Ministers change story yet again on benefit-related deaths

Ministers have admitted releasing yet more inaccurate information about their secret inquiries into the deaths of benefit claimants.

Last year, the Department for Work and Pensions stated, in a Freedom of Information Act (FoI) response, that it did not hold any records on deaths linked to, or partially caused by, the withdrawal or non-payment of disability benefits.

Mark Harper, the Conservative minister for disabled people, later told Disability News Service (DNS) that he did not “accept the premise” that DWP should collect and analyse reports of such deaths.

But the Liberal Democrat DWP minister Steve Webb appeared to contradict Harper when he said the following week that when the department becomes aware of worrying cases “they do get looked at”.

A DWP spokesman finally told DNS last October that it does carry out reviews into individual cases, where it is “appropriate”.

It then admitted, in another FoI response, that it had in fact carried out 60 secret reviews into benefit-related deaths since February 2012.

But in a response last week to a question from the veteran Labour MP Michael Meacher, Esther McVey, the Conservative employment minister, said the department had in fact carried out 49 “peer reviews relating to the death of a claimant”.

She refused to say how many of these reviews involved the sanctioning of claimants, and in how many cases DWP’s actions were found to be “inappropriate or incorrect”...

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Looming Staffing Crisis In The NHS As Atos And Maximus Try To Steal All The Nurses

Originally posted on the void:

Iain Duncan Smith’s brutal and bungled welfare reforms could be set to the plunge the NHS into chaos as nurses and doctors are paid huge sums to carry out benefit-slashing assessments instead of working in our chronically understaffed hospitals.

Last year the Royal College of Nusring warned that a lack of senior nurses in the NHS is putting patient care at risk.  This followed a report a year earlier from the Department of Health funded  Centre for Workplace Intelligence which found that the NHS will face a shortfall of 47,545 nurses by 2016.  It is not just Tory cost cutting set to cause this crisis in the NHS, but a lack of suitably qualified homegrown nurses.  Last year The Guardian reported that the shortage is already so acute that one in five nurses employed between 2013/14 had to be recruited from overseas.

US firm Maximus are the company brought…

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Rachel Reeves could single-handedly lose the election for Labour

Rachel Reeves: This photo is a rare occasion in which she doesn’t have her foot in her mouth.

I’ll say it if nobody else will – Rachel Reeves is so stupid she could lose Labour the election.

Work and Pensions is a gaping policy open-goal for the Tories but Ms Reeves can’t see this and wants the world to know she’ll out-cut them on the Benefit Cap.

“Labour supports a cap on benefits. We will ask an independent commission to look at whether the cap should be lower in some areas,” are her actual words.

What stupidity. One can only imagine she is basing these comments on the fact that wages are lower in some areas than others. But prices are just as high!

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Benefit Sanctions Will Cause A Deterioration In Health And That’s OK Says DWP Rule Book

Originally posted on the void:

Physical punishment is now built into the benefit system with sanctions both known and intended to cause a deterioration in health says the DWP rule book..

The shocking fact was revealed by Alison Garnham, Chief Executive of the Child Poverty Action Group who was giving evidence to Work and Pensions Committee’s sanction enquiry this morning.  Graham ended her evidence by pointing out a chilling extract from the DWP Decision Maker’s guidelines referring to whether a claimant who has had their benefit stopped should be entitled to a meagre Hardship Payment for the first two weeks of their sanction.

According to the rules, it would be “usual for a normal healthy adult to suffer some deterioration in their health” if they are left with no money to buy food or pay for essential items for two weeks.  A Hardship Payment can therefore only be awarded for this period if Jobcentre staff…

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How benefit sanctions punish people with mental health problems the hardest

Some of the most vulnerable people on benefits are being sanctioned at alarming rates - even when they're in hospital.

Going through the sanctions process is even more stressful for people with mental health issues (posed by models)

It's hard enough dealing with a mental health issue - but it's made much worse if you're not able to work.

David (not his real name) suffers from schizophrenia and receives two types of income support to help him live while he deals with his illness. He was sanctioned twice in 2013 for not attending work focussed interviews and appointments due to his deteriorating health.

