Dying Is An Option Thanks To DWP

Reblogged from enoughisenoughdwp:

Nothing left to do but die

It has taken 3 days to type this, I can't concentrate for long and can't be bothered to correct.

I suffer from crippling depression And anxiety. I also have problems walking  and standing unaided  because of a spinal issue. 

I rarely leave my home and spend most of my time in bed or in front of a Telly. I have lost contact with friends as I just want to be  left alone 

I haven't been paid any benefit since mid February when my ESA was stopped.

The reason they stopped it was because I didn't attend my medical assessment at Atos. This was because I never received my notification.

I am no longer at the address it was sent to, but when I lived there, mail could be very sporadic because mine and others on the street, would be sometimes delivered to different flats and houses on the street.

I appealed their decision but was refused twice and later told, they were not appeals, but  reconsideration, even though I filled out a GL24 form.

I have reached the point that some days I feel life is no longer worth living. I was evicted 3 Weeks ago and currently living in a mice infested squat because I didn't want to be parted with my dog.

If it wasn't for my pensioner mother, I don't know how I would have survived. She has helped me out with small amounts of money here and there, but it is not fair on her as she is also in bad health.

After several months I tried to apply for job seekers but was met by a very unhelpful and spiteful bitch called Saba who works at the Dalston Job Centre. I'm sorry, but after that woman did to me, it's the first word that comes to mind.

From the first meeting she showed no interest and didn't even look at me when I was in front of her.

Things came to a head when I attended  Dalston Job centre for my first sign on. Saba was unfriendly, barked at me. I told her I was unable to look for the required 8 jobs and only managed a few, because of my dire state of mind. I was on the verge of being evicted, suffering depression so bad that I spent most of the day with a duvet over my me. Compounded with arthritis and a bulging disc in my back, I was lower than low. Even standing at the kitchen sink was an ordeal. My only relief is when I'm lying down.

Saba reluctantly decided I would be paid, but scolded me like a child and told me to show up with proof of 8 jobs I had sought next sign on

She got me to sign something and when I handed the pen back to her, she claimed I threw it at her. In fact it dropped from my hand as I have problems holding on to things, even a phone because my fingers are numb most of the time  and feel like pins and needles.

She told me my JSA was being stopped because I threw a pen at her. I insisted on seeing her manager (she refused at first but I insisted). Her manager who overheard everything told me he had called her aside and spoke with her even before I requested to speak to him.

After two Weeks on JSA it was decided by my doctor I not try to work.

That is when the nightmare got worse.

How long am I supposed to live like this? I can't handle the stress of calling DWP, I can't handle the abuse from them, I can't handle sleeping on a mattress in a mice infested squat. I don't think I have enough pills left to take my life and not enough on my oyster card to get into my nearest tube station to jump infront of a train. The easiest thing is to walk in front of a bus on Kigslad High Rd nr the job centre What more do they want from me? My doctor has written a letter to them but that is not enough.

To our current government, Dwp, the staff at Hackney and Dalston job centre. My blood will be on your hands when I summon up the courage to leave this world.

I can't just blame them for everything, my problems began long before my dealings with Dwp. It hurts to be awake. I just want to sleep and never wake up.

It has taken 3 days to type this, I can't concentrate for long and can't be bothered to correct.

I rarely leave my home and spend most of my time in bed or infront of a Telly. I have lost contact with friends as I have nothig  to share

I'm out of money, can't pay for my mobile phone bill and can no longer pay for top up for mobile broadband,  basics like  personal hygiene and food

I don't want to be a burden to my mother anymore and cannot bare the thought of asking her for more money.

The following  people helped drive me over the edge

Dalston job centre, Hackney Job Centre, Francine (mare street jc) who was so cold and told me to kill myself if that's what I felt like doing , some woman called Begonia (mare st jc) who spoke very bad English and refused to give me her name yesterday and this morning, Jenny (mare st jct) who was rude some months ago and hung up when all I did was ask her a question.You are employed to help people not degrade them.

Rob on the Ajax Team at Mare St thanks for being very decent. Same goes to Delores at Dalston Job centre for being very patient and taking time out.

An idiot speaks: Time for Europe to let British farmers grow GM food, says environment minister

'Genetically modified crops should be sold in Europe, despite consumers' concerns about 'Frankenstein foods’, the Environment Secretary Owen Paterson will say.

Mr Paterson, who has previously spoken out about the benefits of GM technology, has decided to make a high-profile speech in the hope of turning the tide on the issue.

It is understood he has the firm backing of Chancellor George Osborne, who believes GM food could provide opportunities for British farmers.'

Read more: An idiot speaks: Time for Europe to let British farmers grow GM food, says environment minister

Work When You’re Sick Say New DWP Guidelines

New advice issued to doctors, patients and employers on sick pay shows just how far the Government intend to push the brutal regime for people on disability or sickness benefits into the workplace.

The DWP recently renamed ‘sick notes’ as ‘fit notes’ which in the new guidance has led to some genuinely Orwellian gobbledygook in the guidance such as:  “if your employee’s doctor thinks they are fit for work, they will not be issued with a fit note.”

Just like the despised Atos run Work Capability Assessment, doctors can now declare a patient ‘fit for work’, unfit for work, or capable of some work but not necessarily the job they usually do.  This means that if an employer makes some changes to a staff member’s working conditions then they may be forced back to work.

The new rules, which were devised in consultation with the Confederation of British Industry, seem little more than an attempt to bully people into work when they aren’t really well enough.  The document is littered with bold claims that work is good for your health such as “People can often come back to work before they are 100% fit – in fact work can even help their recovery”.

Nowhere in the documents does it warn that people’s conditions may also be made far worse by going back to work before they are ready.

Bosses have welcomed the chance to force their sick employees back to work with one quoted as calling the new system ‘a joy’:

“The joy of the fit note is that it’s flexible enough for us to interpret and fit the GP’s recommendation within the context of our business.”

The truth is that the DWP are playing a dangerous game and could tempt employers into a legal minefield.  One stark warning says:  “You may need to carry out a risk assessment to accommodate the clinical judgment in the fit note (eg if it states that your employee should avoid lifting, you are liable if you give them work that involves manual handling).”

In a further complication, according to guidance from Citizen’s Advice, if employers refuse to make changes to an employee’s working conditions to accommodate doctor’s recommendations, then they are still liable to pay Statutory Sick Pay.  The confusion doesn’t even end there.  ‘Fit Notes’ are advice only and bosses are not legally obliged to follow that advice.  They can sack you even if a doctor claims you are too ill to work.  They could however then be taken to court.  Employment tribunal lawyers will be rubbing their hands in glee at the DWP’s meddling with an already complex  legal situation.

The DWP have already shown they are happy to play fast and loose with the Courts.  Bosses who act the same way may be in for an expensive shock.

The guidance can be read at: http://www.dwp.gov.uk/fitnote/

Follow me on twitter @johnnyvoid

The Void

This is what ESA/WCA means for sick and disabled people [Ekklesia]

As part of a new campaign to highlight the highly damaging impact of the government's welfare changes, particularly in relation to Employment and Support Allowance (ESA), activist Sue Marsh (http://diaryofabenefitscrounger.blogspot.co.uk/) launched #ESAendgame, the first of a range of mobilising activities, on Twitter and on her web page yesterday (6 March 2013).

The aim is to get people talking about the human impact of ESA, and of the WCA (Work Capability Assessment) overseen by the DWP and implemented by ATOS and others, which is what someone has to go through to qualify for ESA.

We have excerpted some of the comments and examples people tweeted below. They make harrowing reading. There are a few news and audio links included. These are the stories and experiences which politicians, civil servants, policy makers and media operatives need to see in order to understand the massive damage being occasioned by the government's assault on welfare.

