Telling tales about work assessment

It was with more than a little incredulity that we read John Mackintosh's defence of Atos HealthCare in assessing people for employment support allowance (Letters, 4 April). Mr Mackintosh cites the National Audit Office review as saying quality of assessment is only a factor in 0.3% of successful appeals. However, this is judged on one single criteria – the quality of information Atos provides to the Department for Work and Pensions.

The DWP has created a process that limits people's ability to present the full complexity of their conditions. If Atos assessors were doing a half-way decent job, they would challenge that guidance and make sure the people they assessed had the correct information with them. Assessments would then lead to the right result first time, rather than people being forced into the unbearable situation of appeal and reassessment.

We also found laughable the suggestion that Atos is providing a compassionate and professional service. The stories we have collected to write two plays, Atos Stories and The Atos Monologues, suggest a different experience. All our contributors described the assessment as being degrading and stressful; the assessors acted like robots, with tick-box approach and little knowledge of the conditions they were assessing

Atos Healthcare, of course, is only following orders, and being paid handsomely for it. But it is high time that this disgraceful situation stopped. The ESA End Game Campaign is calling on the government to abandon the failing ESA and end the Atos contract. As part of this campaign, the Atos Stories Collective is holding a mass reading of our work tomorrow in Oxford, Lampeter and Cardiff, with videos, podcasts and tweets broadcast throughout the day (atosstories.blogspot.co.uk).

Judith Cole

The Atos Stories Collective, Oxford

Guardian