He was even sanctioned while he was very ill in hospital, and forced to rely on his family for food.

Caught in a bureaucratic nightmare without any guidance, David was too ill to speak to advisors.

His family explained his situation but received little compassion. They didn't know who to turn to.

The sanctions on his Disability Living Allowance and Employment Support Allowance (ESA) were only lifted once Citizens Advice Bureau got in touch and intervened on his behalf.

It's now all too common to hear tales of frustrated vulnerable people unable to access the financial help they need and are entitled to. Too many of them are sanctioned for not fulfilling basic tasks which they just can't do because of their disability.

People with mental health problems are FAR more likely to be sanctioned than someone with a physical injury

If you have depression, you're much more likely to lose your benefits than if you've got a physical condition like a broken leg or bronchitis.

This is what new data released by a consortium of church groups and charities shows.

They looked at the number of sanctions given to ESA claimants with different conditions. Claimants with mental health or behavioural problems have been penalised the heaviest by the new sanctions.



The most common reason for being sanctioned is being late or not turning up for a Work Programme appointment, according to the data released by the Methodist Church, Church of Scotland, Church in Wales and mental health charity Mind.

Yet some of these people have issues like crippling anxiety that prevent them from leaving the house, never mind getting to appointments on time. 

Paul Morrison, Public Issues Policy Adviser for the Methodist Church, said: "Sanctioning someone with a mental health problem for being late for a meeting is like sanctioning someone with a broken leg for limping.

"The fact that this system punishes people for the symptoms of their illness is a clear and worrying sign that it is fundamentally flawed."

The reality of being sanctioned, behind the figures:

• One single male said that he was sanctioned for SIX WEEKS for not attending a meeting that would take him off ESA and onto JSA. He didn't attend the meeting as he didn't know about it - he never answered unknown numbers for fear of harassment from debt collectors.
  He said: "I was given no direction over where to go for help.  I felt so angry, insecure, negative, depressed and beaten. I felt like finding solace in drugs and drink.”
• Another ESA claimant suffering from severe anxiety and IBS cannot always leave their home. They were asked to attend training sessions despite giving doctors' letters to support their claim, and were threatened with sanctions for non-attendance. Frightened they would be left destitute, they attended the training and while there, had an anxiety attack. They had to make their way home while very unwell and frightened: an situation that could have been easily-avoided.
• In one particularly tragic story from 2013 one single mother was sanctioned for not attending a meeting. She wasn't able to find help and the stress became too much for her. She was found hanged in her home two days before Christmas.

62% of people sanctioned have mental health problems

People on ESA with mental health problems are over-represented when it comes to being sanctioned.
Since 2010, the gap between the percentage of claimants with mental health problems and the percentage of sanctions for those who have mental health problems has widened.



Paul Farmer, CEO of mental health charity Mind, said: “We’re very concerned about the number of people having their benefits stopped. It’s unjustifiable that people with mental health problems are being sanctioned disproportionately compared to those who have another health problem.

"Stopping benefits does not help people with mental health problems back into work. In fact, it often results in people becoming more anxious and unwell and this makes a return to work less likely."

Mirror Online

UNUM … know thine enemy

At a time when the main focus of attention appears to be on Maximus, the company taking over Work Capability Assessments, Mo says she hopes this will encourage people to deal with the real villains – UNUM Insurance.

She tells us: “Sonia Poulton now advises [UNUM] are in talks with political parties re: an insurance funded health service – which is the beginning of the end for the NHS, I fear.”
Nigel Farage may be delighted to hear such news; the rest of us should be horrified. Now let’s go over to Mo for further information about UNUM:

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Maximus To Get Paid More Than Twice As Much As ATOS For WCA

Maximus, the company taking over work capability assessments (WCA) will be paid more than twice as much as Atos but plans to reduce the proportion of doctors carrying out medicals in favour of cheaper occupational therapists, the Guardian reports.

