Last time I blogged about how Clean Slate is about re-activating people and how unemployment and the welfare system itself actively switches people off. Since then I met Tom.

Actually, before I met Tom we had an in-house training day. I wanted to double-check everything I have been saying was reflected in all our offices' day to day experience. And I wanted to ensure our committed team - largely made up of former workless people themselves - had the best skills to do the job of re-activating people. So, we ran the day, breaking it down into listening skills, an introduction to our new Job Readiness MOT, and quality standards.

The first workshop was amusing. People paired up to discuss an event one of them held dear. A director, Carole, was describing her daughter's wedding that she'd effectively run. She went into the detail of the challenges, the hiccups, the stress of it all. Obviously slow on the uptake, I was shocked to see her counterpart looking around the room and then start rolling a fag. It didn't occur to me that this was his task in the role play and shame on me for thinking he'd do that. (Carole didn't let on but I swear she'd have been ready to tear him off a strip.)

So when I sat down to meet with Tom it was fresh in my mind that I wasn't there to talk to him but to listen. In particular, we needed to revamp his CV.
Tom speaks five languages fluently and two more passably. He's worked in security, translated for a legal firm, volunteered for Lambeth council, been homeless through relationship breakdown. It's easy to talk about the past. Like talking about the weather. Matter of fact. Can't be changed. But then we got down to reading between the lines.

It turned out the voluntary work was translating for patients and their families in hospitals and the legal work was with people seeking asylum. I imagined how terrifying hospitals must be if you can't speak the language - it's hard enough to know what's going on when we can. We discussed how rewarding Tom found it when families were so grateful to have not only access to information but an advocate. The legal work was with asylum seekers and it turns out Tom was as valuable supporting people who, understandably, feared authority and felt the need to fight for what they need. And we re-built a profile of who Tom is. His CV will be unique to him. He'll come alive in the eyes of employers and he'll be more likely to avoid the reject pile. What's more, Tom began to see himself afresh too.

As we talked and thrashed out how to take his perfectly adequate CV and turn it into a Clean Slate one, it became clearer to me what I wanted. We're called Clean Slate for a reason. It's not much help to job seekers to have them produce a resume; a simple list of where they've been, where they've worked (or not worked), what they've learnt (or not learnt). What they need, and what Clean Slate needs to take to employers and present the latent talent on our books, is a document that shines. It needs to say 'This is who I am', 'This is what I have to offer', and 'This is where I'm going'.

For some, conquering their demons is a positive. I worked with one young woman, Lizzie, who'd spent ten years on drugs since before leaving school. She believed she had nothing to offer employers and less to write up a CV. So we focussed on the future. Again, we're called Clean Slate for a reason. She talked about what gets her going and how hard she worked to turn her life around. She explored the skills she uses to volunteer at Narcotics Anonymous meetings. By the end of session, she's mapped out a CV that left no-one in any doubt what she had to offer. Including Lizzie.

We have a plan for making this the standard delivered in all our offices. More training. More job readiness programmes. More listening. We're ambitious and want to spread around the country so we have to systematise our approach. We're going to have to get good at it: Better than the growing ranks of the competition and good enough to keep re-activating those job seekers.

Torch - part 2 (Generating Energy)

I met Shirley when she came to help me out about a year ago. I was hosting a visit from a homelessness charity from the Midlands. I hadn't had a chance to talk to her beforehand, so I was taking a bit of a gamble but what she said blew me away:

"I turned up at the Clean Slate office after 13 weeks on a job centre programme. I didn't even have a CV. And I had no idea what I wanted to do. I explained to the worker there that I've got no skills and no experience, I've been raising a family for 20 years.

"They said 'Are you kidding? 20 years raising a family? You have loads to offer.' And within two sessions I realised I had so many transferable skills and I set my sights on working in the care sector. Not working with kids, mind," Shirley had a proper Bristolian brogue. "I'm going to work with older people. And my CV proves it."

