A recent Freedom of Information request seems to raise huge concerns over whether the Department of Work and Pensions accept that they have a legal Duty of Care with respect to benefit claimants forced onto mandatory Workfare placements. With DWP intent on implementing new policies which will see disabled people in the ESA WRAG being forced onto indefinite mandatory Workfare placements under threat of sanctions, never mind all of the complexity, risk and privacy concerns that disability adds to the existing Workfare farrago, this is obviously hugely concerning.
The DWP have apparently stated "If however, a work placement is considered appropriate then the responsibilities of the individual, the provider and the organisation accepting the placement must be discussed and made clear (including liability)." and pointed their respondent at the generic guidelines for workfare, which state "All participants involved in any way with DWP Provision are entitled to train and work in a healthy and safe environment with due regard to their welfare. Under Health and Safety Law they are regarded as your employees, whether they are paid by you or not. You must, therefore, comply with your Duty of Care under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 and the Act’s associated regulations in the same way as you would do for any other member of your workforce"
This may seem quite responsible on the surface, however the implications are anything but. The Workfare situation is an unusual one, in which people are being forced to work by (or is it 'for'?) a government agency, the DWP, at a private contractors, while the DWP pay them benefits - which of course amounts to people being forced, under threat of having their benefits stopped entirely for anything up to three years, to work for less than the national minimum wage. Under normal circumstances the person paying your wages would be considered your employer, no matter where you were working. So if I work for Company A, but they send me to work at Company B, then both Company A and Company B would have a Duty of Care towards me, Company A because I am their employee and they have a legal responsibility to ensure that I am not exposed to unnecessary risk wherever I am, and Company B because they have a similar responsibility towards anyone on their premises. Yet DWP seem to be denying that they have the Duty of Care towards me that would normally descend from me being their employee. They also seem to be insisting on a process which would require the disabled person to fully reveal details of their disability to a company they are being forced to work for, in order to allow a risk assessment, no matter the privacy concerns of forcing someone to reveal full details of disability to an organisation for whom they not an employee.
This would be worrying enough for anyone in any circumstances, but for a disabled person dealing with the DWP it is a recipe ripe for disaster. The Workfare process involves someone, either from Job Centre Plus or one of their providers, such as the much castigated A4e (facing two more probes for fraud just this week), deciding that the benefit claimant would be helped by a work placement - or at least that is the spin on it, there is a considerable body of evidence pointing at JCP and contractors like A4e being very heavily target-driven, with JCP employees under massive pressure from management to hit targets such as number of people sanctioned per week, which whistleblowers have revealed means they are driven to target people with intellectual and mental disabilities as 'easy marks'. Now extend that pattern of behaviour to Workfare, and we will undoubtedly see large numbers of disabled people being forced onto Workfare not because it is in their interest, or appropriate for their disability, but because the JCP employee will be bawled out by their manager if she doesn't mandate another dozen crips before the end of the week, or because the training agency employee will miss a bonus if their figures aren't better than the rest of the office's...
I've dealt with JCP Disability Employment Advisors and training agency employees from the benefit claimant's position, a more clueless bunch of people about disability employment it would be difficult to imagine. The JCP staff persistently pushed the boundaries of what my disability allowed me to do, if I could do something for 10 minutes, they would write down 30, and then persistently try to undermine that at every other meeting. The training agency people (once I'd climbed the rickety outside staircase to their office - god help me if I'd arrived with a wheelchair not crutches....) knew so little about privacy and data protection that they saw nothing wrong in asking me to discuss the intimitate details of my disability while the gentleman sat immediately behind me was discussing his drug problem. Do either of these sound like organisations likely to give the necessary weight to the complexities of disability, or to their Duty of Care - especially if they seem to believe that Duty of Care doesn't apply in the first place?
When I was working I regularly ended up curled up in pain on the office floor because of my inability to sit for extended periods, Duty of Care can potentially be something as basic as recognising that someone cannot even sit at a desk, but how much recognition and understanding are we going to see when showing those may mean a bollocking in the manager's office, or a missed bonus? And if basic physical constraints are so readily targetted for undermining, what chance does someone with complex mental health issues have.
I thought this was scary when it was just the prospect of DEAs or A4e employees mandating disabled people onto indefinite Workfare assignments under threat of sanction, but if they don't even think they have a Duty of Care towards us....
Source
Saturday, March 10, 2012
Friday, March 9, 2012
GPC seeks talks with DWP over Atos ‘fitness to work’ scheme concerns
The GPC is seeking talks with the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) after GPs and LMC leaders raised a series of concerns with the tests and appeals process being used in the Government's drive to get patients off benefits.The GPC said it was alarmed by the high success of appeals against original fitness to work judgements made under the work capability assessment, with private firm Atos charged with carrying out initial assessments. The DWP said that a quarter of people who have received work capability assessments to date have had appeals heard against rulings by Atos assessors. Of this quarter, 38% have had their fitness to work judgements overturned.
The GPC said it was particularly concerned over the length of time patients are having to wait to have their appeals handled – the latest DWP statistics show that an average appeal takes 24.6 weeks to be completed. The committee said it would be flagging up concerns over the levels of pay for doctors who sit on appeals panels, with concerns that the Government is ‘significantly underpaying' GPs. Doctors are currently paid £371 to sit on social security panels.
Dr John Canning, chair of the GPC's professional fees committee and a GP in Cleveland, said:‘A 40% success rate of appeals suggests the appeals process and the first round are inconsistent in their approach. We have concerns about the process with Atos and how their doctors are remunerated and encouraged to work – that is to do with how the contract is managed.
‘The second bit is how long it takes to get an appeal, it can take up to nine months in some cases and that is incredibly unfair on people. I don't believe that the tribunal service is adequately staffed with doctors – certainly not with doctors who are active in clinical practise.
‘The fees that they pay will not backfill a doctor in active clinical practise for a day. The doctors that they are employing do not have to be licensed, they only have to be registered, so they do not have to go through revalidation. They, we believe, are significantly underpaying in order to attract people who are in active practice.'
Dr John Hughes, secretary of Manchester LMC and a GP in the city, said:‘As part of the Govenrment's drive to get people into work, we have more and more patients getting called in for medicals. The quality of the assessment is sometimes in significant doubt, particularly with patients with psychological and psychiatric conditions. It does appear to be very much a tick box exercise.
‘The patients are then taken off benefits - they then appeal and we then get an increased workload from that because they are advised by third parties that if they are appealing then they have to see us for a further sick note.'
Her Majesty's Courts and Appeals Service, which manages the tribunals, refused to say how many doctors used on tribunal panels are clinically active. But a spokesperson said: ‘Medical members undertake regular training and are subject to appraisal on their judicial and medical skills including ‘in-court' observation to ensure they can make fair and robust decisions based on accurate medical information.'
A DWP spokesperson said: ‘If a 'fit for work' decision is overturned at appeal, it does not necessarily mean that the original decision was inaccurate - often, customers produce new evidence in their appeal. The DWP is working closely with the MoJ and the Tribunals Service to reduce the number of appeals.'
An Atos spokesperson said: ‘ [An] appeal tribunal hears all evidence afresh, including any new evidence that was not available to the original Decision Maker, to decide whether the original decision on benefit entitlement was correct. Thus when an appeal panel reaches a different decision this does not necessarily mean that the original decision lacked validity or the original assessment was not correct.'
Source
Thursday, March 1, 2012
Jobseekers forced to clean private homes and offices for nothing
Concern over unpaid workers taking overtime from staff as some placements last more than a month
Domestic duties: The use of unemployed people as cleaners supplied by a government contractor has been uncovered by the Guardian through a freedom of information request. Photograph: Rex Features/Frederic Sierakowski
Unpaid jobseekers have been forced to clean private homes and offices for more than a month at a time under government employment schemes, despite mounting evidence that the controversial policy is reducing the overall availability of paid work by replacing temporary jobs and overtime for other staff.
A succession of high street shops have pulled out of the schemes this week amid criticism that using unpaid labour to carry out routine tasks such as filling shelves amounts to a public subsidy for employers, but the practice extends far beyond the retail industry.
The Guardian has now discovered through a freedom of information request that a major government contractor, Avanta, has compelled jobseekers to work as unpaid cleaners in houses, flats, offices and council premises under the work programme.
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has previously stated that all mandatory schemes must be for "community benefit". However, under government rules, this can be defined as increasing the profit of organisations where the unemployed are sent to work without pay.
Avanta has said that its schemes are not mandatory, but like all back-to-work companies involved in the work programme, it is able to refer jobseekers back to the job centre for sanctions.
The unpaid work involves cleaning houses and flats in the Sussex area as well as offices. When asked if they were job shadowing, she replied that "they are actually doing" cleaning.
Over the last two years she said that she had had 20-25 unpaid cleaners through the work programme and the previous new deal scheme. According to Fagan, the firm, which employs 18 full-time staff including those in head office, had hired six or seven during those two years.
"It gets them back into work," she said. She added that the firm had been passed four to five jobseekers in the last six months alone, usually for four weeks at a time. "Sometimes we ask the job centre or local scheme if they want to extend that four weeks if we think we really want to employ them but it is not the right time." She confirmed that even when the placements were extended they were still not paid.
She added that her other staff were happy and did not believe it was replacing other shifts.
Following publication of the Guardian article the company checked its records and found, he said, that "we have only used the [Avanta placement] service once for one individual who came to work in our customer service department, an office based position, from 25 July to 12 August last year". [See footnote]
Nonetheless, evidence sent to a government committee suggests some employers have been replacing temporary staff and taking away overtime hours.
"Many retail jobs required staff to work for 16 hours each week, with overtime payable for any hours worked beyond that. Work experience allowed for 25 hours work activity, so overtime to permanent staff was being reduced or removed," the minutes noted. "There was also evidence to suggest that work experience placements were being taken on to cover Christmas vacancies."
