre environment, claimants have naturally been through a stressful period of either losing their job or having not working for a long time. Strengths tests, like the one below, provide the individual with strengths about their personality they can apply to any scenario. The respondent is not given weaknesses or a score for their strengths – a strength is a strength, not a high or low scoring strength.

Applying it to Jobcentres

As part of the behavioural insights trial, Jobseeker’s are requested to complete a strengths testing exercise at some point in the first 13 weeks of ;">their claim. The exercise is particularly useful if:

 morale or confidence have visibly fallen
 the claimant is looking to refresh/update their CV or prepare for an interview

The effect of these tests should provide the claimant with a greater belief that they have something to offer an employer, giving them a more positive and optimistic approach to finding work.

You can register on the Authentic Happiness website or at http://www.viasurvey.co.uk and complete your own strengths test there.

Alternatively, you can complete the signature strengths test used in the Behavioural Insights trial here.

Did you find a single word about how to choose candidates, or ethical issues, or the need for care? No, nor did I.

Once again we have from the DWP a series of non-responses designed to mislead and misdirect – yet which give away far more than intended. The current DWP is rather good at persecuting the vulnerable, but rather less good at covering it up.

I’ll be passing this information on to the BPS DOP, so that its members can decide what to do with it. I also plan to make my own complaint to the HCPC, once I have the name of the psychologist responsible for ‘facilitating’ this bizarre, threat-based experiment on struggling jobseekers.