Ekklesia believes that social, welfare and benefits policy should be shaped by human determinants, by an economics of sharing rather than hoarding, and above all by the expertise, experience and perspective of those living at the sharp-end - not by decision-makers living in remote comfort, protected by spin-doctors.


Here is what #ESAendgame revealed:

"The DWP sends very poorly terminally ill people like me into the Work Related Activity Group - we're not 'fit for work' any time soon, we're dying."

"Elaine's body was found in a drain. The Inquest heard she was worried about a benefit entitlement meeting."
"My terminal friend had to explain 'how terminal?' was her terminal cancer to the JSA office. She died four months later."

"If you became ill or disabled would you want to live in constant fear of becoming destitute?"

"A Freedom of Information document from the DWP has revealed that rather than an average of 32 deaths per week as a result of Welfare Reform that figure has now risen to an average of 73 deaths per week." http://welfarenewsservice.com/nothing-short-of-barbaric/

"I live in a crip's body, wracked with pain, high on drugs to dull pain receptors, have restricted movement but brain works fine."

"I was pushed into oncoming traffic whilst waiting at traffic lights in my wheelchair followed by shouts of 'scrounging scum'."

"Quote from ATOS Work Capability Assessment: 'And how long have you had Down’s Syndrome?'"

"According to the DWP's own research, 92 per cent of UK businesses will not consider employing a blind person. WCA [is] oblivious to this fact."

"Far from 'helping people back to work' the truth regarding ESA is [that] it causes additional suffering and makes sick people sicker."

"The DWP, with no medical experience, can declare you fit for work despite evidence from professionals. This is just wrong."

"Now too old for ESA, but hear about too many people with terminal cancer being told they should be in work."

"Fury as benefits bullies DWP force 50,000 disabled Scots to go back to work." tinyurl.com/b7fqneb

"I object to having my illness tested by a points scoring system. If doctors did this, hospitals would be virtually empty."

"New rules allow assessors to completely disregard symptoms."

"The One Year Time Limit totally undermines any contributory principle."

"Is it fair that ill/disabled have to justify said illness to someone who knows nothing about it? Justify it?"

"My WCA assessment stated I couldn't work. DWP overturned it and placed me in a WRAG. Took a year to overturn at tribunal."

"Claimants could be left without any income replacement benefit at all when challenging a decision that they are fit for work, the government has confirmed."

"My fight for my ESA is temporarily over, many more are still fighting."

"Why should someone who has to spend the bulk of their energy on dealing with pain, fatigue, and staying alive be forced to work?"

"Most people's impairments can be accommodated in the right job with the right support - but those jobs are few and far between."

"ESA is finding people fit for the dole queue, not fit for any kind of realistic and suitable employment."

"The worst thing about ESA is the constant reassessment of people who won't get better."

"The tragedy of Alice: How the Work Capability Assessment costs lives - its impact on people with mental health problems is more serious than ATOS have acknowledged." http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/03/tragedy-alice

"One day I was a valued member of society, the next day I was a dirty, filthy scrounger who bankrupted the UK."

"All the people I tweeted about who died were real and their stories can be found here." http://t.co/ZRsZzVlkoO [*.PDF file]

"Seems saying I have frequent co-morbid tendencies at my ESA WCA means I'm OK to work. Who knew?"

"Full of rage for the contempt in which people are held. Human beings. Full of fear for the future when I'll need to apply."

"A man who doused himself with petrol and tried to set himself alight in a job centre after a dispute over benefits has been jailed for 20 months."

"April 2013 sees the end of contribution-based ESA. All claims will only last for a year even if you have paid 40+ years of National Insurance (NI)."

"ATOS incompetence: 'When did you catch autism?'"

"The claimant has no right to know the qualifications of the WCA assessors. You could have a physio assessing autism."

"One ATOS [assessor] was described, by my brief at my tribunal hearing, as 'certifying a chair fit for work'. Everyone knew him."

"I'd like to know how qualified these ESA 'advisors' actually are. More visibility, please."

"A person whose cousin was on disability benefit, dying of liver failure: the DWP stopped her benefit and she had to appeal against it, enduring eight weeks of 'worry, hopelessness and grief' before dying two days before her family received notification that her appeal had been granted."

"One of the most stressful events in life, is moving home - the government's bedroom tax is deliberately inflicting this on disabled."

"A man 63 dies of kidney failure and starvation after being cut off benefits and declared 'fit for work'."
"Please tell me, Government, what have I done to deserve this abuse and suffering from you?"

"The bullying tactics of DWP and ATOS." http://alonewewhisper.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/the-bullying-tactics-of-dwp...

"Why are we spending millions of pounds finding sick people fit for jobs that don't exist?"

"ATOS: The world's silliest interview." http://loopys-rollingwiththepunches.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/esa-sos-world...

"Worst thing about ESA is [that] they ignore long-term medical knowledge about people in favour of a 10-minute ATOS interview."

"Simon Hickmans ATOS assessment. This is how they treat people with mental health problems." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tG9a22hbrcY

"This is very much like my assessment, but I felt couldn't walk out and I had no-one with me or any support of any kind, so I got trampled over by ATOS and got zero points."

"Government policy on disability assessment doesn't work and is wasting my taxes, and making the lives of the disabled even harder."

"We hope that you'll never understand what the fear of the brown envelope means, but just in case please sign the WOW petition: http://wowpetition.com/

------

Ekklesia is honoured and pleased to be working with disability researchers and campaigners in helping to link analysis with advocacy, political lobbying and media awareness-building around welfare, benefits and disability policy.

See also:

* Sue Marsh's blog on Ekklesia: http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/suemarsh
* Disability issues on Ekklesia: http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/disability
* Truth and lies about poverty, benefits and welfare: http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/18086
* Thousands of disabled and sick people will be hit by new ESA/WCA changes: http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/17812

Source

Why are more middle-aged men turning to suicide?

This Guardian Video sensitively looks at the issue of suicide as National Statistics suggest that the number of middle-aged men killing themselves is rising with the marked increase of unemployment and financial problems.

Why are more middle-aged men turning to suicide?

Recent figures from the Office for National Statistics suggest that the number of middle-aged men killing themselves is rising.

The number of suicides among women has fallen over the past 30 years, but the figure for men has not dropped at the same rate.

Men in the 30 - 45 age bracket are most likely to turn to suicide, but since 2007 there has been an marked increase in the number of men in the 45 - 55 age group who are taking their own lives, and unlike other groups this has not dropped since.

What is causing this and what can be done to tackle it?

Tim Samuels reports for BBC Newsnight.

If you, or someone you know, has been affected by the issues raised in this report on suicide, click here to find details of organisations that can help.

Source; Guardian

#ESAendgame ~ Please lend your support to this campaign and share as widely as possible ~ Unite!

SUE MARSH WRITES: Wednesday, 6 March 2013

ESA SOS – The Starting Gun

In a few weeks, I’m going to arrange for some very significant stories to break in the very mainstream press about ESA.

I’ve been collecting them for about 6 months and if there’s any justice left at all, they will kill ESA once and for all.

They will totally change your perception of ESA and WCAs

We need a Spartacus 2 and as you all know, I’ve been sick as a dog.

Today is stage one. If you’re in, please leave your Name and user name on twitter or Facebook (Feel free to only provide the latter if you like to keep your anonymity a little) and Constituency

There will be a task most days, so please keep watching my blog.

Today, I would like something very specific. What is the worst thing, for you about ESA/WCAs? I need you to simply leave a one line answer if possible, ie “1 Year Time Limit – It totally undermines any contributory principle”

The most popular of these “subjects” will make up every short section of the new report.

Share this post everywhere you can.

This will be the start of our biggest fightback.

EVERYONE will have to give this everything if it is to work.

We need hundreds of responses to every request to make this a truly representative report from disabled people, by disabled people.

The more join, the more powerful our voice and the more impact any final work will have.