That's one light re-lit.

Clean Slate's job is to reactivate. To find the 'on' switch for all those systematically de-activated not only by unemployment itself but the systems and mechanisms supposedly designed to support them. We help them find their worth. You don't have to dig very deep. It's not rocket science. It's all there. As readily available as the weather.

So, I'm stood in front of a group of people already excited about Bristol becoming a net exporter of energy by harnessing the elements. I'm stood on the stage brandishing an imaginary torch. And the room is wondering where this is going.

The battery may be flat but it's not dead. Clean Slate helps the light flicker on. Then we need to charge it up.

We do this by providing people with paid work. Just a few hours a week, placed with employers through our temp agency or working directly for us delivering leaflets or packing condoms into sexual health kits, for example. It starts the motors stirring. Even rough sleepers and current drug users come away thinking: 'So I CAN work'. Our temps who we've placed soon want more hours, even if they lose out on their benefits. The guys (gender non-specific) using our walk-in centres get focussed, motivated and active in job search.

Lights go on.

And on.

And stay on.

"Can we directly link how we reactivate and re-energise job seekers to the vision of you environmentalists?" I ask.

What if our temps are delivering easy to read publications to people on low incomes (and everyone else for that matter) on ways to reduce utility bills? What if they spread the word in their own communities? What if we train up 50 job seekers in the skills required to help households install low energy products? What if they're available to do the lugging and hauling to get the solar panels to the rooves? What if some have the technical skills to fit the kit?

Lights go on across Bristol.

In communities. Within families. Within people.

Torch - Part 1 (Wasting Energy)

So I'm stood in front of the audience at the launch of the Bristol Power Coop. "Imagine I have in my hand a whacking great torch. It's a million candles bright. And I'm switching it on.

"And off.

"And on.

"And off."

Now imagine this torch is one unemployed person. All this latent energy. This potential. This untapped opportunity to light up the path ahead and illliminate the world around. Switched off.

Although the bulb's not shining, the longer the light is off the more the battery drains until there's barely the energy to create any light at all. Feeling unwanted. Then unable. Then unmotivated. Unemployment corrodes. It starts with the individual. Then families. Then communities. And that's where Clean Slate comes in.

I've been to a few events involving benefit claimants over the past year. Their stories are basically the same. They ask the same questions: Why is it Job Centres need doorstaff and why do they always ask what you're doing there? Why do I have to repeat the same personal details to a perfect stranger every time I come in, they're not something I'm proud of? Why am I invariably treated with suspicion as if the likelihood is that I'm cheating the system?

At one event in East London, claimants asked why Job Centres don't just strip claimants naked and be done with it.

At most of the events, the civil servants present said they were disappointed that individual had had a bad experience. At the launch of the European Year of Combating Poverty last year, DWP staff and a minister refuted these were universal experiences. Yet attendees were there from Wales, London, Norfolk and the South West with all the same stories. It would be a lie to call it a listening event.

So, the light goes off again.

Whenever I read another headline about benefit cheats and scroungers, I imagine another light going out. (I remember when I was at The Big Issue, one radio presenter described a colleague of mine as 'representative of the feckless and workshy' - showing just how much journalists know.) Then I see politicians doing the same.

Lodge this in your brain: Next time you hear someone berate the unemployed, imagine another light going out.

Don't get me wrong, the unemployed are not a unified group. There's no solidarity. They're no less likely to judge others on benefits than anyone else.They're switching the lights off too.

Nor is it true to say that all jobless people would readily work if they had the chance to. Some don't believe they could. Some can't. Some won't. Some just don't.

And even if they did, many would find themselves so much worse off that they'd be forced to quit. (Bear in mind that, for many, we're talking about £56 on top of the direct cost of rent and council tax each week. The cost to the State may be high but the value to the claimant is low. And the net value of work depends on how high those fixed costs are.) I know. It's tricky to follow. We can't expect journalists to follow that. Or politicians, it seems.

And off.