A DWP official told the committee that Jobcentre Plus required employers to sign a declaration confirming no jobs would be displaced through participation in the work experience scheme, but said the department was "working with other stakeholders to explore what more it could do to protect against that".
The committee's chair, Paul Gray, ended the session by asking the DWP to take further action to prevent work experience roles taking over paid jobs: "He said that the committee had voiced some serious concerns around the potential for exploitation of the work experience scheme and considered it important for the department to look at how it can further strengthen the safeguards that had been put in place," the official minutes note.
The same committee had also, earlier in 2011, warned the government against proceeding with another scheme introducing compulsory work placements for some jobseekers. The government proceeded with the mandatory work activity programme regardless, saying it expected no more than around 10,000 jobseekers a year to be compelled to do work placements under the programme. The latest figures record 8,100 people were placed on to the scheme in November 2011 alone.
It later clarified that it was pulling out of the work programme, a government scheme administered by private companies, owing to concerns about whether places were voluntary.
"Poundland have been taking part in two schemes, the work programme and the work experience scheme," it said in a statement. "Poundland has suspended its participation in the work programme, because of concerns about the compulsory nature of the programme but they are continuing with the work experience, which is voluntary."
Several other companies, including Waterstones, Sainsbury's and TK Maxx, have withdrawn from the work experience scheme, while Tesco now offers jobseekers the choice of sticking with the government programme or taking up paid work with a guarantee of a staff job at the end of a four-week placement if the trial was successful.
As Poundland withdraw from the Work Programme scheme citing compulsory placements as a cause for concern, the Guardian has uncovered more evidence about the behaviour of the companies administering scheme.
Earlier this week the Guardian reported that A4E, one of the biggest provider of the scheme, had compelled jobseekers to work unpaid in its own offices, as the police launched an official investigation into allegations of fraudulent business practices at the company. A4E's founder, Emma Harrison, has subsequently stepped down as David Cameron's "families tsar" and from the board of A4E.
The chair of the Social Security Advisory Committee declined to comment.
• This article was amended on 29 February 2012 because the original said: "Town and Country Cleaners confirmed it also used unpaid cleaners sent by Avanta, but could not provide further details." The company later contacted the Guardian and stated unequivocally that it had used no unpaid Avanta cleaners. (A director said that information initially given to the Guardian came from an employee who had no access to information about such work placements.)
Guardian
A succession of high street shops have pulled out of the schemes this week amid criticism that using unpaid labour to carry out routine tasks such as filling shelves amounts to a public subsidy for employers, but the practice extends far beyond the retail industry.
The Guardian has now discovered through a freedom of information request that a major government contractor, Avanta, has compelled jobseekers to work as unpaid cleaners in houses, flats, offices and council premises under the work programme.
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has previously stated that all mandatory schemes must be for "community benefit". However, under government rules, this can be defined as increasing the profit of organisations where the unemployed are sent to work without pay.
Avanta has said that its schemes are not mandatory, but like all back-to-work companies involved in the work programme, it is able to refer jobseekers back to the job centre for sanctions.
Rebecca Fagan, a manager at DC Property Maintenance in Sussex, said that it had been sent "loads" of jobseekers from Avanta during the last two years. "They normally come for four weeks and they are put with other team members," she said.
Over the last two years she said that she had had 20-25 unpaid cleaners through the work programme and the previous new deal scheme. According to Fagan, the firm, which employs 18 full-time staff including those in head office, had hired six or seven during those two years.
"It gets them back into work," she said. She added that the firm had been passed four to five jobseekers in the last six months alone, usually for four weeks at a time. "Sometimes we ask the job centre or local scheme if they want to extend that four weeks if we think we really want to employ them but it is not the right time." She confirmed that even when the placements were extended they were still not paid.
"We find it the best way to see how people work when on jobs," she said. "Most of them, you find that they are eager to get back into the workplace. They are really trying to get back into a job. Some, you can tell they are doing it for the sake of keeping their benefits."
[This update was inserted on 29 February 2012:] A second company, Town and Country Cleaners, was also listed on the freedom of information document as an Avanta placement provider in the Kent-Sussex area. However, director David Rushton stated unequivocally: "Town & Country Cleaners do not use unpaid cleaners supplied by Avanta or anyone else."
Responding to questions about why it was sending jobseekers to get work experience as cleaners, Avanta said: "Our approach is to work closely with our customers to understand the type of job that they are looking for and create a personalised package of support that will enable them to get a job with long-term prospects … We provide a broad range of placements with employers from different business sectors.
"We work with many employers who have recruited staff following work experience placements and we believe that work experience is a vital tool in helping long-term unemployed people find work."Nonetheless, evidence sent to a government committee suggests some employers have been replacing temporary staff and taking away overtime hours.
Minutes from the social security advisory committee, an official and impartial body set up to advise the DWP on welfare policy, suggest evidence had already surfaced by December that employers were using unpaid schemes to fill seasonal vacancies.
A DWP official told the committee that Jobcentre Plus required employers to sign a declaration confirming no jobs would be displaced through participation in the work experience scheme, but said the department was "working with other stakeholders to explore what more it could do to protect against that".
More than 34,000 young people have started unpaid job placements of up to eight weeks under the work experience programme. The scheme is voluntary, but anyone terminating their placement early can face sanctions, including a stop on their benefits for between two and 26 weeks.
The same committee had also, earlier in 2011, warned the government against proceeding with another scheme introducing compulsory work placements for some jobseekers. The government proceeded with the mandatory work activity programme regardless, saying it expected no more than around 10,000 jobseekers a year to be compelled to do work placements under the programme. The latest figures record 8,100 people were placed on to the scheme in November 2011 alone.
Poundland became the latest employer to pull out or amend its participation in the government's work schemes on Friday, when it issued a statement stating it was suspending "participation in the government's mandatory work programme" but continuing to take people on voluntary work experience.
"Poundland have been taking part in two schemes, the work programme and the work experience scheme," it said in a statement. "Poundland has suspended its participation in the work programme, because of concerns about the compulsory nature of the programme but they are continuing with the work experience, which is voluntary."
Several other companies, including Waterstones, Sainsbury's and TK Maxx, have withdrawn from the work experience scheme, while Tesco now offers jobseekers the choice of sticking with the government programme or taking up paid work with a guarantee of a staff job at the end of a four-week placement if the trial was successful.
As Poundland withdraw from the Work Programme scheme citing compulsory placements as a cause for concern, the Guardian has uncovered more evidence about the behaviour of the companies administering scheme.
Earlier this week the Guardian reported that A4E, one of the biggest provider of the scheme, had compelled jobseekers to work unpaid in its own offices, as the police launched an official investigation into allegations of fraudulent business practices at the company. A4E's founder, Emma Harrison, has subsequently stepped down as David Cameron's "families tsar" and from the board of A4E.
The chair of the Social Security Advisory Committee declined to comment.
• This article was amended on 29 February 2012 because the original said: "Town and Country Cleaners confirmed it also used unpaid cleaners sent by Avanta, but could not provide further details." The company later contacted the Guardian and stated unequivocally that it had used no unpaid Avanta cleaners. (A director said that information initially given to the Guardian came from an employee who had no access to information about such work placements.)
Guardian
Work Programme prime provider details
Slave trader details
Our research shows Ingeus Deloitte (Pricewaterhousecoopers) are the main administrators to the work programmes.
Work Programme 2011-‐2016
Prime Providers details
Company details
Parent company details
Contact details
From Invitations to Tender
Department for Work and Pensions (DWP)
Click below images to enlarge.
Further Study
ATOS, the ‘Work Programme’ & ‘Mandatory Work Activity’ supply chains
Work Programme Redactions, Keeping the Taxpayer in the Dark
Work Programme Contract Figures Awarded to Prime Providers
DWP : Stakeholder Bulletin September 2011
WP05 : Work Programme Notification Letter, SEETEC
List of Work Programme Subcontractors February 2011
Source
Disabled adults more likely to be victims of violence
From ABC News. To help stop disability hate crime in the UK, visit this website, http://www.disabilityhatecrime.org.uk/.
Adults with disabilities are more likely to be victims of violence than adults who are not disabled, according to a new study published online in The Lancet.
Mentally ill adults are at four times higher risk for violence, and adults with intellectual impairments are also particularly vulnerable.
A team of researchers from the United Kingdom's Liverpool John Moores University and the World Health Organization analyzed 26 studies on violence against disabled adults, with more than 21,000 participants from around the world.
"About 3 percent of individuals with non-specific impairments [eg, physical, mental, or emotional, or health problems that restrict activities] will have experienced violence within the past 12 months, rising to almost a quarter of people with mental illnesses," said lead author Mark Bellis of Liverpool John Moores University in a press release.
The violence, he explained, was either physical, sexual or by an intimate partner.
Experts not involved in the research say the study calls attention to the plight of many disabled adults who become targets for a variety of reasons.
Jack Levin, professor of sociology and criminology at Northeastern University in Boston, said the disabled often suffer in silence.
"It happens all too often, but we have ignored a very serious issue," he said.
He cited the case of 30-year-old Jennifer Daugherty as an example of what a surprisingly high number of mentally ill and intellectually challenged adults suffer.
Daugherty, described by her stepfather as having the mental abilities of a 12 to 14-year-old was allegedly tortured and murdered by a group of six people in western Pennsylvania in 2010. Prosecutors say a 17-year-old girl served as the group's ringleader and saw Daugherty as a romantic rival.
The group was accused of abducting Daugherty, beating her, forcing her to consume human waste and bleach, then forcing her write a suicide note before stabbing her multiple times.
Levin said that while people view what happened to Daugherty as particularly heinous, most people don't see it for the hate crime that it is. Hate crimes, he explained, are more likely to be viewed as crimes against a certain race or against people of certain sexual orientations.