What’s more, by crowdsourcing our information and skills, believe me, we have 100 times the resources and ability of the DWP.

I have an awesome team in place – they produced #esaSOS in just 4 days.

Hard though it will be, PLEASE, I’m still very weak and CAN’T read endless comments or pages and pages of Hansard or reports.

Make this easy for me by keeping as close to the brief each day as you possibly can.

I WILL cover everything, nothing will get missed.

I’ll ask the question you’re itching to comment on, honest, but if we do it this way, I can delegate very much and empower you all to know exactly what we need.

Even a shadow of division will see us fail.

This will need every group, every campaigner, every supporter, no matter how radical or moderate, how powerful or unknown, every journalist that has supported us, every politician who is fully signed up to our arguments.

If you have a prominent welfare/disability/political voice, website or other outlet, please cross post this from me. 

So today, in the comment thread please leave :

• Name and social media name/s (or just the latter if more comfortable)
• Constituency
• The WORST thing for you about ESA/WCAs in one line. 

****ESA is the most terrible failure of any developed nation for a very long time. The reasons are numerous and utterly undeniable. The government has failed to implement Harrington with any commitment and is actively increasing the rate at which vulnerable people face a failing and unfair test. We have engaged with a democratic process that has failed us at every stage. We have no choice left but to stop this ourselves. Over 100,000 people now face some kind of ESA assessment every MONTH. We can’t afford to wait. ****

Enough is Enough. 

From today, please use the hashtag #ESAendgame in all your tweets.

We must build awareness and create an army of support and dissemination. 

Alone we Whisper, Together we Shout

PLEASE COMMENT HERE: http://diaryofabenefitscrounger.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/esa-sos-starting-gun.html



Programme for action over Atos [Michael Meacher MP]

I am extremely grateful for the huge number of persons and organisations who have written to me both before and after the debate in the House on Atos on 17 January.   If this campaign succeeds, and I believe it will, it will be entirely due to the determined and unceasing efforts of so many dedicated activists to make sure it does happen.   Thank you all for that tremendous, and continuing, drive which is what gives momentum to any successful campaign.   There are now several initiatives in the pipeline, and I wanted now to update everyone.

1  I wrote to Iain Duncan Smith MP, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, on 31 January asking for a delegation to meet him in his office to discuss the reforms that urgently need to be made.   I told him in my letter that: “The debate in my view was one of the best that I have recently heard in the Chamber, being free of rancour and partisanship, but critical, detailed, passionate and well-focused on the need for reform.   Nearly 30 MPs spokeand without exception on all sides of the House, whilst recognising there had been some improvements, they were deeply critical that the fundamental structures still remained deeply flawed causing profound upset, distress, indignation, anger and sense of helplessness, in many cases making sick people even more sick through anxiety and fear.   Although many MPs targeted Atos Healthcare, it was noticeable that a singly MPdefended the DWP position over the descriptors, regulations and guidance handed down by the government to the private company”.

Not having had a reply to my letter at any time throughout February, I have now written a reminder to Duncan Smith that this is a matter of acute public interest both cross-party within the House and throughout the whole country, and that I now expect a very early response.   If this is not forthcoming very soon, I shall put down a Parliamentary Question drawing attention to this unacceptable delay, and from my experience that always produces a reply within 24 hours or so.

In addition, I am working on a number of other initiatives -

*  A further delegation to see the Minister from the Royal College of Physicians, the Royal College of General Practitioners, and the Royal College of Psychiatrists,

*  An EDM demanding that all assessments should be in line with practice at Kettering which pursued the Harrington recommendations in full including just 4 assessments a day, not the 11 laid down by DWP targets, and produced almost entirely accurate results, not the cruel distortions generated by so many perfunctory examinations today,

  *  A further select committee inquiry, perhaps in conjunction with social media mobilisation of public opinion.

If anyone has any further ideas, please let me know.

Michael Meacher MP

Related:

• Is Parliament fit for purpose? A month ago the Government was defeated in a vote ...
• My speech on ATOS Work Capability Assessments http://youtu.be/9q9QfRVB6HA I beg to move that this House has considered the ...
• Debate on Atos in chamber of House of Commons now likely next month I am very pleased that the Back-Bench Business Committee of ...
• Atos debate in the House now fixed for Thursday 17 January I am very pleased to announce that the elected Back-Bench ...
• More horror stories from Atos I have now received several more letters from around the ...

How the Work Capability Assessment costs lives

The tragedy of Alice

How the Work Capability Assessment costs lives - its impact on people with mental health problems is more serious than Atos have acknowledged.

Campaigners Protest Against Atos Work Capability Assessments Which They Say Are Failing Sick & Disabled People

You probably won’t have heard much about the case of Alice (name changed). She’s a 33-year-old woman who lives in the West Country with her parents. She’s very poorly: she suffers from severe bipolar disorder, and has been sectioned on numerous occasions after harming herself.

In February last year, she received a letter from the outsourcing company Atos, which told her that she was about to lose her disability living allowance and would have to undergo an assessment before could receive employment support. Shortly after this, Alice was found by her mother in the bathroom. She'd slashed her throat in the bath. She was taken to hospital for treatment, and survived.

Alice’s community psychiatric nurse and a forensic psychologist contacted Atos, and told the company not to contact her directly again. The company agreed. The morning after she’d been released from hospital, she returned to find another letter concerning an appointment. She slashed her throat again, and was readmitted to hospital.

Alice’s mother got in touch with Bufferzone, a local benefit advice charity. They managed to restore her benefits without the need for further tribunals. But the last issue of Private Eye - thus far the only publication to have covered this story - carried a staggering update:

Last week, Atos wrote to Alice again. Fortunately the letter arrived while her condition was stable and she suffered no ill effects. Tony Lea of Bufferzone was again forced to take up her case. Atos told him the letter was computer-generated - and could not be stopped. Brilliant.

Perhaps, were it to concern another company, this ludicrous tale of cruel incompetence would be making more headlines. But the problem is, we’ve run out of ways of telling the story. Here’s a list of 30 similar tales where the outcome was worse: the victim died.

As John McDonnell MP has pointed out in Parliament:

The first [now second] example on the list was that of Paul Reekie. Some Members may have known Paul, an award-winning writer and poet in Leith, Scotland. He did not leave a suicide note, just two letters on the table beside him. One was about his loss of housing benefit and the other was about his loss of incapacity benefit.

Tony Lea, Alice’s advisor, has been working at the coal face for years. A garrulous, likeable man, (“Stop me if I’m going on: I’m just some bloke with a big mouth”) he set up Bufferzone six years ago, originally as an advocacy service for those suffering from mental illness. Its remit expanded - now he helps the homeless, alcoholics, those suffering from disability, victims of abuse, and other vulnerable. He’s got a whole load of stories, from meeting a mentally ill woman in the middle of a field at night with the police in tow because that was the only place she’d talk to him, to being attacked and having his car windscreen smashed. He’s seen it all: last year, on a budget of £16,000, which he secured from Lloyds TSB, the Co-Op, the Claire Milne Trust and Awards for All, he managed to support 187 people.

And one thing he’s sure of is that Alice’s case, though shocking, is hardly new. He wonders whether the rules should mean that a risk assessment has to be carried out before contact is made with people like her. “I was struck when I saw her in the ward,” he tells me. “I couldn’t believe how badly she’d damaged herself. But I’ve seen this sort of thing day in, day out. The simple fact is, the people behind the assessment don’t understand mental illness, nor do they understand invisible, fluctuating conditions like fibromyalgia or chronic fatigue syndrome. A question like “Can you switch off an alarm clock?” just doesn’t begin to cover these conditions or co-morbidity - the way that one affects the others. And they’re not just putting the lives of the mentally ill at risk - they’re putting the lives of the people with whom they could end up working at risk too.”

