MSE News: Half a million could lose disability benefits

Dunroamin

laptop80 wrote: »

Sorry for the rant but it is something I wanted to get off my chest. It appalls me that my tax money is funding the coalition government and a private company to terrorise disabled and elderly people on my behalf. The prospect of falling sick or ill under this government is terrifying and where it will all end I don't know.
"

In what way are elderly people being terrorised - by being given a 5% pay rise?

BigAunty

clouty wrote: »

The strangling off of disability benefits is only the beginning. We are on a journey back to a feudal past.

Some critics of the welfare state actually say the govt is returning to the original spirit of Beveridge's intentions, namely that benefits is a temporary safety net and the state should not replace the assistance and support that comes from the family and between couples.

Also, that it is addressing an unsustainable bill not envisaged by Beveridge at it's inception whereby his model was based on 3% full unemployment whereas we are now at around 9% plus millions on part time employment.

The spending in terms of GDP on benefits has more than doubled while the income taxes that contribute towards the funding have shrunk. This is why under Labour, the country ended up spending more on benefits than employees paid in PAYE.

Again critics say that Beveridge also failed to anticipate the individualistic and very therapeutic culture we have now where people demand the right to personal happiness as the norm and foreground vulnerabilities that never used to be considered incapacitating and disabling. Even a professor of psychiatry has complained that there is now a huge tendency to medicalise social and personal problems and that there is not actually the huge increase in actual mental illness that the benefit figures suggest.

This perhaps is why there is now a sea-change to focus on independence and capability rather than the embedded culture of incapacity. Of course, this is led by the Tories because it corresponds with their political philosophy, their natural disinclination towards state support and mantra around self reliance which has a very cruel streak.

smashedsanny

Penny- Pincher I am not doing anything wrong but its so depressing to see that car 3-4 days a week.
But Thanks x
Kriss kross I am. I use the money to have the heating on most of the time and have hot baths as this helps me to get throught the day, my partner has a car, which we have had to go from manual to automatic since driving was becoming a nightmare and you know what the guy intervewing me did not even bat an eye at that.
but just think of how much money they are wasting having to park that car then go through all the recording for each day....
he told me becouse I did not inform them that I had bought a new bed and couch I was comitting frud, work that one out.

mealone

sangio wrote: »

Personally I agree with all of these reviews, IB/ESA, DLA/PIP etc. For far too long it has been a question of once on it, you are generally left alone year in year out.

As for DLA, it is an utter joke! Only last month a friend of one of my children was awarded MRC & HRM. Why? He is 29 and has a blocked artery to his heart.
You might say that that is acceptable, so would I as the symptoms are that he could get out of breath easilly and cannot do anything that exerts him. His GP seems to think so.

Yet his council bungalow (yes he was given a property due to his condition) is used every weekend as a 'drug den'. He is permanently stoned on 'Coke' spends every Friday and Saturday night clubbin getting legless on alcohol and drugs, AND still manages to walk the 3 miles home!!

His GP & Consultant sees one side of him, the side he wants them to see the other he carries on with his life as normal.

Is he just a one off case? No way, he has 2 brothers and a sister including his mum & dad and they are all in receipt of DLA and a myriad of other benefits. The sister has a £300,000 detached house (mortgage free) which is currently up for sale with the intenetion of buying a 5 bed £650,000 property. All of that on 'Permitted Work'!!!

We are all used to your twisted take on disability benefits and permitted work andy, the user names change but topics never do.

FBaby

laptop80 wrote: »

The facts of the DLA/PIP situation, as several people have already posted in response to the anecdotal 'everyone is at it' evidence, prove that this attack on the disabled is a politically-motivated move rather than a moral or genuine austerity measure. The disabled and the unemployed have become easy scapegoats to deflect attention from the bigger issues our economy is facing, with politicians using the media to turn everyone against each other, with every benefit claimant who isn't a wheelchair-bound paraplegic labelled a 'scrounger'. Forget the banks, forget tax-dodging corporations and billionaires, what about that woman with MS? Couldn't she be doing more to help the economy? The recent rise in verbal and physical attacks on the disabled is almost certainly attributable to this shameful policy.

Thankfully I am not disabled and have always been fit and able to work, but I have seen how these 'assessments' are carried out and the effect they have on disabled people. They are designed to be humiliating and prove that the claimant is a liar / can do more than they admit; they seize on anything (e.g. old man puts a brave face on his condition and says he can do more than he realistically can / person with crippling rheumatoid arthritis admits that on a good day they can use the oven) to force them off benefits and make the figures look better. It seems to be irrelevant that lives are being ruined and people genuinely in need are sent home distraught, confused, scared and without the money they need to live a dignified existence.

They say a society can be judged by how it treats its weakest members. If this is the case we are sinking very far indeed by actively and repeatedly picking on the section of society that can defend itself least. That such a high amount of decisions by the company running the asssessment are overturned on appeal should raise alarm bells - what about those people who are too vulnerable to appeal or have no-one to stick up for them? There are certainly disabled people who have had their benefits wrongly removed but cannot face or understand the appeal process so they suffer in silence.

This is with the current system of assessment - after the last crackdown they now want to take benefits off a further 500,000 claimants and reduce spending by 20%. How on earth can you determine care of human beings by the same kind of arbitrary targets you would use to cut the use of stationery in an office? They are essentially saying this *is* how many we will kick off DLA (many less and it would cost more than £1billion being paid to the private company that does the dirty work on their behalf). Doctors should decide who needs what care, not politicians trying to be seen as tough on benefit cheats. To say you can cut claimants by this many *before* the assessments have taken place is disgusting beyond words, particularly as their own evidence suggests fraudulent DLA claims are so low.