The U.S. Department of Justice found that disabled adults were victims of twice as many violent crimes as adults who are not disabled, and about 15 percent of these victims believe they were targeted as a result of their impairments.
"There are a number of reasons why adults with disabilities are more vulnerable to violence," said Dick Sobsey, professor emeritus at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada.
"Many of them are more vulnerable or may have limited communication abilities, either by impairment or by situations they are in," he said.
Levin added that they may not be able to fight back or to report the incidents to the authorities.
The disabled, especially those who have cognitive impairments, are often viewed as non-human.
"They have a deficit or a defect, so they can be more easily treated like animals or subhumans," said Levin, also the author of "The Violence of Hate."
Many people with disabilities are also often dependent on others, making them vulnerable to people who may feel the desire to exert power over them, Sobsey added.
Perpetrators may also be exacting revenge on people with disabilities, Levin said. Since the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990, which prohibits discrimination based on disabilities, people may feel that the disabled get special privileges.
Source
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Workfare scheme slammed by Archbishop of York
Writing in a column in the first edition of the new Sun On Sunday newspaper, he said: “We can encourage people to volunteer, but a worker should be worthy of their wages.
“What we need is a culture where young people not only want to work, but where their work is valued and contributes to the national good.
“By all means, pay companies incentives to employ young people, but do not take advantage of the vulnerable by using them as free labour.”
He said that earning a living wage should not be an optional extra, but should be seen as a basic necessity.
He also criticised high levels of unemployment that left about a million young people out of work.
The Archbishop’s comments came after Employment Minister Chris Grayling defended the scheme, saying that half of those who joined it after the launch 11 weeks ago had now found a job, often with companies which had offered them work experience.
The Minister also claimed that some firms reportedly pulling out of the programme, including supermarket giant Sainsbury’s, had never formally been involved in the Government initiative because they ran their own scheme.
Elsewhere in his column, Dr Sentamu revealed that he had gone vegetarian for lent, having given up dairy products and meat as well as alcohol.
He urged people to buy as many Fairtrade products as possible as Fairtrade Fortnight starts today.
He admitted that some would criticise him for writing in a newspaper which would be seen by many as filling the gap left by the closure of the News Of The World, but he said he was “always one for responding to change positively and embracing new beginnings”.
Source
 |
| The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu |
THE Archbishop of York has slated the Government’s controversial ‘workfare’ scheme, suggesting it took advantage of vulnerable people by using them as free labour.
Dr John Sentamu said his heart sank when he heard about the work experience project, which he said encouraged young people to take on unpaid placements in companies with no guarantee of permanent posts, by “apparently threatening to cut their benefits if they drop out after a week”.
Writing in a column in the first edition of the new Sun On Sunday newspaper, he said: “We can encourage people to volunteer, but a worker should be worthy of their wages.
“What we need is a culture where young people not only want to work, but where their work is valued and contributes to the national good.
“By all means, pay companies incentives to employ young people, but do not take advantage of the vulnerable by using them as free labour.”
He said that earning a living wage should not be an optional extra, but should be seen as a basic necessity.
The Archbishop’s comments came after Employment Minister Chris Grayling defended the scheme, saying that half of those who joined it after the launch 11 weeks ago had now found a job, often with companies which had offered them work experience.
The Minister also claimed that some firms reportedly pulling out of the programme, including supermarket giant Sainsbury’s, had never formally been involved in the Government initiative because they ran their own scheme.
Elsewhere in his column, Dr Sentamu revealed that he had gone vegetarian for lent, having given up dairy products and meat as well as alcohol.
He admitted that some would criticise him for writing in a newspaper which would be seen by many as filling the gap left by the closure of the News Of The World, but he said he was “always one for responding to change positively and embracing new beginnings”.
Source
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
This is not wartime Nazi Germany and Cameron's attacks on the vulnerable and needy must be stopped
Dastardly: Sonia Poulton says David Cameron and the Coalition Government has surpassed itself in its campaign of terror against some of the most needy in our society
I'm unwell at the moment. I have a streaming nose, high temperature, cold shakes and low blood pressure. I get light headed when I stand and I have fallen over a couple of times this week. What I am experiencing has made me a bit miserable and snappy (sorry loved ones), not to mention bruised and sore from head to foot, but it's not life-threatening, not terminal. Unlike what many others are enduring.
I reveal my current state of health not because I wish to elicit sympathy (or even garner a gift or two, but either is always nice) but because I wish to highlight that even though I am physically poorly, I still felt compelled to rise from my sickbed and write.
There we were thinking it impossible that David Cameron's Tory party could become even more dastardly, even more duplicitous, in their devastating aims against those in vulnerable groups - sick, disabled, single parent families and the elderly - but they have.
I agreed with her. I deplore the Workfare programme for many reasons but primarily because it is deplorable. Trumpeted as a programme that will give the unemployed key skills, it serves nothing of the sort.
What it is, in actuality, is a benefit system for sections of our work force. And there was I, foolishly, thinking that when you are part of the capitalist work force then the appropriate term for remuneration received is salary. Apparently not. These days, and under Cameron's stewardship, we receive 'benefits' to become part of the job market.
Controversial: The Government's Workfare programme has been trumpeted as a scheme that will give the unemployed key skills
Fair? Tesco is one of the firms set to benefit from the Workfare programme
Let me be clear. There is nothing wrong with getting hands-on experience that will enable progression in your chosen path, and we've all done plenty of that, but there is everything wrong with being forced to work in a place that has nothing to do with your aims and ambitions and everything to do with creating a labour force that verges on slavery to the system.
Astonishingly, the deplorable - I think I mentioned that already - Workfare has reached new lows this week as it became transparently clear that it also serves to line the overflowing coffers of wealthy corporations while making the already poor, poorer still.
The thing about Cameron's Workfare programme is it's almost too easy to criticise. The problem is not knowing where to start but wondering if I shall ever finish.
Presumably Tesco's slogan 'Every little helps' (the shareholder) is a similar mantra to the Coalition's 'We're all in this together' (politicians and bankers, that is). In that it benefits the few and not the many.
That's wrong. Clearly. If staff are needed by our numero uno retailer then Tesco should have an absolute obligation to pay them the going rate. And not a penny less.
Presumably the company's slogan 'Every little helps' (the shareholder) is a similar mantra to the Coalition's 'We're all in this together' (politicians and bankers, that is). In that it benefits the few and not the many.
What Tesco, and other participants in the Workfare scheme, receive is far greater than what they give.
We, as the country, are, quite literally, paying the consumer giant to make even more money. And we are doing that by having our taxpayer funded job seekers work free for the company.
Does that sound right? It might if your view of life is from Downing Street, but it's not from elsewhere.
You have to wonder how many MP's have fat wads of shares at stake in the Workfare scheme. I know I do. It may not be illegal for them to benefit from increased corporate share prices that Government initiatives may bring them personally, but it sure is highly questionable.
Disability benefits
As a result of Cameron's spurious recent behaviour in pushing through crippling, quite literally for some, amendments to disability benefits, it has become clear that the attached issues are even more heinous that the blueprint of the Welfare Reform Bill, itself.
And it is this: disabled people will now face the prospect of unlimited unpaid work or they will be subject to cuts in their benefits. For millions that is nothing more than a line on a page but for many terrified and suicidal others, it is anything but.
Unfair: Under new rules disabled people now face the prospect of unlimited unpaid work or be subject to cuts in their benefit
Even from the outside - in that neither I or my daughter currently require disability or sickness benefits, thankfully - it is clear that this will result in a deeply troubling outcome for those directly affected.
The consequences of this cannot be overstated. It will be, quite simply, devastating. As a number of institutes have not been slow in expressing their very real concerns.
The Royal College of Psychiatrists (RCP) have written to the Coalition outlining the dangers of forcing sick and disabled people into the job market (the one that currently stands at almost three million unemployed by the way).
The RCP have a number of fears about the inadequacies of such a system. They worry, quite rightly, that managers in job centres and private companies - whose job it is to get people back to work - have inadequate health expertise and will push those with mental health issues into inappropriate placements.
Forcing people who have more than six months left to live - yes it is that stark, again - to earn a living is an outrage on a previously unseen scale.
Even I'm shocked by the ruthlessness of it and I wouldn't put anything past this compassion-free zone that is Parliament.
Sonia says cultural observers could not fail to notice similarities between what is taking place here and what occurred in Hitler's Germany
It's no great secret that one of the main reasons that MP's take care of business is because so many of them have financial interests in the businesses that they do business with. They are protecting their own interests while governing over the rest of us and insisting we do the same.
Morals aside, and I feel we must put them aside when referring to many, many politicians - and particularly much of the current shower in power - you can't really blame them for protecting their assets. They know which side their bread is buttered, or that of their colleagues, and they never fail to deliver or to resort to type in that regard.
Some people have written to me complaining that I get too angry when I write about our Government. But I AM angry. I believe we all should be outraged and I'm shouting because I want people to hear it.
Let us make no mistake what we are witnessing from our Coalition Government is absolutely, unquestionably, categorically scandalous.
The ritual humiliation, brutalisation, threats and punishment of anyone who is considered 'a burden to the state'. Anyone who is less than perfect, anyone who dares to find themselves in a position where they need the state to support them. Those people are the subject of shocking and terrifying behaviour at the hands of David Cameron's Coalition.
Cultural observers could not fail to notice the similiarites between what is taking place here towards sick, disabled, elderly or any group perceived to be vulnerable and weak and what occurred in Hitler's Germany.
This may not be ethnic cleansing that we are witnessing - and some are already experiencing - but it's a type of cleansing all the same.
