DWP 'put girl in coma' - now they won't leave her family alone

The Mirror's Real Britain columnist Ros Wynne-Jones on the private companies being paid to hound people - whatever condition they are in

Anxious: Sheila's dad Ken and sister Linda

At Sheila Holt’s home in ­Rochdale, Lancs, her sister Linda fetches a letter. It’s to Sheila from Seetec, a private company paid a bonus every time it gets someone on ­benefits into work.

“We hope that all the activities or training intervention completed so far has not only supported you to achieve your aspirations but has moved you closer to the job market,” Linda reads, her eyes filling with tears.
“You will shortly enter the second stage of your Intensive Job-Focussed Activity.”

Sheila, 47, has been in a coma in hospital since December 17, but she is still receiving letters from Atos and Seetec, contracted by the Department for Work and Pensions.

“They’re still hounding Sheila even now,” Linda says.

Far from “achieving her aspirations”, Sheila’s family believe the pressure their severely bipolar daughter was put under to take part in the Work Programme has led to her being in the coma that now means she almost certainly never will.

“Sheila was doing OK until July,” ­Sheila’s 74-year-old dad Kenneth says quietly. “Then they started threatening to take her money away.”

Now Ken spends his days at the hospital holding his daughter’s hand, or keeping a vigil with Sheila’s cat, Tawny, at her home.

The hospital says it is “uncertain when, or if, she will regain consciousness”, but Ken still hopes. ­“Sometimes her eyes open, even if she doesn’t know you,” he says.

 

Tragedy: Sheila in hospital

Her life scarred by ­childhood trauma, Sheila has been in and out of psychiatric hospitals and has attempted suicide three times. Diagnosed with severe bipolar and heavily medicated, she hadn’t worked in 27 years.
“Anyone who met her could see that Sheila couldn’t work,” Ken says. “She couldn’t be with people.”

Still, last July Sheila was told by the DWP she was now being placed in the Work Related Activity Group of disability benefit claimants – and must now attend the Work Programme. Linda wrote on Sheila’s form that “it is extremely important Sheila doesn’t experience stressful situations”.

But, in August, her sister was allocated a “Groundwork” placement in Middleton, two bus rides away in rush hour.

“She just couldn’t cope,” Linda, a reflexologist, says. “She was terrified.”

When Ken went to visit Sheila on December 5, she was so agitated that he took her straight to A&E. The following day, she was sectioned, and on December 17 she suffered a massive heart attack at the psychiatric unit.

Staff fought to save her life, but her brain was starved of oxygen for around 30 minutes.

The family has written to the DWP to say they can see “a clear link between the extreme anxiety caused to her by having to attend numerous meetings with workplace advisers and the decline in her mental health”.
In intensive care, doctors induced a coma. “Sheila has a very severe hypoxic brain injury,” Linda says. “She has never fully regained consciousness.”

She last wrote to Seetec to tell them about Sheila’s condition on January 17 – but she received yet another letter asking her to comply with the programme on January 30.

Simon Danczuk, Sheila’s MP, is now raising her case in the House of Commons. “This is one of the worst cases I’ve ever seen and my heart goes out to Sheila and her family at the terrible way in which she’s been treated,” he says.

“Welfare reform has to be able to ­differentiate between people who can’t work and won’t work.

“The system is riding ­roughshod over ­vulnerable people like Sheila.”

Meanwhile, Ken keeps on hoping. “Her most recent brain scan was very poor,” he says.
“But we won’t give up on her.”

Read more...