Reblogged
from Beastrabban\'s Weblog:
Like very many other people, I was saddened and angered to read Johnny Void’s
and Tom Pride’s posts on the death of Jacqueline Harris. This lady took her own
life after ATOS found her fit for work, despite her multiple disabilities and
the great pain she suffered from them.
This poor woman, like me, came from
Bristol. I’ve also had a run-in with ATOS. Here are a few more of my
observations and comments on the case. I intend to write a much deeper article
attacking the pseudo-scientific nature of the ATOS assessment form later.
I don’t know if there are any other ATOS centres in Bristol, but there’s one
at Flowers Hill in Brislington. This is a suburb of Bristol, which contains a
mixture of light industrial buildings and former warehouses along with
residential homes, and some of the most historic buildings in Bristol. It has
Arnos Vale cemetery, dating from the 19th century. The funeral monuments there
are impressive, with one of the most striking the tomb of Rajah Rammohan Roy, an
Indian reformer and one of the founders of his country’s independence movement.
He was married to the daughter of Bristol Unitarian minister, and preached in
her father’s chapel. I believe there is an annual visit to his grave every year
by members of the City’s Indian community. Other monuments include the Black
Castle, an 18th century factory in the shape of a castle, made from black stone.
There is also a 19th century mental hospital. Established by those guardians of
peace and humanity, the Quakers, this was pioneering in its day for the humane
treatment given to the inmates. It possessed extensive grounds and gardens for
the patients’ enjoyment, as it was found that this greatly assisted their
healing and recovery.
If I recall correctly, the ATOS offices are in a complex of buildings just
down from a DIY centre and other stores. ATOS share the site with a complex of
buildings, which include an NHS administration and a driving test centre.
When you go for an assessment, bring someone into the interview with you, or
record it. It has been my experience that ATOS will lie and try and falsify your
answers. You need to keep some kind of record of the interview, and that other
person will remember or pick up on things that you may not notice or forget. Similarly, when going through the form it is very wise to photocopy it after you
have filled it out, so you have a record of your answers there.
This poor woman’s suicide, along with so many others, raises the following
points and questions.
Firstly, ATOS have tried to distance themselves from the tragedy. They state
that they have no part in any decision on benefits. This is disingenuous. While
the decision to end someone’s claim is taken by the DWP, rather than ATOS, ATOS
clearly have the contract for the development and administration of their tests
on the express knowledge that those, who fail it will lose their invalidity or
disability entitlement. With this in mind, they cannot justly deny
responsibility for the loss of benefits from those they judge fit to work.
In view of the number of people, who have committed suicide after ATOS
declared them fit for work, it should be asked what training ATOS gives its
personnel to deal with extremely distressed or suicidal interviewees. Johnny
Void and the other left-wing bloggers have carried stories reporting that some
Job Centres are training their staff to deal with such emergencies. I myself
have seen a stack of cards for the Samaritans on the desk of one of the
interview staff at the Job Centre Plus in Eagle House, St Stephen’s Street in
Bristol. Are there similar items stocked by staff at ATOS? If not, why not?
Seventy-five per cent of ATOS decisions that someone is fit for work have
been overturned on appeal. This suggests that either the ATOS assessors are
criminally negligent when administering the tests, or that they are under
pressure to falsify results to get a negative decision which will please their
paymasters in the DWP.
I said before that it has been my own experience that
ATOS will lie in order to be able to turn down your claim. There have been
revelations of secret quotas for benefit sanctions within the DWP and Job
Centres, along with bonuses and gifts awarded to staff, who have the most number
of claimants disallowed. Is there are a similar system operating within ATOS?
What pressure are its staff under to declare someone fit for work? Are they also
given financial incentives and gifts, like Easter Eggs, for so doing?
What policies and procedures does ATOS have to protect the vulnerable adults
they interview? We have had reports of people with severe mobility problems
forced to take their assessment in centres, which are some distance from where
they or their lifts may park, or else on the upper floors of buildings. Does
ATOS consider this acceptable?
The ATOS form itself is heavily biased towards
physical disability. It and its administrators therefore appear to have little
experience or awareness of mental health issues. What procedures have been put
in place to safeguard people with schizophrenia or disorders, like depression
during the interview and afterwards? Shouldn’t their fitness for work or
otherwise be assessed by a trained, objective psychiatrist or psychologist?