There are hundreds of thousands of people around our country right now who are absolutely petrified for their future. It appears so hopeless. There have already been a number of suicides from people who left behind messages to the effect that they simply could not take the hardship any more. Could not face another winter without sufficient food or heat. And in the UK in 2012. Doesn't it make you proud?
Some of the actions that are being carried out around our great country - and it's still great no matter what the idiots trying to make it's not say - are an absolute living outrage and we cannot condone it in any way shape or form.
This Coalition have long since crossed the line of decency. Their attacks on those who need our help the most are vile, and transparently so, and must be stopped. Else we all live to regret it.
Sonia Poulton
Monday, February 20, 2012
This is not wartime Nazi Germany and Cameron's attacks on the vulnerable and needy must be stopped [Sonia Poulton]
Dastardly: Sonia Poulton says David Cameron and the Coalition Government has surpassed itself in its campaign of terror against some of the most needy in our society
I reveal my current state of health not because I wish to elicit sympathy (or even garner a gift or two, but either is always nice) but because I wish to highlight that even though I am physically poorly, I still felt compelled to rise from my sickbed and write.
Why? Because over the past week or so I have sat back and watched our Coalition Government surpass itself in its campaign of terror against some of the most needy in our society.
There we were thinking it impossible that David Cameron's Tory party could become even more dastardly, even more duplicitous, in their devastating aims against those in vulnerable groups - sick, disabled, single parent families and the elderly - but they have.
I agreed with her. I deplore the Workfare programme for many reasons but primarily because it is deplorable. Trumpeted as a programme that will give the unemployed key skills, it serves nothing of the sort.
What it is, in actuality, is a benefit system for sections of our work force. And there was I, foolishly, thinking that when you are part of the capitalist work force then the appropriate term for remuneration received is salary. Apparently not. These days, and under Cameron's stewardship, we receive 'benefits' to become part of the job market.
Controversial: The Government's Workfare programme has been trumpeted as a scheme that will give the unemployed key skills
Fair? Tesco is one of the firms set to benefit from the Workfare programme
Astonishingly, the deplorable - I think I mentioned that already - Workfare has reached new lows this week as it became transparently clear that it also serves to line the overflowing coffers of wealthy corporations while making the already poor, poorer still.
The thing about Cameron's Workfare programme is it's almost too easy to criticise.
The problem is not knowing where to start but wondering if I shall ever finish.
Presumably Tesco's slogan 'Every little helps' (the shareholder) is a similar mantra to the Coalition's 'We're all in this together' (politicians and bankers, that is). In that it benefits the few and not the many.
That's wrong. Clearly. If staff are needed by our numero uno retailer then Tesco should have an absolute obligation to pay them the going rate. And not a penny less.
Presumably the company's slogan 'Every little helps' (the shareholder) is a similar mantra to the Coalition's 'We're all in this together' (politicians and bankers, that is). In that it benefits the few and not the many.
What Tesco, and other participants in the Workfare scheme, receive is far greater than what they give.
We, as the country, are, quite literally, paying the consumer giant to make even more money. And we are doing that by having our taxpayer funded job seekers work free for the company.
Does that sound right? It might if your view of life is from Downing Street, but it's not from elsewhere.
You have to wonder how many MP's have fat wads of shares at stake in the Workfare scheme. I know I do. It may not be illegal for them to benefit from increased corporate share prices that Government initiatives may bring them personally, but it sure is highly questionable.
Disability benefits
As a result of Cameron's spurious recent behaviour in pushing through crippling, quite literally for some, amendments to disability benefits, it has become clear that the attached issues are even more heinous that the blueprint of the Welfare Reform Bill, itself.
And it is this: disabled people will now face the prospect of unlimited unpaid work or they will be subject to cuts in their benefits. For millions that is nothing more than a line on a page but for many terrified and suicidal others, it is anything but.
Unfair: Under new rules disabled people now face the prospect of unlimited unpaid work or be subject to cuts in their benefit
The consequences of this cannot be overstated. It will be, quite simply, devastating. As a number of institutes have not been slow in expressing their very real concerns.
The Royal College of Psychiatrists (RCP) have written to the Coalition outlining the dangers of forcing sick and disabled people into the job market (the one that currently stands at almost three million unemployed by the way).
The RCP have a number of fears about the inadequacies of such a system. They worry, quite rightly, that managers in job centres and private companies - whose job it is to get people back to work - have inadequate health expertise and will push those with mental health issues into inappropriate placements.
Forcing people who have more than six months left to live - yes it is that stark, again - to earn a living is an outrage on a previously unseen scale.
Even I'm shocked by the ruthlessness of it and I wouldn't put anything past this compassion-free zone that is Parliament.
Cultural observers could not fail to notice similarities between what is taking place here and what occurred in Hitler's Germany
It's no great secret that one of the main reasons that MP's take care of business is because so many of them have financial interests in the businesses that they do business with. They are protecting their own interests while governing over the rest of us and insisting we do the same.
Morals aside, and I feel we must put them aside when referring to many, many politicians - and particularly much of the current shower in power - you can't really blame them for protecting their assets. They know which side their bread is buttered, or that of their colleagues, and they never fail to deliver or to resort to type in that regard.
Some people have written to me complaining that I get too angry when I write about our Government. But I AM angry. I believe we all should be outraged and I'm shouting because I want people to hear it.
Let us make no mistake what we are witnessing from our Coalition Government is absolutely, unquestionably, categorically scandalous.
The ritual humiliation, brutalisation, threats and punishment of anyone who is considered 'a burden to the state'. Anyone who is less than perfect, anyone who dares to find themselves in a position where they need the state to support them. Those people are the subject of shocking and terrifying behaviour at the hands of David Cameron's Coalition.
Cultural observers could not fail to notice the similiarites between what is taking place here towards sick, disabled, elderly or any group perceived to be vulnerable and weak and what occurred in Hitler's Germany.
This may not be ethnic cleansing that we are witnessing - and some are already experiencing - but it's a type of cleansing all the same.
There are hundreds of thousands of people around our country right now who are absolutely petrified for their future. It appears so hopeless. There have already been a number of suicides from people who left behind messages to the effect that they simply could not take the hardship any more. Could not face another winter without sufficient food or heat. And in the UK in 2012. Doesn't it make you proud?
Some of the actions that are being carried out around our great country - and it's still great no matter what the idiots trying to make it's not say - are an absolute living outrage and we cannot condone it in any way shape or form.
This Coalition have long since crossed the line of decency. Their attacks on those who need our help the most are vile, and transparently so, and must be stopped. Else we all live to regret it.
Sonia Poulton
Thursday, January 26, 2012
biopsychosocial model has no empirical foundation in relation to ME/CFS
Attention is drawn to a letter recently sent to two high-profile members of The House of Lords by Douglas Fraser, a former professional violinist but now severely affected by ME/CFS (http://www.meactionuk.org.uk/FraserToTGTandMM.htm ).
In it, Fraser sets out his concerns about a paper circulated by Lord (David) Freud, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Minister for Welfare Reform) to certain members of the House of Lords (this being “Models of Sickness and Disability” by Waddell G and Aylward M, whose track record on the alleged deviance of sick people -- those with ME/CFS being specifically targeted -- is documented in “Magical Medicine: how to make a disease disappear” by Professor Malcolm Hooper available at www.meactionuk.org.uk/magical-medicine.htm ).
David Freud’s history is interesting: he previously worked as a journalist for the Financial Times and then joined a leading UK investment bank (UBS investment banking), where he was on record as saying to his deputy: “If the rest of the country knew what we were being paid, there would be tumbrels on the streets and heads carried round on pikes”. In his city career he frequently got things seriously wrong. As one reviewer of his book put it, Freud “will be remembered in the City as one of the key players in several of the most embarrassing and badly managed deals in investment banking”. His revenue forecasts were, in his own words: “completely potty”; according to the Daily Telegraph, his financial plans for Euro Disney “went so goofy they almost wrecked his career” and on the Channel Tunnel Rail Link he got his sums wrong by £1.2 billion and had to be bailed out by the Government (www.variant.org.uk/events/Doc7Poverty/BankerBankies.pdf ).
Nonetheless, as the “To Banker from Bankies” 2009 report (which was supported and funded by Oxfam) states, in 2007 Freud was appointed as the key Government advisor on welfare reform by Labour’s John Hutton, having been commissioned to produce a report “Reducing Dependency, Increasing Opportunity” on the “Welfare to Work” programme. This was despite the fact that, in his own words, Freud “didn’t know anything about welfare at all” (Daily Telegraph, 4th February 2008). Despite the great complexity of the welfare system, Freud researched and wrote his welfare “shake-up” plan in just three weeks. It recommended that the existing role of private firms (such as the French company Atos) in the Government’s “Welfare to Work” programme be dramatically increased; he acknowledged that there was no evidence to suggest that private contractors were any better than the Department for Work and Pensions, but he still concluded that it would be “economically rational” to pay them tens of thousands of pounds for every person they removed from benefits.
The Daily Telegraph subsequently reported that Freud himself had severed all ties with Labour Ministers and was joining the Conservatives’ Work and Pensions team “after being put forward for a peerage”.
In May 2010 the Coalition Prime Minister (David Cameron) appointed him to his current post as Minister for Welfare Reform.
On 17th January 2012 Hansard recorded that Lord Freud referred to the “Models of Sickness and Disability” document that he had handed round to some members of the House of Lords (http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201212/ldhansrd/text/120117-0001.htm), this being the document which will apparently underpin the transition from Disabled Living Allowance (DLA) to the Personal Independence Payment (PIP) and from which document it is clear that the biopsychosocial construct now permeates medical assessments for state benefits (so it may come as no surprise that Professor Peter White is acknowledged as an advisor).
Lord Freud explained: “I am hopeful that PIP will do a better job than DLA….I shall now turn to the more technical aspects of this issue – that is, looking at what we are doing with the PIP and its assessment. Is it a medical assessment…? It absolutely is not.