It’s not just the likes of Tony who have noticed this - or, here in more detail, charities like MIND. In January’s parliamentary debate, which I wrote about here, there was general condemnation of the Workplace Capability Assessment’s (WCA) performance when it comes to mental health. Michael Meacher said the “current criteria and descriptors do not sufficiently—or even at all—take into account fluctuating conditions, especially episodic mental health problems.” Pamela Nash described “Seeing people who have claimed employment and support allowance as a result of a physical disability or illness ending up with mental health problems owing to the stress of going through the system.”

Madeleine Moon described a female constituent, “Mrs E”, who had worked as an accounts officer, but suffered a vicious sexual assault which left her with post traumatic stress disorder. She went to an Atos assessment for Employment and Support Allowance, was found fit to work, and found herself in a similar situation to Alice, repeatedly having to attend appeal tribunals and having her payments stopped on several occasions due to “administrative errors,” the stress leading to a suicide attempt. She concluded: “This lady is being hounded by the state: there is no other way of describing it. There is no excuse for this behaviour. This is a company that is not playing fair by this country’s most vulnerable people.”

So what’s being done? The answer is detailed on Atos’s company blog: “We have put in place a network of Mental Function Champions to spread best practice across the business and offer advice and coaching to other professionals carrying out WCAs. We invited leading external experts in mental health to help us shape the role for the Mental Function Champions, and we now have 60 Champions.” As Heather Wheeler MP made clear, not only are these “champions” only giving guidance (they won’t be sitting in on interviews), but given the WCA’s lack of suitability to deal with the issue of mental health, it’s patently clear that 60 is not enough of them.

And more to the point, what do they really do? The journalist Kate Belgrave has been monitoring the development closely and has recently written this excellent blog post on the lies, prevarication and lack of transparency that has characterised the initiative (as she told me on the phone last night: “At one point, we started to wonder if these people even existed”). Since that blog was published Atos has told her group that a face-to-face meeting is possible, but it would have to be off the record. They are waiting to find out if they’ll be able to report on any discussion.

Flawed, secretive and cruel: it’s the very worst of the shadow state. Or, as John McDonnell MP put it:

The concern expressed by Members about an issue of public administration in all [these stories] is unprecedented in recent decades. There is example after example of human suffering on a scale unacceptable in a civilised society.

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/03/tragedy-alice

Welfare Reform Bill: Where is our national conscience? [Sonia Poulton]

Over the past week, as the hunting season of the disabled has continued, I have had moments when I have been forced to ask, of no-one in particular, ‘what is wrong with us?’

And I have questioned that in response to the way our country - and our elected and unelected leaders - have approached and dealt with the issue of welfare reform and, more pertinently, the budget for our sick and disabled.

Personally, I have loathed David Cameron’s Welfare Reform Bill from the beginning.

Not just because I view him as a hopelessly out-of-depth and and incapable Prime Minister, which I do, but because it is the singularly most reprehensible attack on our vulnerable - our disabled - that this country has witnessed in many years.

And while I appreciate that it was Tony Blair’s government who created the original blueprint for this welfare reform, it has been David Cameron‘s Coalition who have fought, without mercy, to bring this particular kind of national masochism into being.

So, those moments of despair when I have wondered how much further we could possibly sink in terms of inhumanity have occurred in a series of bile-tinged snapshots as the reforms debates have progressed.

Take, for example, part one of the welfare reform voting that took place in the Lords’ last week and the unedifying spectacle of Lord Freud, leading the Government's charge. Someone once claimed that he had a conscience, but I presume that was just a rumour for I have yet to witness it.

This is a man so determined to carry out Cameron's wishes that he attempted to overturn the voting later on that night with the aid of a few key Peer friends.
However, by far and away his 'can he get any lower?' moment was when he attempted to argue about ’how ill is really ill’ and how much care and support we should give such unfortunates.

What Lord Freud lacked in compassion he more than made up for in a type of passive vitriol so determined was he to be the Head Boy to Cameron's proposals.

'How much further can we possibly sink in terms of inhumanity?'

Personally, having enjoyed the overwhelming benefits of good health and an able body, I can’t quite fathom how low a person you would need to be to even conceive such a thought process: a scale of despair if ever there was one.

They might as well dispense with the social niceties and just start branding people ‘not long to go’ and ‘got a bit longer, worthy of assistance’ so graphically deplorable was the tone and content of his argument.

He better hope that such a life or death decision doesn’t fall to someone else on his behalf one day.

Someone, perhaps, like me who may decide he is not worth saving as their hand hovers over the life-support switch and the decision is taken whether to keep him in the fight or let him ebb slowly away.

The thing is much to the Government’s consternation, disability campaigners - led by the formidable Spartacus team who prepared the impressive counter-argument ‘Responsible Reforms ‘The Spartacus Report‘ - are not prepared to go away quietly.

Oh, no, siree. Despite their collective illnesses and disabilities - and even hospitalisation as a result of the stresses and strains of compiling the report - they are jumping up and down and banging the table and saying ‘No, we will not take this lying down’.

Heartless: They might as well dispense with the social niceties and just start branding people 'not long to go'

But then, it has to be noted, these people do not have a choice. It is their lives that Cameron and his apparatchiks are playing with in such a cavalier manner.

Thankfully, the Lords’ threw out the first three disability proposals which DWP honcho, Iain Duncan Smith, then proclaimed that they would evoke old laws to push the reforms through, anyway.

Dear Lord - do these people have no shame? So determined are they to get their way that they will attempt any tactic, underhand or otherwise, to see their ghastly measures come to life.

To re-cap, in their morbid determination to see the Welfare Reform Bill come to pass they have barely left one immoral stone untouched. And at great personal (to the disabled) and public (taxpayers) expense.

Thus far there have been costly public consultations (where the results were thrown out by David Cameron when they were found to be almost 100 per cent in opposition to the reforms) and levels of spin that even original spinmeister, Alisdair Campbell, may baulk at.

Today will see the second part of the highly dubious and controversial welfare reforms to reach the Lords. This time the emphasis is on scrapping Disability Living Allowance and replacing it with the deeply-flawed Personal Independence Payment. (PIP).

PIP is riddled with problems which, if David Cameron had chosen to listen to the people who know about these things - the disabled - he would already have known about.

DLA, for example, is a working benefit. It enables the sick and disabled to continue in gainful employment while supporting them in that endeavour. PIP, on the other hand, will offer no care to a person even if they are unable to shower, wash their own hair and get dressed.

Oh right. So we want to make people intentionally unemployed then, do we? Presumably so.

The Government need to engage in some joined-up thinking. According to their own figures we are heading towards an all-time high of three million unemployed in this country, helped along, no doubt, by major chains Peacocks and Past Times going into administration and leaving tens of thousands unemployed.

So why then do they want to remove DLA from people who are already working and make them unemployable? Can someone take this back to the drawing board please?

The problem about the Government’s proposals about DLA, in general, and disability benefit, in particular, is they are not merely cruel but short-sighted, too.

To abolish Disability Living Allowance is absurd and will cost more in the long run.  It will certainly create more problems than it can possibly resolve.

Contentious: Today will see the second part of the controversial welfare reforms reach the Lords

It is a proven fact that it costs more to live a disabled life rather than an able-bodied one. Expenses that the majority of us do not even have to consider such as having a carer, appropriately adapted transportation, hoist and even medication (I met one woman who uses her DLA for liquid Paracetamol as she cannot take regular tablets).

However, there has today been a small glimmer of hope as an amendment to PIP - calling for a pause - has been tabled for the Lords. A concession, presumably, because the overwhelming opposition - including 16 charities and even London Mayor, and Cameron friend, Boris Johnson - have finally started to get through to the hard and arrogant head on the PM's shoulders.