Johnny Void and the others have also reported that many of the employees
administering the test are not doctors, but nursing staff. This is unacceptable.
However, the medical qualifications of ATOS’ assessors are, in my experience,
superfluous and irrelevant. They do not examine you themselves under their own
initiative, but simply ask you the questions on the form. Presumably medical
staff are employed in case a physical examination, such as to confirm some of
the claims made by the interviewee, is necessary. Mostly I think it’s just to
provide a pseudo-professional medical gloss to the proceedings.
The interviewing staff do at least have some medical qualifications. What are
the medical qualifications of the decision-makers? Are they doctors, surgeons,
psychiatrists? Or is that an entirely risible question, and they are really just
another bunch of faceless bureaucrats? Again, from the procedure it seems that
no proper medical experience is required or needed. All the decision makers do
is go through the form, tot up the answers and then declare a person fit, even
if that person is in a coma or possibly dead. This is no exaggeration. These
things have happened. If the decision makers are medical personnel, have any of
them expressed reservations or criticisms about the tests? Or resigned? What
mechanisms are in place to assure that any criticisms or complaints they have
about the test are passed on and accepted?
The ATOS assessment has also led to violations of British disability law, and
contravenes the Hippocratic Oath. This was for centuries taken by British and
European doctors. It has now been discarded, but is, I believe, still held in
great respect by parts of the profession. At its heart is the stipulation that
the doctor should ‘first do no harm’. Clearly this lies at the heart of all
medical practice. If you can’t cure something, then for heaven’s sake don’t make
it worse.
But ATOS does make it worse. Clearly the individuals who have suffered
heart attacks due to the stress of their assessment, or mentally ill people
who’ve taken their own lives, have been made worse by the procedure. Private
Eye a few years ago ran a story about one woman, who had already frequently
attempted suicide. Tragically, she succeeded after ATOS told her she was fit for
work, and no longer eligible for benefits.
ATOS broke the law. According to the
Eye, it is explicitly against the law to force the mentally ill to
undergo such tests if this will exacerbate their condition. Has ATOS ever been
prosecuted for one of these incidents? Were staff disciplined for such legal and
medical negligence? What procedures were set in place to stop this ever
occurring again?
Well, it seems to me that the answer is obviously none, but the question
still needs to be asked.
Ordinary doctors, nurses and other medical professionals can be sued for
malpractice. They have medical insurance to provide for this, and practice under
the knowledge that they are responsible for the care of the patients and may be
sued and convicted if they abuse or criminally neglect this sacred trust. The
Coalition are considering passing legislation that will further criminalise and
inflict severe penalties for negligent hospital staff. The question must be
raised here of whether similar procedures are in place to discipline and try
ATOS staff generally – the interviewers and decision makers – for similar
negligence and malpractice in or through the administration of the test, quite
apart from the horrific incidents mentioned above.
These are a few of the questions I feel still need to be answered. I believe
strongly that the ATOS assessment form and process does not constitute proper,
valid medical practice but a form of pseudo-medical bureaucratic quackery to
provide a professional gloss to what is at heart an entirely bureaucratic
procedure. Science is meant to be objective. According to Popper, the essence of
science is falsification: the experimenter arranges his tests not to prove a
theory, but to disprove it. If this occurs, new theories must be devised, and
further experiments conducted. This is how science has progressed, and it has
resulted in astounding advances in nearly all areas of endeavour, including
biology and medicine.
The ATOS test is the exact opposite of this. It has been
devised and administered according to a narrowly and ideologically driven
pre-conceived notion of what constitutes ‘fitness for work’, regardless of the
personal needs and abilities of the individual to whom it is administered. It
has been expressly designed to get as many people off benefit as possible
according to the Neo-Liberal imperative of reducing government spending (but
only on the poor). In this, it is strongly reminiscent of other pseudo-medical
and pseudo-scientific fads, such as monkey glands, the removal of vestigial
organs in order to make us more evolved, and the Stalinist ‘proletarian’ science
of Lysenkoism.
The only proper solution to this is to have ATOS shut down
immediately, its wretched assessment permanently expunged from responsible,
ethical medical practice.
Oh yes, and the prosecution of Thierry Breton and his
minions for culpable negligence and serious malpractice.