“…Our approach is – and this is rather a mouthful – akin to the biopsychosocial model…
“I sent round a rather interesting piece of analysis to many noble Lords in the Committee, called Models of Sickness and Disability, which showed the differences between the models, explaining the medical model, the reaction of the social model against the pure medical model and the synthesis of the biopsychosocial model. The summary of the biopsychosocial model in the analysis is that: ‘Sickness and disability are best overcome by an appropriate combination of healthcare, rehabilitation, personal effort and social/work adjustments’. There is a coherent theory behind this assessment”.
There are about 170 references to “models” scattered throughout the 40 page document and Fraser points out that readers may get the impression when it comes to the “biopsychosocial model” that a rigorous and scientific approach has been taken, yet it may be argued that there is no coherent theory whatsoever behind that “model”.
Fraser draws attention to the authors’ footnotes, which are rife with selective referencing and contain misquotations from and misrepresentations of the (not easily available) cited source.
In one instance the authors seem to infer (from their cited source) that it has been shown to be perfectly legitimate to proceed directly from biopsychosocial theory (or the “conceptual model”) to biopsychosocial practice and policy, when the cited author in fact concluded that the biopsychosocial model is “hardly a theory” and “certainly not a model”.
The central arguments surrounding issues of bias and confounding in relation to the biopsychosocial model that are exposed within the cited source are not -- as they should have been -- made known by Waddell and Aylward.
Notably, the impression from the footnotes is that it was Professor Peter White who provided “classic” examples on “how the biopsychosocial model is not an aetiological model of disease, and (how) arguments about whether the cause of a particular disease is biological or psychosocial obscure the main issue”, when in reality it was George Davey-Smith, Professor of Clinical Epidemiology at the University of Bristol who urged caution and who carried the torch for intellectual integrity: it was he who showed that bias can generate spurious findings and that when interventional studies to examine the efficacy of a psychosocial approach have been used, the results have been disappointing, and he who pointed out that cholera was attributed to “moral” factors and that peptic ulcer was attributed to stress before the appliance of science (Proof Positive? Eileen Marshall & Margaret Williams, 30th August 2005 http://www.meactionuk.org.uk/PROOF_POSITIVE.htm ).
According to Waddell and Aylward (and White), both these examples are of “specific diseases of doubtful relevance to common health problems” and they are dismissed because they appear to threaten the biopsychosocial philosophy, which Waddell and Aylward claim applies to “any illness”.
However, when one examines Waddell and Aylward’s claim of supporting evidence for the biopsychosocial model in the management of low back pain (“extensive scientific evidence that the biopsychosocial model provides the best framework for the modern management of low back pain”), one finds from the latest Cochrane meta-analysis examining the results of behavioural interventions for low back pain that: “the risk of bias of the trials included in this review was generally high” and, in relation to the addition of behavioural therapy to in-patient rehabilitation over the longer term, that: “there was only low or very low quality evidence, which was based on the results of only two or three small trials” (Behavioural treatment for chronic low-back pain; 7 JUL 2010. The Cochrane Collaboration. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD002014.pub3/full ).
Such seeming sleight of hand by Waddell and Aylward in seriously misleading a Government Minister and members of the House of Lords is to be deplored.
When it comes to ME/CFS, over 20 renowned international experts on ME/CFS have provided written statements of concern effectively stating that cognitive behavioural therapy and graded exercise therapy used to support the alleged existence of the “biopsychosocial model” do not work for people with ME/CFS (Magical Medicine pp 88-92).
Furthermore, numerous trials have shown that not only is the “biopsychosocial model” unsuccessful in the management of ME/CFS but that the model itself is not evidence-based and it may be actively harmful:
(i) the evidence that behavioural modification techniques have no role in the management of ME/CFS is already significant and has been confirmed by a study in Spain, which found that in ME/CFS patients, the two interventions used to justify the biopsychosocial model (CBT and GET) did not improve HRQL (health-related quality of life) scores at 12 months post-intervention and in fact resulted in worse physical function and bodily pain scores in the intervention group (Nunez M et al; Health-related quality of life in patients with chronic fatigue syndrome: group cognitive behavioural therapy and graded exercise versus usual treatment. A randomised controlled trial with 1 year follow-up. Clin Rheumatol 2011, Jan 15: Epub ahead of print)
(ii) “Notwithstanding the medical pathogenesis of ME/CFS, the (bio)psychosocial model is adopted by many governmental organizations and medical professionals to legitimize the combination of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Graded Exercise Therapy (GET) for ME/CFS…. Justified by this model CBT and GET aim at eliminating presumed psychogenic and socially induced maintaining factors and reversing deconditioning, respectively. In this review we invalidate the (bio)psychosocial model for ME/CFS and demonstrate that the success claim for CBT/GET to treat ME/CFS is unjust. CBT/ GET is not only hardly more effective than non-interventions or standard medical care, but many patients report that the therapy had affected them adversely, the majority of them even reporting substantial deterioration…. We conclude that it is unethical to treat patients with ME/CFS with ineffective, non-evidence-based and potentially harmful ‘rehabilitation therapies’ such as CBT/GET” (A Review on Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and Graded Exercise Therapy (GET) in Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME) / Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS). Neuroendocrinol Lett 2009:30(3):284-299)
(iii) The Wessely School’s much-vaunted FINE (Fatigue Intervention by Nurses Evaluation) Trial could not by any standards be judged to have been successful: the results showed that “pragmatic rehabilitation” (PR, based on CBT/GET) was minimally effective in reducing fatigue and improving sleep only whilst participants were engaged in the programme and that there was no statistically significant effect at follow-up. Furthermore, pragmatic rehabilitation had no statistically significant effect on physical functioning; equally, its effect on depression had diminished at follow-up. Moreover the other intervention being tested (“supportive listening” or SL) had no effect in reducing fatigue, improving physical functioning, sleep or depression (AJ Wearden et al; BMC Medicine 2006, 4:9 doi:10.1186/1741-7015-4-9
(iv) Equally, the widely acclaimed but statistically unsustainable PACE Trial cannot be said to have been successful since, uniquely, ratings that would qualify a potential participant as sufficiently impaired to enter the trial were considered “within the normal range” when recorded on completion of the trial and no recovery statistics have been published by the Chief Principal Investigator, Professor Peter White (Comparison of adaptive pacing therapy, cognitive behaviour therapy, graded exercise therapy, and specialist medical care for chronic fatigue syndrome (PACE): a randomised trial. PD White et al. Lancet 2011 Mar 5;377(9768):823-36).
It has not been possible to determine Lord Freud’s awareness of the need to distinguish biomedical science from biopsychosocial ideology before he formulates Government policies that will have a profoundly detrimental impact on sick and frightened people whose means of survival is threatened if their state support is withdrawn.
The term “biopsychosocial model” is used almost exclusively by Wessely School psychiatrists to refer to disorders that they continue to regard as psychosomatic (especially ME/CFS) and it is not used by other disciplines. For example, cardiologists do not refer to patients as having a “biopsychosocial” disorder and oncologists do not refer to cancer as a “biopsychosocial” disorder, nor do they claim that their patients must be coerced back to work by the withdrawal of their state benefits because it is patients’ aberrant belief that they are physically sick which maintains their disease.
The use of such a term can be seen as a linguistic misdirection by these psychiatrists, allowing them to conceal their belief that ME/CFS is not a physical disease but an aberrant state of mind maintained by psychological and behavioural factors (ie. the psychosocial components of “biopsychosocial”). The only “bio” in their “biopsychosocial model” is their reluctant concession that ME/CFS is sometimes preceded by a self-limiting viral infection (and, despite the overwhelming international evidence to the contrary, they insist it is maintained by psychosocial elements that do not result from any organic pathology).
As Fraser states: “As the tortured arguments continue, one suspects that the authors (Waddell and Aylward) are keenly trying to ensure something is kept out of public view….Had Lord Freud said ‘We have not gone for the medical model; we have gone for the psychosomatic model’, I do not think that members of the House would have been impressed for a moment”.
Informed readers of “Models of Sickness and Disability” might wonder why something that has been repeatedly shown not to be a successful model is being promoted by a UK Government.
As Fraser points out, an explanation may be found from a 2005 issue of “Decision Makers’ Exchange” (DME), the monthly newsletter for DLA and Attendance Allowance decision makers: “Confirmation that Medical Services (ie. the DWP) have adopted the Biopsychosocial Model for assessing not just claims based on incapacity for work but also DLA and AA came in the July edition of Decision Makers’ Exchange…An item explained that Medical Services have recently introduced a change in the way that they assess a customer’s disabilities and the effect it has on their lives. The Biopsychosocial Model aims to address how a person’s disability has an effect on that individual’s life”. The newsletter features an article by Mansel Aylward, former Chief Scientist at the DWP, entitled “Professor Aylward endorses the Biopsychosocial Model of Disability….Conditions for which there is limited or no recognised pathological basis, such as chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia…feature regularly in disability assessments for state benefits….The Biopsychosocial Model is the answer to the disability analyst’s plight”.
Fraser then quotes from an Atos Origin Medical Services meeting in 2004 which sets out just how the dogma that underpins the “biopsychosocial model” is being authoritatively promulgated, and he notes “the convenient fictions and lack of logic those responsible would…refuse to tolerate if applied to their own family and friends”.
The Atos Origin 2004 Conference report is explicit: “Psychosocial factors…are at least as important as physical factors in the onset and maintenance of these conditions. Patients can make a number of ‘secondary gains’ with these unexplained illnesses, such as…turning a socially unacceptable disability into a more acceptable ‘organic’ disability caused by injury or disease beyond their control. They can blame their failures on the illness; elicit care, sympathy and concern from family and friends; avoid work or even sex; and there are financial rewards associated with disability.