I look forward to the moment in all these proceedings when David Cameron and his team who are pushing for these draconian measures - Chris Grayling, Iain Duncan Smith and Lord Freud - are held to account for their acts against the disabled.
I, personally, believe that what they are doing is tantamount to hate crime.

They routinely issue misleading and questionable statistics and further perpetuate the idea of ‘scroungers’. They should be aware that each time they do this it has a serious and detrimental impact on disabled people who are frequently bullied and beaten by people calling them all manner of heinous names including 'retards' (just as Hull Conservative MP, John Fareham did on Twitter last week).

I can’t bear all the scheming and spin that the Government have indulged in for welfare reforms.

 

I look forward to when those supporting these draconian measures, such as Iain Duncan Smith (above) are held to account

Where the Department for Work and Pensions issue selective and ill-informed data, designed to whip us up and make us believe that every person claiming some form of disability is undeserving.

Their myths include statements like 'it takes little more than a form to get disability benefit' like it's as easy as sticking on a kettle or running a bath. Of course, they fail to tell us that these forms are lengthy - 50 pages - and are extremely complex and require medical information and details that are far from straightforward.

I detest that old crock that this is all about tackling fraud in the system and rooting out those miscreants who abuse it. For those of us who have looked closer, rather than just take our information from a DWP press release, we know it is nothing of the sort.

That is merely a smokescreen to obfuscate the shady dealings that are taking place.

According to the Government’s own figures, there is less than 0.5 per cent fraud in disability benefits and a phenomenal 16 billion remains unclaimed in benefit entitlements. And yet they still want to shave 20 per cent off the budget.

Is it, as disability campaigner Lord Patel suggested in The Lords last week, that we have "entered a different type of morality" when we "rob the poor to pay the rich."

I believe so. Many thousands of us are still waiting to hear why the Government regularly cuts 'sweetheart deals' for the likes of Vodafone and Goldman Sachs thus allowing them very favourable tax exemptions to the tune of billions.

The way the DWP go on anyone would think that the disabled and sick had enjoyed a free walk in the park. I encountered one woman with progressive Multiple Sclerosis who was called a ‘liar’ to her face during assessment - and she was confined to a wheelchair at the time. Truth is, that many disabled and sick people have multiple conditions and these do not fit in to a tick box assessment.

As David Cameron, the father of a disabled young boy who sadly passed away, should know only too well. How appalling that he appears not to.

It gives me heart to see what the group behind the Spartacus Report have done by bringing together other frightened and threatened sick and disabled people and mobilising them into one incredibly, impassioned and articulate voice.

These campaigners have worked tirelessly to have the truth heard and they still fight on. Many of them from their sickbeds, quite literally.

Disappointment: Lord Freud has shown a substantial lack of compassion

They have become increasingly empowered as their findings have served to, rightfully, knock the Dark Lord Freud off his preposterous perch.

Yesterday he issued a letter to the Lords rubbishing the Spartacus Report but failing, miserably, to adequately address the many and numerous claims that the report contained.

Sue Marsh, one of the powerhouses behind the report and movement - and herself suffering with a rare form of Crohn's Disease - says it was telling that Freud did not address any of the substantive criticisms about the government's misleading use of statistics. Telling, indeed.

No one, not even the campaigners, is asking for Welfare to remain the way it is. We are all aware of the need for reform, but it is deplorable that the Government have used slurs and smears to achieve an end that will lead many to contemplate, and carry out, suicide. That is an absolute certainty judging by the level of desperation that has been whipped up for our disabled and sick.

I am now going to ask something completely irregular for a journalist. And it is this: can we please search our collective conscience and let our local MP’s know, in no uncertain terms, that we do not support this act of treacherous brutality against some of our most vulnerable citizens and that we demand, once and for all, that the ‘well’ be put back into welfare.  For all our sakes.

Sonia Poulton

Unum: Getting rich on disability denial

Debbie Jolly reports on US insurance giant Unum, whose ‘biopsychosocial model’ is being used to justify the devastating cuts in disability benefits

When the Tory work and pensions undersecretary Lord David Freud set out his vision of welfare reform for disabled people he used a number of references to back up his plans. No fewer than 170 of these references came from a group of academics based at or connected to Cardiff University’s Centre for Psychosocial and Disability Research.

This centre, originally led by the ex‑chief medical officer at the Department for Work and Pensions, Sir Mansel Alyward, was funded by the US-based insurance giant Unum to the tune of £1.6 million from 2004 to 2009. The objective was to add academic credibility to the ‘biopsychosocial model’ that has underpinned disability benefits reform since the early 1990s – a model used as part of the government’s disability benefits crackdown by the private company Atos in identifying who is deemed to be ‘fit for work’ and hence ineligible for disability support.

So what is the biopsychosocial model? In this context, its key postulate is that an emphasis on medical causes and effects has failed to provide an adequate basis for disability benefits policy, and therefore much greater emphasis should be placed on the psychological attitudes and beliefs of individuals. It posits that disability – and the ability to work in particular – is not just a medically definable, physical matter but one that has a social and psychological dimension too. And it is used to underpin the assertion that to a very large extent the growth in the cost of disability benefits must surely be the result of people faking those disabilities.

A whole set of workshops run by Unum with such charming titles as ‘Malingering and illness deception’ should leave us in no doubt about where this approach is coming from. A glance at popular media would appear to substantiate such a view. However, the headline figures of those considered ‘fit for work’ by Atos always miss the successful appeals at tribunal, which significantly reduce those figures (and incidentally cost the taxpayer £50-80 million per year). Who is gaining from this system?

Unum’s second vice-president John LoCascio was brought into UK government circles as early as 1992 to ‘manage’ incapacity benefit claims. He was also responsible for bringing in ‘health assessors’ and training them by Unum criteria in biopsychosocial views of individual capacity. Back in the US this approach led to the company (which currently provides disability insurance for 25 million workers, half the US market) systematically refusing to pay out on huge numbers of insurance claims. One of its working practices that received widespread negative attention involved rewarding employees with ‘hungry vulture awards’ for their success in closing claims.

Unum’s behaviour resulted in it being accused of being ‘an outlaw company – it is a company that for years has operated in an illegal fashion’ by California insurance commissioner John Garamendi in 2005, when it was charged with more than 25 violations of state law and fined $8 million. These charges followed a financial and regulatory settlement in the previous year with 48 US states following investigations of Unum’s alleged abuses.

Nevertheless this same basic approach was to prove useful in helping with the UK’s welfare reform and in overriding the basis of medical opinion as the deciding factor on a whole set of conditions. And the more the government bought into disability denial with its contracted private companies such as Atos and supporting academics, the more Unum stood to benefit from increased market returns on its insurance business as disabled people saw their minimal welfare support diminishing.

The company was quick to seize its opportunities. As early as 1997, with the roll out of the all work test to assess fitness for work for benefit purposes, in which John LoCascio had played a major part, Unum launched an expensive advertising campaign. One ad ran: ‘April 13, unlucky for some. Because tomorrow the new rules on state incapacity benefit announced in the 1993 autumn budget come into effect. Which means that if you fall ill and have to rely on state incapacity benefit, you could be in serious trouble.’

Unlucky for some, lucky for Unum.

Red Pepper

Coalition's support fund won't protect disabled from bedroom tax

The £30m fund promised by David Cameron will cover just £2.71 of the £14-a-week loss in housing benefit facing disabled claimants.

By far the most troubling aspect of the "bedroom tax", which comes into effect on 1 April, is the impact it will have on the disabled. The policy, which will see housing benefit reduced by 14 per cent for those deemed to have one spare room and by 25 per cent for those with two or more, currently takes no account of those families for whom this additional space is not a luxury but a necessity. For instance, a disabled person who suffers from disrupted sleep may be unable to share a room with their partner, likewise a disabled child with their brothers and sisters. The same applies to those recovering from an illness or an operation.