Sorry for the rant but it is something I wanted to get off my chest. It appalls me that my tax money is funding the coalition government and a private company to terrorise disabled and elderly people on my behalf. The prospect of falling sick or ill under this government is terrifying and where it will all end I don't know.

As Neil Kinnock said before the election of the last Tory goverment, "I warn you not to be ordinary, I warn you not to be young, I warn you not to fall ill, I warn you not to get old."

Why it is that as soon as a potential reforms affect the disabled (or are not forceably the poorest in any case), it becomes persecution against the vulnerable. The recession and reforms that result from it do not only affect certain people. Redundancies are making many working people struggle and have to adjust their lifestyles. The 'rich' are seeing their CB go. Are many families nowadays are not somehow affected by one or another change in reforms?

Why the generalisation that disabled people are the least able to defend themselves? How does having a mobility issue makes you less able to fight for what you believe is your rights? How are they less able to defend themselves than a young employee who is made redundant because he was the last one in, who has no idea about employement rights?

Talking about people being terrorised because they will have to be reassessed is ridiculous. They might not like it, they might be worried about the consequences, but that's no different to what many non disabled people have to face every day. I'm going to have to apply for my position for the 3rd time in 2 years because of constant organisation changes in the NHS. It's stressful, it makes me want to scream, it gives me sleepless night, but that's what I have to face if I still want an income at the end of the day. Everyone is going through a tough time at the moment, better accept it.

laptop80

FBaby wrote: »

Why it is that as soon as a potential reforms affect the disabled (or are not forceably the poorest in any case), it becomes persecution against the vulnerable. The recession and reforms that result from it do not only affect certain people. Redundancies are making many working people struggle and have to adjust their lifestyles. The 'rich' are seeing their CB go. Are many families nowadays are not somehow affected by one or another change in reforms?

Why the generalisation that disabled people are the least able to defend themselves? How does having a mobility issue makes you less able to fight for what you believe is your rights? How are they less able to defend themselves than a young employee who is made redundant because he was the last one in, who has no idea about employement rights?

Talking about people being terrorised because they will have to be reassessed is ridiculous. They might not like it, they might be worried about the consequences, but that's no different to what many non disabled people have to face every day. I'm going to have to apply for my position for the 3rd time in 2 years because of constant organisation changes in the NHS. It's stressful, it makes me want to scream, it gives me sleepless night, but that's what I have to face if I still want an income at the end of the day. Everyone is going through a tough time at the moment, better accept it.

Sorry, but having to apply for your position again, however stressful and unfair, is not the same as being treated like dirt by a 'professional' who is interrogating you from a starting point that you are a liar and probes the most personal aspects of your life during the interrogation.

Also, many of the people claiming DLA are very vulnerable and have mental issues - it isn't all people with bad backs and gammy legs, many of whom are able to and do defend themselves via appeal.

A lot of us being in a s*&tty position doesn't make it right or necessary to target the disabled in this way. It might be an inconvenience for some people to lose their Child Benefit as they earn too much, and everyone is affected by the downturn in some way, but the effects on people who rely on benefits to live are worse.

I hope your employment situation improves and settles down soon - unfortunately the NHS is another plaything of government.

Dunroamin

laptop80 wrote: »

Sorry, but having to apply for your position again, however stressful and unfair, is not the same as being treated like dirt by a 'professional' who is interrogating you from a starting point that you are a liar and probes the most personal aspects of your life during the interrogation.

As we all know so well that ATOS medicals are done by a script and a computer programme, I fail to see how this can be either an interrogation or even remotely personal.

rogerblack

Dunroamin wrote: »

As we all know so well that ATOS medicals are done by a script and a computer programme, I fail to see how this can be either an interrogation or even remotely personal.

It depends.
In the best case - the person understands the disease, is a fast typist, proficient with a computer, having a good day, ... the process can be done fairly well, and the computer adds to the process by suggesting things that may have been missed, allowing the professional to either follow up on these, or delete them if inappropriate.

If these things aren't true - even someone attempting to do their job to the best of their ability is going to find it really difficult to generate an accurate report in the time allotted.

Looking at the design of the software - I quite understand where 'lies' are coming in.

It is - in I suspect nearly all cases - not intentional - but simply the fact that it's _really_ hard to type and compose meaningful text while listening to the claimant answering a question - that may have an important fact buried in it about something else.

The fundamental problem with the unreliability of the work capability assessment is _NOT_ ATOS.
It's not the software.

It's the limited time that HCPs have to do the assessment, and the fact that they can't - for example - edit the report later, after having checked the recording.

Of course - this leaves aside the question of if it's a fundamentally flawed process based on criteria that fail to accurately capture someones ability to work.

clouty

I help people informally, with benefit claims. The reports generated by their ATOS assessments have never been said to ring true, indeed people often wonder if they've been sent the wrong report. I coined the phrase "a wonderful work of fiction" to describe the outcome of the WCA process.

laptop80

Dunroamin wrote: »

As we all know so well that ATOS medicals are done by a script and a computer programme, I fail to see how this can be either an interrogation or even remotely personal.

You fail to see how anything script based could be an interrogation or personal? So if I read you an extensive script of questions about your toilet habits and other aspects of your personal life whilst looking at you like you were a piece of dirt and suggesting your answers were lies you would be fine with that? That's actually irrelevant, as it would be mandatory. If you told me to stick it, as most people would be inclined to, you would lose your means of support.

These tests and more specifically the way they are carried out strip away the dignity of disabled people - it's precisely their mechanical nature and delivery by a stranger with no compassion for their situation (the opposite in fact) which is dehumanising. If you want to know how disabled people feel about ATOS assessments then Google it; even people who keep their benefits often say they feel violated by the process.