“…if a patient believes their illness was caused by a virus and there’s nothing they can do about it, their prognosis is not likely to be positive. But if the patient believes…that the symptoms won’t last long and they have control over them, then the prognosis will be better…. We need patients to understand their situation, so they are more likely to go back to work” (http://www.meactionuk.org.uk/AtosConference2004.pdf).
Fraser concludes in his letter: “Given the combined forces of what appears as an unseen (and) corporate-generated self-serving attitude (tacitly approved by “Models of Sickness and Disability” authors as perfectly moral) in the guise of the…psychosomatic model…promoting the prejudice of…pop-psychology directed at vulnerable and relatively powerless others…and a profit-driven foreign company…it is unsurprising that so many of the bad decisions they help facilitate are overturned on closer examination at costly appeals. It would of course, be much cheaper in the long run to adopt some of the higher standards of appeal tribunals in the first place”.
This non-evidence-based but pervasive biopsychosocial ideology is now being foisted on the unsuspecting people of Australia and New Zealand, because in May 2010 Aylward wrote a report for the Australasian Faculty of Occupational and Environmental Health (Realising the Health Benefits of Work: A Position Paper. Professor Sir Mansel Aylward CB; Director: Centre for Psychosocial Research and Disability Research, Cardiff University (the Centre being funded by the health insurance company UNUM Provident). In it, Aylward asserts:
“Fundamental Precepts:
Main determinants of health and illness depend more upon lifestyle, socio-cultural environment and psychological (personal) factors than they do on biological status and conventional healthcare
Work: most effective means to improve well-being of individuals, their families and their communities
Objective: rigorously tackling an individual’s obstacles to a life in work.
“Making the distinction: definitions and usage:
Disease: objective, medically diagnosed pathology
Illness: subjective feeling of being unwell
Sickness: social status accorded to the ill person by society
In that report Aylward claims that largely subjective complaints (such as ME/CFS) are often associated with psychosocial issues, not with pathology, and that “bio-psycho-social factors” may aggravate and perpetuate disability and that they may also act as obstacles to recovery and barriers to return to work. He refers to the UK Government’s “Pathways to Work” initiative, with its mandatory work-focused interviews for sick people and the use of CBT to change people’s alleged misperceptions about their health; his message is: “Barriers to recovery and return to (retention in) work are primarily personal, psychological and social rather than health-related ‘medical problems’ and that “Perceptions lie at the ‘heart’ of the problem”.
His report provides guidance on “ Engaging and Exploiting Stakeholders”, which he says must include
changing the beliefs and attitudes of politicians, civil servants, health professionals, employers etc and changing the present culture about health and well-being in order to deliver “visible hard outcomes”.
Even more disturbingly, Aylward’s report asserts that there must be new roles for health professionals, who must no longer permit their patients to believe that they are incapable of work if they have a disease but must instead propel them back into work even if they do have a legitimate medical disease. In the UK, there are recorded accounts of people with cancer being forced back to work and of a cancer sufferer dying whilst awaiting an appeal against a refusal of benefits by Atos.
Unsurprisingly, since he has invested so much into the promulgation of it, despite the accumulating evidence to the contrary, Aylward claims that the biopsychosocial principles of management are evidence-based, when the “biopsychosocial model” can be readily shown to have no empirical foundation, particularly in relation to ME/CFS.
It has nevertheless been used to justify beliefs and policies, for example, in his letter to the two members of the House of Lords, Douglas Fraser quotes the following:
"Benefits and Work has seen one recent medical report in which a DWP doctor explicitly stated that he had used the Biopsychosocial model. The claimant has Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and was seeking renewal of an award of the middle rate of the care component and the higher rate of the mobility component. His condition had deteriorated since his last award over two and a half years ago. The doctor who visited him recorded that: ‘There are few significant findings other than subjective tenderness and stiffness. But the customer is clearly living the life of a disabled person and I have applied the Biopsychosocial model’. The doctor then stated, without explaining how the conclusion had been reached, that the claimant’s condition was just 40% physical and ‘60% psychosocial’…. This allowed the decision maker to conclude that the claimant’s award of higher rate mobility was no longer appropriate as the primary reason for his virtual inability to walk was psychosocial rather than physical".
The specific numbers given (40/60 split) provided a superficial appearance of scientific objectivity to cover what was in fact no more than a highly-prejudiced guess, because such things cannot be measured or quantified, but they achieved the required outcome (which was to strip this person of his benefits and for which the company to which the DWP has delegated its medical assessments would receive a handsome financial reward).
It is, of course, imperative to seek out and remove from state benefits the cheats and idle lead-swingers, but it is even more imperative to take appropriate medical care of the sick, yet what underpins current Government welfare reform is the un-evidenced conviction that work is always good for people, no matter how ill they may be.
Commenting on a response to her article “Illness as Deviance, Work as Glittering Salvation and the ‘Psyching-up’ of the Medical Model: Strategies for Getting the Sick ‘Back to Work’ ” (http://www.democraticgreensocialist.org/wordpress/?page_id=1716), Gill Thorburn says: “I was appalled to discover what they have been doing to the ME community for so many years. Its nothing short of legitimised abuse. The one discouraging thing I’ve experienced in all my research so far has been discovering for how many years how much authentic evidence has been simply disregarded by those in power in favour of this spurious psychological approach. Some of the accounts on the net are simply heartbreaking, and it beggars belief that these people should have been allowed to continue with their ‘methods’ and ‘theories’. As someone pointed out recently, they ‘intervene’ in peoples’ lives with impunity, disregarding their negative effects, for which they are never held to account”.
A UK Government is democratically elected to look after the best interests of the nation and of its citizens, not to abuse and persecute the sick in favour of foreign corporate profits by imposing the “biopsychosocial model” that is promoted by UK psychiatrists who have vested financial interests in such a “model” because they work for the health insurance industry, whose profits benefit from its use.
Source
In it, Fraser sets out his concerns about a paper circulated by Lord (David) Freud, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Minister for Welfare Reform) to certain members of the House of Lords (this being “Models of Sickness and Disability” by Waddell G and Aylward M, whose track record on the alleged deviance of sick people -- those with ME/CFS being specifically targeted -- is documented in “Magical Medicine: how to make a disease disappear” by Professor Malcolm Hooper available at www.meactionuk.org.uk/magical-medicine.htm ).
David Freud’s history is interesting: he previously worked as a journalist for the Financial Times and then joined a leading UK investment bank (UBS investment banking), where he was on record as saying to his deputy: “If the rest of the country knew what we were being paid, there would be tumbrels on the streets and heads carried round on pikes”. In his city career he frequently got things seriously wrong. As one reviewer of his book put it, Freud “will be remembered in the City as one of the key players in several of the most embarrassing and badly managed deals in investment banking”. His revenue forecasts were, in his own words: “completely potty”; according to the Daily Telegraph, his financial plans for Euro Disney “went so goofy they almost wrecked his career” and on the Channel Tunnel Rail Link he got his sums wrong by £1.2 billion and had to be bailed out by the Government (www.variant.org.uk/events/Doc7Poverty/BankerBankies.pdf ).
Nonetheless, as the “To Banker from Bankies” 2009 report (which was supported and funded by Oxfam) states, in 2007 Freud was appointed as the key Government advisor on welfare reform by Labour’s John Hutton, having been commissioned to produce a report “Reducing Dependency, Increasing Opportunity” on the “Welfare to Work” programme. This was despite the fact that, in his own words, Freud “didn’t know anything about welfare at all” (Daily Telegraph, 4th February 2008). Despite the great complexity of the welfare system, Freud researched and wrote his welfare “shake-up” plan in just three weeks. It recommended that the existing role of private firms (such as the French company Atos) in the Government’s “Welfare to Work” programme be dramatically increased; he acknowledged that there was no evidence to suggest that private contractors were any better than the Department for Work and Pensions, but he still concluded that it would be “economically rational” to pay them tens of thousands of pounds for every person they removed from benefits.
The Daily Telegraph subsequently reported that Freud himself had severed all ties with Labour Ministers and was joining the Conservatives’ Work and Pensions team “after being put forward for a peerage”.
In May 2010 the Coalition Prime Minister (David Cameron) appointed him to his current post as Minister for Welfare Reform.
On 17th January 2012 Hansard recorded that Lord Freud referred to the “Models of Sickness and Disability” document that he had handed round to some members of the House of Lords (http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201212/ldhansrd/text/120117-0001.htm), this being the document which will apparently underpin the transition from Disabled Living Allowance (DLA) to the Personal Independence Payment (PIP) and from which document it is clear that the biopsychosocial construct now permeates medical assessments for state benefits (so it may come as no surprise that Professor Peter White is acknowledged as an advisor).
Lord Freud explained: “I am hopeful that PIP will do a better job than DLA….I shall now turn to the more technical aspects of this issue – that is, looking at what we are doing with the PIP and its assessment. Is it a medical assessment…? It absolutely is not.
“…Our approach is – and this is rather a mouthful – akin to the biopsychosocial model…
“I sent round a rather interesting piece of analysis to many noble Lords in the Committee, called Models of Sickness and Disability, which showed the differences between the models, explaining the medical model, the reaction of the social model against the pure medical model and the synthesis of the biopsychosocial model. The summary of the biopsychosocial model in the analysis is that: ‘Sickness and disability are best overcome by an appropriate combination of healthcare, rehabilitation, personal effort and social/work adjustments’. There is a coherent theory behind this assessment”.
There are about 170 references to “models” scattered throughout the 40 page document and Fraser points out that readers may get the impression when it comes to the “biopsychosocial model” that a rigorous and scientific approach has been taken, yet it may be argued that there is no coherent theory whatsoever behind that “model”.