While those disabled tenants who receive overnight care from a non-residential carer will not be charged for an extra room, those who live with their carer (such as a family member) will have their housing benefit reduced. Of the 660,000 social housing tenants that will be affected, the DWP estimates that 420,000 are disabled. From April, they will be forced to pay an average of £14 a week more in rent or an extra £728 a year. As a result, many face the unpalatable choice of either falling into arrears or downsizing to a property unsuitable for their needs.

When challenged to defend the decision not to exempt the disabled from the measure, David Cameron has insisted that the most vulnerable tenants will be protected by the £50m Discretionary Housing Payments (DHP) fund. At last week's PMQs, he said:

This government always puts disabled people first and that is why we have protected disabled benefits. Specifically on the issue that he raises, there is the £50m fund to support people affected by the under-occupancy measure.

But new research published today by the National Housing Federation shows just how inadequate this support is. First, of the £50m referred to by Cameron, £20m comes from general DHP funding, which must cover a wide range of claimants struggling to pay their rent, not just those hit by the bedroom tax. Second, were the remaining £30m to be distributed equally among every claimant of Disability Living Allowance affected (229,803 in total), they would each receive just £2.51 per week, compared to the average weekly loss in housing benefit of £14. With the fund also intended to support foster families, whose children are not counted as part of the household for benefit purposes, the disabled may not even receive this paltry amount.
In a recent letter to George Osborne calling for the disabled to be exempt from the cut, the heads of seven charities, including Carers UK, Mencap and Macmillan Cancer support, cited two typical cases (see Frances Ryan's recent NS post for others).

Jean and Carl live in a two bedroom house. Carl has suffered from serious health complications for years and is now unable to work as a result of a series of operations and treatment. Jean juggles caring for her husband with a job at a local supermarket. They are unable to share a room because Carl’s condition causes very disrupted sleep and if they share Jean cannot sleep. Her shifts at work mean she frequently has to be up at 4am and she would simply be unable to do this if she could not get a good night’s sleep. They fear they will not be able to make up the shortfall in their Housing Benefit and if forced to downsize Jean is worried about her ability to do her job if she is unable to sleep properly (names changed to preserve anonymity).

Jodie has two sons Kian, aged eight and Ashton, aged seven who has Down’s Syndrome and Autism. Ashton does not sleep. He wakes through out the night and head butts the wall. Jodie has to get up and calm him several times a night. Jodie was going to be housed in a two bed house, but the social worker and the family doctor said that they needed an extra room, because of Ashton’s care needs. Ashton at times has difficult behaviour and Kian needs his own space for his health and wellbeing and for his performance at school.

It these personal stories that Labour believes could turn public opinion against the government on welfare reform. Shadow work and pensions minister Liam Byrne will launch a new party campaign against the bedroom tax in Hull today, where 4,700 tenants will be affected by the policy but where there are just 73 one and two bedroom properties available to let. Unsurprisingly, Byrne will remind voters that five days after the bedroom tax is introduced, the government will reduce the top rate of income tax from 50p to 45p, benefiting 8,000 millionaires by an average of £107,500 a year (see the recently-launched "Tory Millionaire's Day" campaign).

Coalition ministers remain confident that the public will accept the logic of the policy. Private sector tenants do not receive a "spare room subsidy" (as Tory chairman Grant Shapps has dubbed it), so why should those in social housing? In addition, they will challenge Labour to say how it would raise the £1.05bn the policy will save over the next two years (although housing experts have said savings could be limited or even non-existent as families are forced into the private sector, where rents are higher, leading to a consequent rise in the housing benefit bill). Would it cut spending on schools and hospitals instead? But the politically toxic decision to reduce taxes for the highest earners has made every spending cut that much harder to justify.

New Statesman

Atos Are Just Medical Mercenaries Leeching off the Vulnerable…

John Mackintosh a so-called Manager for the WCA Process at Atos thinks his company is compassionate, this poor fellow has obviously been taking some medication which changes his perception of Compassion.

Any employee who stands up and defends this companies actions are idiots, how can this man defend the indefensible, how can he defend his company’s total lack of compassion, something which if he bothered to research he would know about, his companies appalling treatment of severely sick & disabled people is well documented for all to see.

Mr.Mackintosh said

“We run a large, highly complex, national operation, with around 1,400 doctors, nurses and physiotherapists assessing around 15,000 people each week.”

 The so-called Doctors, Nurses, Physiotherapists that are employed by Atos only do the job because it’s easy money especially If you don’t have a caring bone in your body, no ethical Doctor/Nurse/Physio would ever take employment with Atos, it’s impossible to decide a person’s ability by a system that was devised by an Insurance company to deny disabled people their rightful entitlement to benefits, it’s a complete fraud of an assessment.
Those who work for Atos are not medical professionals but medical mercenaries who’ve sold themselves to the highest bidder, lining their pockets at the expense of those who cannot defend themselves.

If it wasn’t so serious I may laugh but it is very serious indeed, Atos are trying to defend themselves by saying that it is not them who decides who get’s benefits etc, we know that but in reality the DWP continues to rubber stamp their ludicrous and fraudulent so-called medical/functionability reports, how can any report about a person’s ability to perform certain tasks be made without looking at the individuals medical problems/diseases, being able to hold a carton of milk doesn’t mean a person can work in an office, being able to use ones legs doesn’t mean you are capable of getting to work, the whole assessment process is NOT about making sure the money goes to the right people, it’s all about the political elite trying to REDEFINE DISABILITY?

The profits that Atos are making have increased 36%, sure it’s not all from assessing disabled people but a percentage of it is, the mortuaries are starting to get backed up with the victims of the persecution carried out by Atos, the smoke is billowing from the crematoria more and more, the air is being filled with the toxic excuses of a fraudulent & disreputable company who cares little about its reputation so long as it makes money, money from the deaths of innocent vulnerable people, destroying families lives in its wake.

Atos has caused more damage to society than any oil leak into the sea, when a ship leaks its oil there’s a clean up, with the Atos WCA Assessment process there’s only one outcome, death or continual reassessment by a bunch of disgusting unethical individuals…

Paul Smith 

Atos Victims Group News

DWP manipulated DLA figures to justify cuts, say MPs

The government has been accused by MPs of “manipulating” its own benefit statistics in a bid to justify scrapping working-age disability living allowance (DLA).

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) claimed that the number of DLA claimants was increasing, but neglected to point out that working-age recipients have actually been falling.

On Monday – the same day that Channel 4 aired a Dispatches investigation into the reforms – DWP released a “statistical update”, which it said showed the number of successful claimants of DLA had risen by 15,000 between February and May 2012.

But analysis of DWP figures by Disability News Service (DNS) has shown that the rise in claimants is due to increases in the number of children and older people receiving DLA, while the number of claimants aged 16-64 actually fell by more than 1,600.

This is important because the reforms and cuts will only affect working-age claimants, with DLA for that group to be gradually replaced by the new personal independence payment (PIP) from April.

Stephen Lloyd, the disabled Liberal Democrat MP, who has previously criticised the coalition for “pandering to the Daily Mail” – after it published a misleading press release about the results of its “fitness for work” tests – said he was “extremely angry at this sleight of hand by the DWP”.

He is to write to Esther McVey, the Conservative minister for disabled people, to highlight his concerns about her department’s “massaging of the stats”.

Anne McGuire, Labour’s shadow minister for disabled people, said it was “yet another example of the DWP manipulating the figures on DLA to suit their agenda of abolishing DLA”.

She said: “I find it astonishing that it was not made clear that the number of working age applicants are falling, and can only conclude that this did not suit their agenda.

disabilitynewsservice.com/2013/03/govern...try-to-justify-cuts/

Government deliberately misrepresenting the poor, say churches



Churches claim several "myths" have emerged as a result of the way information is used



By John McManus
BBC News

The government is deliberately misusing evidence and statistics to misrepresent the plight of the poor, a report says.