Atos was paid around £80 million a year for its WCA contract, but Maximus will receive between £590 million and £650 million over three years, depending on performance. 40% of Atos assessors are doctors, 40% are nurses and 20% are physiotherapists. Maximus plans to take on 1,000 extra staff, but reduce the proportion of doctors and take on more occupational therapists instead

According to the Guardian, Maximus believe things will improve from the very start of the contract in March:

“if we can reach out and make people understand the process they are going through … if we can reduce some of the anxiety … if we can schedule more intelligently … if we can speak to people rather than just sending letters. Those are some of the differences … We believe if we do it right, we should be able to do this in a good way.”

However, given that the same staff will be using the same software to assess claimants using the same legal criteria, it is questionable how much difference a better bedside manner is likely to make to make.

See the Guardian for the full story.

Maximus: The Company That Dare Not Show Its Face

Join the Day of Action Against Maximus called by Disabled People Against Cuts on March 2nd.

Maximus – the US based firm brought in to replace Atos to carry out benefit assessments – will hide their corporate identity behind a hastily erected front company in an attempt to avoid damage to their brand The Guardian revealed yesterday.

According to the paper, the company will not use its logo on letters sent to claimants facing the notorious Work Capability Assessment, instead using a neutral name such as “The Centre for Health and Disability Assessment”.  In fact this company has been up and running since June 2014, suspiciously several months before it was announced that Maximus would be taking over the contract from Atos.  The Guardian should probably have known this, because they are currently running an advertisement for a Social Media Manager for the new company on the recruitment part of their website.

The company was established by senior Maximus directors Leslie Wolf and William Smith and is based in the their offices in East Sussex..  Already they are using this fake ID to recruit Functional Assessors and other staff to work on the new contract with the DWP as they desperately attempt to find enough healthcare professionals who are nasty enough to take on the role.

The suffering caused by the Work Capability Assessment is well documented with an ever growing list of tragic deaths linked to the process.  Despite this Maximus claim that the press coverage of Atos and their shambolic handling of the assessments has been “unjustifiably negative” and that in future people should blame the government if they don’t like what Maximus does.   This incidentally was exactly the same line Atos used when they whined about people complaining about them.  The idea that it is perfectly possible to hold governments responsible for the shitty things they do, and equally condemn the vile shitbags who profit from them, never seems to have occurred to this mercenary bunch of vultures.

It looks like Maximus are also using the same medical recruitment firm @sjbmedical that Atos used to hire staff.  Any healthcare professional considering working for these bastards should remember the words of a former Atos disability analyst:

“The job was making me sick …. It’s against my principles to treat people with long term illnesses in such a disgusting way, so I had to give it up.“People go into those interviews and talk openly to you because you are a nurse and they trust you.“Then your skills are used against them, to take away their benefits and destroy their lives.“I can’t be a part of that.”

Reblogged from The Void,

Taking The WCA Back To The Bad Old Days, Why Sick and Disabled Claimants Should Fear A Labour Government

Shadow Minister for Disabled People Kate Green has pledged to return the despised Work Capability Assessment (WCA) back to its “original purpose” raising fears that gains made by capaigners over the last few years could be lost as Labour attempt to rehabilitate the despised tests for sickness or disability benefits.

[...]


The introduction of the Work Capability Assessment was based on the tabloid myth that hundreds of thousands of people were faking their health conditions  and were really able to work.  This lie took hold despite the UK not having significantly more people unable to work due to sickness or disability then other comparable economies.  Yet still the abuse persisted from politicians of all parties.  In 2011 Ed Miliband even attempted to blame benefit claimants for the financial crisis claiming many of those unable to work were “ripping off society”.

On the ground however a very different picture was emerging.  As early as March 2010 Citizens Advice published a damning report (PDF) backed by disability charities revealing the horrific suffering the WCA was causing.  It turned out that most people were not lying about their health condition after all and tragic stories began appearing in the media of poverty, homelessness, ill health and even suicides linked to the new sickness benefit regime.  Huge numbers of decisions made by Atos and the DWP to remove benefits were being over-turned at appeal.  Protests against the process began to spread throughout the UK.  And slowly, the number of people found fit for work, began to fall (as can be seen in the above graph which represents new claims, not re-assessments)...

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Disabled man hounded to death by DWP

 Stephen Lynam tragically died after challenging a #WCA that found him fit for work. DWP then chased his sister... pic.twitter.com/JZcQ2uKU3q

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