Fraser draws attention to the authors’ footnotes, which are rife with selective referencing and contain misquotations from and misrepresentations of the (not easily available) cited source.
In one instance the authors seem to infer (from their cited source) that it has been shown to be perfectly legitimate to proceed directly from biopsychosocial theory (or the “conceptual model”) to biopsychosocial practice and policy, when the cited author in fact concluded that the biopsychosocial model is “hardly a theory” and “certainly not a model”.
The central arguments surrounding issues of bias and confounding in relation to the biopsychosocial model that are exposed within the cited source are not -- as they should have been -- made known by Waddell and Aylward.
Notably, the impression from the footnotes is that it was Professor Peter White who provided “classic” examples on “how the biopsychosocial model is not an aetiological model of disease, and (how) arguments about whether the cause of a particular disease is biological or psychosocial obscure the main issue”, when in reality it was George Davey-Smith, Professor of Clinical Epidemiology at the University of Bristol who urged caution and who carried the torch for intellectual integrity: it was he who showed that bias can generate spurious findings and that when interventional studies to examine the efficacy of a psychosocial approach have been used, the results have been disappointing, and he who pointed out that cholera was attributed to “moral” factors and that peptic ulcer was attributed to stress before the appliance of science (Proof Positive? Eileen Marshall & Margaret Williams, 30th August 2005 http://www.meactionuk.org.uk/PROOF_POSITIVE.htm ).
According to Waddell and Aylward (and White), both these examples are of “specific diseases of doubtful relevance to common health problems” and they are dismissed because they appear to threaten the biopsychosocial philosophy, which Waddell and Aylward claim applies to “any illness”.
However, when one examines Waddell and Aylward’s claim of supporting evidence for the biopsychosocial model in the management of low back pain (“extensive scientific evidence that the biopsychosocial model provides the best framework for the modern management of low back pain”), one finds from the latest Cochrane meta-analysis examining the results of behavioural interventions for low back pain that: “the risk of bias of the trials included in this review was generally high” and, in relation to the addition of behavioural therapy to in-patient rehabilitation over the longer term, that: “there was only low or very low quality evidence, which was based on the results of only two or three small trials” (Behavioural treatment for chronic low-back pain; 7 JUL 2010. The Cochrane Collaboration. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD002014.pub3/full ).
Such seeming sleight of hand by Waddell and Aylward in seriously misleading a Government Minister and members of the House of Lords is to be deplored.
When it comes to ME/CFS, over 20 renowned international experts on ME/CFS have provided written statements of concern effectively stating that cognitive behavioural therapy and graded exercise therapy used to support the alleged existence of the “biopsychosocial model” do not work for people with ME/CFS (Magical Medicine pp 88-92).
Furthermore, numerous trials have shown that not only is the “biopsychosocial model” unsuccessful in the management of ME/CFS but that the model itself is not evidence-based and it may be actively harmful:
(i) the evidence that behavioural modification techniques have no role in the management of ME/CFS is already significant and has been confirmed by a study in Spain, which found that in ME/CFS patients, the two interventions used to justify the biopsychosocial model (CBT and GET) did not improve HRQL (health-related quality of life) scores at 12 months post-intervention and in fact resulted in worse physical function and bodily pain scores in the intervention group (Nunez M et al; Health-related quality of life in patients with chronic fatigue syndrome: group cognitive behavioural therapy and graded exercise versus usual treatment. A randomised controlled trial with 1 year follow-up. Clin Rheumatol 2011, Jan 15: Epub ahead of print)
(ii) “Notwithstanding the medical pathogenesis of ME/CFS, the (bio)psychosocial model is adopted by many governmental organizations and medical professionals to legitimize the combination of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Graded Exercise Therapy (GET) for ME/CFS…. Justified by this model CBT and GET aim at eliminating presumed psychogenic and socially induced maintaining factors and reversing deconditioning, respectively. In this review we invalidate the (bio)psychosocial model for ME/CFS and demonstrate that the success claim for CBT/GET to treat ME/CFS is unjust. CBT/ GET is not only hardly more effective than non-interventions or standard medical care, but many patients report that the therapy had affected them adversely, the majority of them even reporting substantial deterioration…. We conclude that it is unethical to treat patients with ME/CFS with ineffective, non-evidence-based and potentially harmful ‘rehabilitation therapies’ such as CBT/GET” (A Review on Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and Graded Exercise Therapy (GET) in Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME) / Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS). Neuroendocrinol Lett 2009:30(3):284-299)
(iii) The Wessely School’s much-vaunted FINE (Fatigue Intervention by Nurses Evaluation) Trial could not by any standards be judged to have been successful: the results showed that “pragmatic rehabilitation” (PR, based on CBT/GET) was minimally effective in reducing fatigue and improving sleep only whilst participants were engaged in the programme and that there was no statistically significant effect at follow-up. Furthermore, pragmatic rehabilitation had no statistically significant effect on physical functioning; equally, its effect on depression had diminished at follow-up. Moreover the other intervention being tested (“supportive listening” or SL) had no effect in reducing fatigue, improving physical functioning, sleep or depression (AJ Wearden et al; BMC Medicine 2006, 4:9 doi:10.1186/1741-7015-4-9
(iv) Equally, the widely acclaimed but statistically unsustainable PACE Trial cannot be said to have been successful since, uniquely, ratings that would qualify a potential participant as sufficiently impaired to enter the trial were considered “within the normal range” when recorded on completion of the trial and no recovery statistics have been published by the Chief Principal Investigator, Professor Peter White (Comparison of adaptive pacing therapy, cognitive behaviour therapy, graded exercise therapy, and specialist medical care for chronic fatigue syndrome (PACE): a randomised trial. PD White et al. Lancet 2011 Mar 5;377(9768):823-36).
It has not been possible to determine Lord Freud’s awareness of the need to distinguish biomedical science from biopsychosocial ideology before he formulates Government policies that will have a profoundly detrimental impact on sick and frightened people whose means of survival is threatened if their state support is withdrawn.
The term “biopsychosocial model” is used almost exclusively by Wessely School psychiatrists to refer to disorders that they continue to regard as psychosomatic (especially ME/CFS) and it is not used by other disciplines. For example, cardiologists do not refer to patients as having a “biopsychosocial” disorder and oncologists do not refer to cancer as a “biopsychosocial” disorder, nor do they claim that their patients must be coerced back to work by the withdrawal of their state benefits because it is patients’ aberrant belief that they are physically sick which maintains their disease.
The use of such a term can be seen as a linguistic misdirection by these psychiatrists, allowing them to conceal their belief that ME/CFS is not a physical disease but an aberrant state of mind maintained by psychological and behavioural factors (ie. the psychosocial components of “biopsychosocial”). The only “bio” in their “biopsychosocial model” is their reluctant concession that ME/CFS is sometimes preceded by a self-limiting viral infection (and, despite the overwhelming international evidence to the contrary, they insist it is maintained by psychosocial elements that do not result from any organic pathology).
As Fraser states: “As the tortured arguments continue, one suspects that the authors (Waddell and Aylward) are keenly trying to ensure something is kept out of public view….Had Lord Freud said ‘We have not gone for the medical model; we have gone for the psychosomatic model’, I do not think that members of the House would have been impressed for a moment”.
Informed readers of “Models of Sickness and Disability” might wonder why something that has been repeatedly shown not to be a successful model is being promoted by a UK Government.
As Fraser points out, an explanation may be found from a 2005 issue of “Decision Makers’ Exchange” (DME), the monthly newsletter for DLA and Attendance Allowance decision makers: “Confirmation that Medical Services (ie. the DWP) have adopted the Biopsychosocial Model for assessing not just claims based on incapacity for work but also DLA and AA came in the July edition of Decision Makers’ Exchange…An item explained that Medical Services have recently introduced a change in the way that they assess a customer’s disabilities and the effect it has on their lives. The Biopsychosocial Model aims to address how a person’s disability has an effect on that individual’s life”. The newsletter features an article by Mansel Aylward, former Chief Scientist at the DWP, entitled “Professor Aylward endorses the Biopsychosocial Model of Disability….Conditions for which there is limited or no recognised pathological basis, such as chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia…feature regularly in disability assessments for state benefits….The Biopsychosocial Model is the answer to the disability analyst’s plight”.
Fraser then quotes from an Atos Origin Medical Services meeting in 2004 which sets out just how the dogma that underpins the “biopsychosocial model” is being authoritatively promulgated, and he notes “the convenient fictions and lack of logic those responsible would…refuse to tolerate if applied to their own family and friends”.
The Atos Origin 2004 Conference report is explicit: “Psychosocial factors…are at least as important as physical factors in the onset and maintenance of these conditions. Patients can make a number of ‘secondary gains’ with these unexplained illnesses, such as…turning a socially unacceptable disability into a more acceptable ‘organic’ disability caused by injury or disease beyond their control. They can blame their failures on the illness; elicit care, sympathy and concern from family and friends; avoid work or even sex; and there are financial rewards associated with disability.
“…if a patient believes their illness was caused by a virus and there’s nothing they can do about it, their prognosis is not likely to be positive. But if the patient believes…that the symptoms won’t last long and they have control over them, then the prognosis will be better…. We need patients to understand their situation, so they are more likely to go back to work” (http://www.meactionuk.org.uk/AtosConference2004.pdf).
Fraser concludes in his letter: “Given the combined forces of what appears as an unseen (and) corporate-generated self-serving attitude (tacitly approved by “Models of Sickness and Disability” authors as perfectly moral) in the guise of the…psychosomatic model…promoting the prejudice of…pop-psychology directed at vulnerable and relatively powerless others…and a profit-driven foreign company…it is unsurprising that so many of the bad decisions they help facilitate are overturned on closer examination at costly appeals. It would of course, be much cheaper in the long run to adopt some of the higher standards of appeal tribunals in the first place”.