The Methodist and United Reformed Churches, the Church of Scotland and the Baptist Union jointly published the The Lies We Tell Ourselves study.

Researchers said evidence had been skewed to put the blame for poverty at the door of the poor themselves.

The government said it had always made it clear that the system was failing people, not the other way around.

Complex reasons

The churches said that a number of "myths" about welfare claimants have arisen as a result of statistics being misused.

These are repeated by the media and find their way into the popular consciousness.

The myths, according to the churches, pin the blame for poverty directly on those who rely on welfare benefits while ignoring more complex reasons.

These incorrect ideas must be challenged, according to Paul Morrison from the Methodist Church.

He said: "Everybody is complicit - politicians, the media and the general public.

"This is because we have a culture which allows us to tell lies in public life."

Mr Morrison said many people preferred to believe that bad things only happen to "bad people".
The report challenged what it called several misleading ideas about welfare and poverty.

One of these related to the 2011 launch of the government's plan to tackle disruptive families, the Troubled Families programme.

Mental health

Speaking about the programme at the time, Prime Minister David Cameron referred to 120,000 families who were plagued by drug addiction, alcohol dependency and crime.

The report said families counted as "troubled" had to exhibit certain characteristics - none of which actually related to alcohol or drug addiction or criminality.

The largest shared characteristic of the families was, in fact, that the mother had mental health problems.
The report's authors also challenged the idea, repeated by Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan-Smith, that in some parts of Britain there are three generations of families where nobody has ever worked.

According to Mr Morrison, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has admitted that no data exists to prove this claim.

In response to the report, the DWP said there was an ongoing debate about the benefits system.
The department's reforms aimed to end the benefits trap and make it easier for those who needed help to get it.

The four churches said they would send a copy of their findings to every MP and MSP.
They have called for an honest debate about poverty, with policy being formed on the basis of clear facts.

Related Stories

• 'Wide differences' in child poverty
• Ex-minister attacks benefit plans
• How did welfare claimants come to be seen as scroungers?

BBC

ESA appeals nightmare confirmed

Created on Tuesday, 26 February 2013 23:45

Claimants could be left without any income replacement benefit at all when challenging a decision that they are fit for work, the government has confirmed.  Once the new system of mandatory reconsiderations before appeals is introduced, employment and support allowance (ESA)claimants will lose their right to be paid the assessment rate when they first challenge a decision.

Instead, they will have to try to sign on as available for work and claim Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA) or manage without either benefit until the reconsideration has been carried out.  Only once an appeal has been lodged will they be able to reclaim ESA.  The decision to refuse to pay ESA during the reconsideration period was confirmed by Lord Freud on 13 February, when he told the House of Lords:

“I turn now to ESA. At the moment, if someone appeals a refusal of ESA, it can continue to be paid pending the appeal being heard; this is not changing. What is changing is that there can be no appeal until there has been a mandatory reconsideration. So there will be a gap in payment. In that period-and I repeat that applications will be dealt with quickly so that this is kept to a minimum-the claimant could claim jobseeker’s allowance or universal credit. Alternative sources of funds are available. Of course, he or she may choose to wait for the outcome of the application and then, if necessary, appeal and be paid ESA at that point.”

However, there is no time-limit for how long the DWP can spend carrying out a mandatory reconsideration.  Given the ever increasing workload and ever decreasing staff numbers, the probability of reconsiderations being carried out in weeks rather than months does not seem high.

In addition, some people attempting to claim JSA may find Jobcentre Plus staff attempting to refuse to accept their claim on the grounds that, because of their health condition, they are not available for and actively seeking work.  This may be particularly the case as claimants are likely to be required to continue submitting sick notes in relation to their ESA claim whilst presenting themselves as fit for work in relation to their JSA claim.  Claimants may well find themselves  in the nightmare scenario of being found too fit to claim ESA but too sick to claim JSA.

Even the start date for the new mandatory reconsiderations for ESA is the subject of confusion.  DWP and ministerial statements refer to a start date in April for PIP mandatory reconsiderations and  October  for ESA.  The draft regulations, on the other hand, give a start date of 8th April for PIP and 29 April for ESA, JSA and universal credit mandatory reconsiderations.  We’ll keep you posted.

http://www.benefitsandwork.co.uk

DWP bullying of mentally ill and vulnerable has to stop

A plea from Lynn Blackmore:

“Please would people kindly sign this petition which ends 20th March.  I have tried very hard to get this to 10,000 signatures but there seems to be apathy when it comes to signing it. I feel if this we’re for a basket of pretty kittens the signatures would have been there in a week like the badger petition, yet human beings who suffer mental ill health don’t seem to count as much in the publics eye!  My son who suffers from schizophrenia, has been in a psychiatric hospital now for 31 months, yet he’s being hassled by ESA, WCA, DWP, asking him if he’s fit for work!  This is crazy, and the bullying of the mentally ill and vulnerable has to stop! All I can do as a distraught and worn out mum now, is beg you to PLEASE sign this so I at least get this to 10,000 signatures, because the Government then HAS TO AT LEAST ACKNOWLEDGE THIS PETITION!”

Here’s a link to Lynn’s petition. With PIP (Personal Independence Payments) seemingly overlooking mental illness it is vital people act. Time is running out for this petition. There are 23 days to get just over 800 people to sign, how hard can that be folks?

Click here to sign

Unum bragged about ‘driving government thinking’ on incapacity benefit reform

An insurance company set to make huge financial gains from incapacity benefit (IB) reform bragged about “driving” the government towards those reforms, evidence obtained by Disability News Service (DNS) has revealed.

The US insurance giant Unum has repeatedly denied attempting to influence IB reform over the last two decades, despite mounting evidence that it has done so.

Unum is the largest provider of “income protection insurance” (IPI) in the UK, and tougher welfare rules – including replacing incapacity benefit with employment and support allowance (ESA) – are likely to persuade more people to take out IPI, boosting the company’s profits.

Unum even launched a major media campaign in 2011 just as the coalition began a three-year programme to reassess about 1.5 million existing IB claimants through the new, stricter test, the work capability assessment (WCA).

Now DNS has secured a copy of a Unum document on the assessment of “incapacity”, which was published in 2005.

The document was written by Michael O’Donnell, then the company’s chief medical officer and now in the same role at Atos Healthcare, which carries out WCAs on behalf of the government.
O’Donnell says in the document that Unum has “always been at the leading edge of disability assessment and management”.

He adds: “We know that our views and understanding are not yet in the mainstream of doctors’ thinking, but Government Policy is moving in the same direction, to a large extent being driven by our thinking and that of our close associates, both in the UK and overseas.”

Unum has admitted there has been widespread criticism of its past actions in the US, mainly over its refusal to pay out on large numbers of genuine insurance claims by disabled people, a record mentioned in last month’s Commons debate on Atos and the WCA.

But Unum has also faced criticism in the UK. In a parliamentary debate in 1999, MPs accused the company of refusing to pay out on valid insurance claims from disabled people who had lost their jobs due to ill-health or disability.

Unum continues to dismiss claims that it pushed the government to introduce the ESA/WCA system.

In 2011, John Letizia, Unum’s head of public affairs, told Disability News Service (DNS): “At no time have we influenced the government on the design of the reforms to the welfare state or on the level of benefits that claimants receive.”

And in the same year, at the Conservative Party conference, Unum’s chief executive, Jack McGarry, said: “We haven’t tried to influence the welfare agenda around reducing welfare or making it harder to claim. To my knowledge we have not done that.”

This week, Letizia told DNS again that Unum had not attempted to influence the government’s welfare reform agenda.

He said: “We will never ever deny that there were discussions between Unum and the previous government and there continue to be [with the coalition].”