This non-evidence-based but pervasive biopsychosocial ideology is now being foisted on the unsuspecting people of Australia and New Zealand, because in May 2010 Aylward wrote a report for the Australasian Faculty of Occupational and Environmental Health (Realising the Health Benefits of Work: A Position Paper. Professor Sir Mansel Aylward CB; Director: Centre for Psychosocial Research and Disability Research, Cardiff University (the Centre being funded by the health insurance company UNUM Provident). In it, Aylward asserts:
“Fundamental Precepts:
Main determinants of health and illness depend more upon lifestyle, socio-cultural environment and psychological (personal) factors than they do on biological status and conventional healthcare
Work: most effective means to improve well-being of individuals, their families and their communities
Objective: rigorously tackling an individual’s obstacles to a life in work.
“Making the distinction: definitions and usage:
Disease: objective, medically diagnosed pathology
Illness: subjective feeling of being unwell
Sickness: social status accorded to the ill person by society
In that report Aylward claims that largely subjective complaints (such as ME/CFS) are often associated with psychosocial issues, not with pathology, and that “bio-psycho-social factors” may aggravate and perpetuate disability and that they may also act as obstacles to recovery and barriers to return to work. He refers to the UK Government’s “Pathways to Work” initiative, with its mandatory work-focused interviews for sick people and the use of CBT to change people’s alleged misperceptions about their health; his message is: “Barriers to recovery and return to (retention in) work are primarily personal, psychological and social rather than health-related ‘medical problems’ and that “Perceptions lie at the ‘heart’ of the problem”.
His report provides guidance on “ Engaging and Exploiting Stakeholders”, which he says must include
changing the beliefs and attitudes of politicians, civil servants, health professionals, employers etc and changing the present culture about health and well-being in order to deliver “visible hard outcomes”.
Even more disturbingly, Aylward’s report asserts that there must be new roles for health professionals, who must no longer permit their patients to believe that they are incapable of work if they have a disease but must instead propel them back into work even if they do have a legitimate medical disease. In the UK, there are recorded accounts of people with cancer being forced back to work and of a cancer sufferer dying whilst awaiting an appeal against a refusal of benefits by Atos.
Unsurprisingly, since he has invested so much into the promulgation of it, despite the accumulating evidence to the contrary, Aylward claims that the biopsychosocial principles of management are evidence-based, when the “biopsychosocial model” can be readily shown to have no empirical foundation, particularly in relation to ME/CFS.
It has nevertheless been used to justify beliefs and policies, for example, in his letter to the two members of the House of Lords, Douglas Fraser quotes the following:
"Benefits and Work has seen one recent medical report in which a DWP doctor explicitly stated that he had used the Biopsychosocial model. The claimant has Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and was seeking renewal of an award of the middle rate of the care component and the higher rate of the mobility component. His condition had deteriorated since his last award over two and a half years ago. The doctor who visited him recorded that: ‘There are few significant findings other than subjective tenderness and stiffness. But the customer is clearly living the life of a disabled person and I have applied the Biopsychosocial model’. The doctor then stated, without explaining how the conclusion had been reached, that the claimant’s condition was just 40% physical and ‘60% psychosocial’…. This allowed the decision maker to conclude that the claimant’s award of higher rate mobility was no longer appropriate as the primary reason for his virtual inability to walk was psychosocial rather than physical".
The specific numbers given (40/60 split) provided a superficial appearance of scientific objectivity to cover what was in fact no more than a highly-prejudiced guess, because such things cannot be measured or quantified, but they achieved the required outcome (which was to strip this person of his benefits and for which the company to which the DWP has delegated its medical assessments would receive a handsome financial reward).
It is, of course, imperative to seek out and remove from state benefits the cheats and idle lead-swingers, but it is even more imperative to take appropriate medical care of the sick, yet what underpins current Government welfare reform is the un-evidenced conviction that work is always good for people, no matter how ill they may be.
Commenting on a response to her article “Illness as Deviance, Work as Glittering Salvation and the ‘Psyching-up’ of the Medical Model: Strategies for Getting the Sick ‘Back to Work’ ” (http://www.democraticgreensocialist.org/wordpress/?page_id=1716), Gill Thorburn says: “I was appalled to discover what they have been doing to the ME community for so many years. Its nothing short of legitimised abuse. The one discouraging thing I’ve experienced in all my research so far has been discovering for how many years how much authentic evidence has been simply disregarded by those in power in favour of this spurious psychological approach. Some of the accounts on the net are simply heartbreaking, and it beggars belief that these people should have been allowed to continue with their ‘methods’ and ‘theories’. As someone pointed out recently, they ‘intervene’ in peoples’ lives with impunity, disregarding their negative effects, for which they are never held to account”.
A UK Government is democratically elected to look after the best interests of the nation and of its citizens, not to abuse and persecute the sick in favour of foreign corporate profits by imposing the “biopsychosocial model” that is promoted by UK psychiatrists who have vested financial interests in such a “model” because they work for the health insurance industry, whose profits benefit from its use.
Source
Sunday, January 22, 2012
INACCURACIES IN IAIN DUNCAN SMITH'S CV [BBC Newsnight]
 | Press Releases & Press Packs |
| ||||
|
Newsnight reveals inaccuracies in Iain Duncan Smith's CV Aspects of Iain Duncan Smith's CV, relating to his education, are inaccurate and misleading, an investigation by BBC Newsnight reveals. The investigation into the Conservative Party leader's education and early career - broadcast at 10.30pm on BBC TWO last night (Wednesday 18 December 2002) - was presented by Michael Crick, author of the best-selling biography of Jeffrey Archer. If any of the following material is used BBC Newsnight must be credited. The University of Perugia Iain Duncan Smith's biography on the Conservative Party website, his entry in Who's Who, and various other places, state that he went to the Universita di Perugia in Italy. This is not true: his office now admit that he went to the Universita per Stranieri, which is also in Perugia. The Universita per Stranieri - or University for Foreigners - was founded in 1921 and is a totally separate institution to the medieval Universita di Perugia, founded by the Pope in 1308. Although the Universita per Stranieri is a respected language school, it did not grant degrees when he studied there in 1973, although some students attained diplomas. Mr Duncan Smith's office has now admitted to Newsnight that he didn't get any qualifications in Perugia or even finish his exams. Dunchurch College of Management The first line of Iain Duncan Smith's biography, on the Conservative Party website, claims he was "educated at Dunchurch College of Management". In fact, Dunchurch was the former staff college for GEC Marconi, for whom he worked in the 1980s. Mr Duncan Smith's office has now confirmed to Newsnight that he did not get any qualifications there either, but that he completed six separate courses lasting a few days each, adding up to about a month in total. Newsnight has now spoken to 19 former tutors at Dunchurch. Most agree it is over-emphasising his experience at Dunchurch to describe it in the way he does. John Garside, a former Dunchurch tutor, says: "I'm puzzled, flattered, but puzzled. What we did was offer short courses... it was not a continuous form of education by any means." Newsnight has shown these details to some of Iain Duncan Smith's constituents in Chingford. Several people assumed he must have been at both the University of Perugia and Dunchurch for several years, and obtained qualifications in either or both places. Notes to Editors The Conservative Party website page can be found at: http://www.conservatives.com/iainduncansmith/biography.cfm The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites | |||
BBC Press Office
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Monday, January 2, 2012
Barnardos cashing in on slave labour under the work programmes
Return of the slave traders
It’s not only multinationals that are benefiting from the free labour supplied by the government’s ever-expanding workfare programme. Information obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the Boycott Workfare campaign shows that charities across the UK, including Barnardo’s, the British Heart Foundation, Age Concern, Cancer Research and Scope, are all accepting unemployed people sent by job centres and private providers for unpaid work placements in their shops.
And if the experience of claimants sent to a Barnardo’s shop in Leeds is anything to go by, working for free in a charity shop is not necessarily much better than stacking shelves at Tesco. Sheryl Odlum, who has volunteered in the shop for the last year, told Corporate Watch that claimants sent to workfare placements arrive expecting retail experience but are often not even working on the shop floor.
“They could be in the upstairs room the whole time, sorting or steaming the clothes,” she said. “They’re not allowed to work on the till … If they’re in the shop, they’re just standing there, tidying up the clothes.”
Many of the claimants, who have been sent by provider company Best Training, are not there by choice and there is no prospect of paid work at the end of the placement. Barnardo’s shops are mainly staffed by volunteers, so workfare placements are not replacing paid jobs, as appears to be the case with many companies (see here). But Ms Odlum says that five people who have completed the 13-week placements in her store over the last year worked more hours than the other volunteers and have become valuable assets: “things would be an awful lot more difficult for us if we didn’t have that constant labour.”
“They should be paid minimum wage at least.” she said. “They’re doing a full-time job.” These placements are organised through the government’s Work Programme, for “long-term jobseekers”, who are mostly over 25. Barnardo’s also organise placements for 18-24 year olds through the government’s work experience programme for 18- to 24-year-olds – a different workfare scheme (and the one Nick Clegg was eagerly expanding last month). The charity told Corporate Watch its placements under this scheme were never more than four weeks long and that it would “certainly not advise young people to complete long-term unpaid work placements.” But getting older people to steam clothes for 13 weeks is fine!
Source
.
Further Study
November 9, 2011 ‘It’s exploitation and it’s repellent’: Retailers, councils and charities benefiting from workfare
September 26, 2011 Unemployed people ‘bullied’ into unpaid work at Tesco, Primark and other multinationals
August 12, 2011 ‘I was a volunteer for six months and wasn’t given a job or paid any money’
August 12, 2011 ’Making profits from the the unemployed is reprehensible’
Full DWP Study
In Profile : The Trussell Trust
The Dulverton Trust
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)