But he added: “In all the discussions going back over the last five years on welfare reform Unum made absolutely no attempt to influence government policy on the welfare debate, on the ESA or WCA or personal independence payment or disability living allowance, in setting the government agenda.”

After DNS shared the document with Letizia, he declined to comment further.

Mo Stewart, the disabled activist who has done most to highlight concerns about Unum, said the new evidence was “very significant”, and called for an independent inquiry into the role of the company in influencing UK welfare reform, particularly when it had such a “disturbing past history”.

She said: “This entire situation confirms the dangers of a government that confuses its priorities, and places the welfare budget as a much higher priority than the needs of its own chronically sick and disabled people.”

She added: “The WCA is a replica of the assessment system used by Unum to resist funding insurance claimants.

“It is a bogus, dangerous assessment and, with this evidence, it is now time that this DWP medical tyranny was ended.”

A DWP spokesman said: “The WCA was designed from the outset with the involvement of a wide range of experts and disability representative groups and has been subject to rigorous independent review.”

14 February 2013

Disability News Service

#PMQs Discussion of suicide as a result of benefit cuts .

Atos assessment death rate dwarfs that of soldiers in Afghanistan

The headline says it all.

Some people reading this might think it tasteless to compare the number of people who have died while going through the Atos/DWP assessment process for Employment and Support Allowance with the number of soldiers who have given their lives for their country in Afghanistan. I don’t.

Consider the outpouring of sorrow that takes place when one of our soldiers dies. They deserve that recognition; they have made the ultimate sacrifice.

Sick and disabled people who have died because our bullying government’s assessment system caused more stress than their weakened system could handle – they don’t get that kind of recognition. Perhaps it’s because it is an action of their own government that is killing them.

Perhaps you will look more kindly on the sick and disabled of this country when you read the following:

According to the BBC, by October 30 this year, the total number of British soldiers who had died in Afghanistan since military operations began there in 2002 was 437.

That’s equivalent to the number of sick or disabled people who die - while going through the Atos/DWP work capability assessment system (or as a result of going through it) - every six weeks.

Vox Political

ATOS-DWP DEATH TOLL: Nothing Short Of Barbaric

A Freedom of Information document from the DWP has revealed that rather than an average of 32 deaths per week as a result of Welfare Reform that figure has now risen to an average of 73 deaths per week!

http://statistics.dwp.gov.uk/asd/asd1/adhoc_analysis/2012/incap_decd_recips_0712.pdf


When is this going to stop?! When are people going to wake up and help us fight against this government?!  We need help!

Reblogged from Helen Sims
  How many more vulnerable, sick and disabled people have to die before something is done?!

As a disabled person, I don’t want to live in this country any more. We’re frightened of losing our benefits and our independence. It is happening.

People are being left with nothing! Vulnerable, sick and disabled people are being left destitute after having their benefits wrongly cut, by a cruel and callous government!

THIS GOVERNMENT (Aided by ATOS) KILLS!

As a person with Cerebral Palsy, who cannot walk or stand unaided, I know my turn for an assessment is coming soon…and I’m terrified! I know I will fail.

I’m luckier than some I know, because I have my wonderful husband (and his Pension Credit) to help us live, but there will be no more independence for me (what there is of it), because if I lose my Disability Living Allowance, I may as well close my bank account. There will be nothing going into it!

I’m going to be completely reliant on my husband, and feel even more of a burden than I already do. At the moment I can help pay household bills – just like any ‘normal’ wife does. I can get taxis to see friends, and attend appointments alone when I am able. It enables me to feel just like everyone else.

The government has already taken a lot of my self esteem, and my place in society. The constant, relentless lies about Disability Benefit Fraud has done that for me.

You see, the real fraud figures are very different to what the government would have you believe. In reality only 1 in every 200 claimants is committing fraud, but  the unceasing’scrounger’ rhetoric has made me, and many others feel virtually worthless, and very unwanted – no matter how genuine we are.

I hate this country and I’m beginning to hate myself again. I thought I’d accepted my life, it’s limitations and constant pain.

I know I will never be a mother and I know I won’t work again. I did work once – for a year. I was dedicated, hard working, and always there when needed, but I was exhausted and in agony. I came home…and slept.

My boss knew I was struggling. I was pale and losing weight. When my contract came to an end, they didn’t renew it.

I was heartbroken because I loved my job, but I was relieved at the same time. In reality I didn’t know how much I could take.

I’m exhausted now, and my pain (through wear and tear on my body) is worse. It is always there, and some days I can barely move, never mind get myself out of bed and get to work!

Who is going to employ me? I’d have  to take regular days off because I am mind numbingly exhausted and in agony. Not to mention the frequent hospital and GP appointments…!

How many times will my employer put up with me saying “I’m sorry, I can’t come in today”…before they sack me, in favour of somebody who CAN?!

This is not my fault. I didn’t choose my life – none of us did. None of us would! To cut our benefits now, in this economic climate when there are no jobs even for the able bodied, is nothing short of barbaric!

It is inhumane, callous and cruel to treat a whole section of society in this way. The fact that we are some of the poorest, most vulnerable people in society just makes it worse!

How can they do it? How can they hurt people like this? How is it right that this government is able to drive people to suicide (regularly) and hardly anyone bats an eye lid?!

Why is this not a real Human Rights issue by now? Surely it counts as one! It is the oppression of people, and that should be covered somewhere…somehow.

Where has the compassion gone? That’s what makes me saddest I think. People just don’t seem to care like they used to. Have we become that selfish and blinkered as a society, that we can close our eyes to the suffering of others? If we have, it makes me more ashamed of what is happening here!

I no longer trust people like I did, and I will never forgive this government for that. When is it my turn to become a statistic in the 20% national rise in Disability Hate Crime? I’m terrified it will happen.

Will I be one of the people who gets my property vandalised? Will I be verbally abused or physically attacked when I go out in my wheelchair? That thought crosses my mind every time I go out. People should not have to live like this!

We suffer enough, and now we have to deal with victimisation, extra anxiety and pure fear for our futures as well.

It is easy to make judgements. In my case, my disability is visible, but there are so many illnesses and disabilities that aren’t, and it is these people who are often victims of ‘Scrounger’ abuse, but just because you can’t see it, it doesn’t mean it isn’t there.

It is these people too, who will suffer most as a result of the assessment process. The suffering caused by mental illness or invisible disability is not as easily quantifiable – but it can be just as debilitating as any physical visible condition.

As for me, I don’t know what will happen to me on assessment day. I don’t know if I’ll be able to handle questions based on a ‘tick box’ computer programme, that doesn’t allow for pain or variation and rarely takes a person’s medical records in to account. I know that I’ll be set up to fail.

I know that it could be a person who is not medically qualified and who, after meeting me for forty five minutes, will decide whether I get to keep my life, my independence, and my pride intact.

No wonder I wake up sweating, (that’s if I actually get to sleep of course)! No wonder I am plagued by anxiety that buries itself in the pit of my stomach every night and refuses to budge. I am fighting for my life. We all are. I’m waiting for an envelope to drop on the mat and tell me that it’s my turn.

Every time the letter box goes, I jump half a mile out of my skin! I am unable to open, or even look at official envelopes because I am so scared that it just might be it. It isn’t just me. The panic and fear I feel every single day is widespread through the disabled people of this country.

My only consolation, is knowing that I am not alone.

Disabled and ill people like me need your help now, We need the help of our Councillors, MP’s and society at large. This should not be happening to us.

Even if you feel that can’t get involved in our fight, you’d be surprised how much difference a few kind words of support can make. It gives people hope when it can feel like there is none.

I’m asking you – one human being to another – to not let them take our lives. There is no difference between you and I. Anyone can be struck by illness or disability at any time. No one is immune. It only takes a second for lives to be changed forever, and I hope that if it does, there will be someone there who is willing to fight for you.

Helen Sims