Cause of Death: Individual Civil Servants.

Please read this demolition of the Work Capability Assessment  by the LSE.

"There are also increasing stories of suicides committed by people left without any means of income fighting and winning appeals, only to find they are called for WCA reassessments shortly after. As part of the recognition of the increasing trend of those going through assessments to take their own lives Job Centre Plus staff have been issued with guidelines on how to deal with people who they think might be suicidal because of the WCA testing."

Well, Dole Office staff were also issued with guidelines on how to identify and deal with people who might be susceptible to loan sharks. They don't have the time. A majority don't have the inclination. I had an extraordinary, Kafkaesque conversation with a DWP operative last week on behalf of a non-counselling client. After listening to the long list of reasons Why Not, I attempted an empathic response along the lines of, "It sounds as if you might be under a lot of bureaucratic stress." Fully 10 seconds passed in silence. I sit opposite a clock and counted! In your next formal phone call I challenge you to leave a 10 second silence. Her eventual response was this:

"That's nothing to do with me. If she [the client] doesn't turn up I'll stop her benefits."

And then she put the phone down.

It makes me a less than perfect counsellor but I don't care what pressure this person is under. "Just Doing My Job"is also known as the Nuremberg Defense, and like the other very ordinary individuals who did a job to feed their families, even if that job was dropping pellets of Zyklon B into air vents, you cannot process disabled people through demeaning, painful processes and not expect to be involved in abuse. You cannot be involved in a system that for many years has been responsibile for suicides without knowingly being involved in abuse. Then again, I know that a person who works in this kind of system is also being abused. And then some wretched machine part will come out with this kind of statement, which makes me lose all understanding again:

"We are sorry to hear that Mr Deighan has [killed himself]. I understand that you are dealing with his affairs. We have looked again at Mr Deighan's Income Support claim and found that he was paid £160.55 too much Income Support. . . the amount is recoverable from the estate of Mr Deighan."

I have a strange acquaintance with a man who works at my local JobCentrePlus office. It's highly boundaried because he knows I disapprove of his job and because I've told him I would rather someone like him did the job than the callous horror on the end of the 10-second silence. He often seems desperate to talk and knows that this would make his life complicated in all kinds of ways, not least the likely outcome of whistleblowing  (I don't know whether to laugh or cry or take up arms over this dripping-with-hypocrisy page.)  He's getting visibly older by the day. He always has the option to leave.

We Live In Interesting Times

Tomorrows protest march is against cuts in disability benefits. Just as the protest against the scrapping of the Education Maintenance Allowance (a payment to the children of very poor households) was attended by thousands fewer demonstrators than protests against increases in costs to university students so there are likely to be very few people attending tomorrow. People in receipt of Disability Living Allowance and other benefits aimed at people who are too ill to work have been subjected to dreadful propaganda.


Godwin’s Law normally holds good but in this case I think there’s something to be learned from comparing the rhetoric about the cost of caring for disabled people today and how it echoes that of Nazi Germany.

Helpfully, this article also references the lies of omission around ‘Fraud and Error.’

These are turbulent times, all of us are caught up in it one way or another, it’s impossible to ignore. I wonder if psychotherapy has anything to offer to the understanding of this cycle of radicalism?


Post script Indeed, 20 people turned up in Trafalgar Square. Read a disabled activists perception of the issues.

Benefits and Work

Take some time to browse the Benefits and Work site. Join their mailing list. You'll get a couple of emails a month with fascinating links that will help you understand the experience of people who are feeling under threat from all sides, in a fundamental way.

Here's a copy of the mail I received today. From time to time we might ask clients if they'd be interested in knowing about of sources of information and support: this is one that empowers the individual in properly meaningful ways.

£4,000 backdated disability living allowance for ME

"Just wanted to thank benefits and work for all the advice on the site. I won my appeal for DLA and went from being awarded nothing to getting lower rate care and higher rate mobility (for severe ME)!

"The DWP wanted to start my claim from December, but somehow the tribunal put the date as August. I've just spoken to someone who has confirmed back-dated payment of over £4000 - a good day!"

Anna

More good news from members at the end of this email

Disabled claimants to be starved into obedience

The welfare reform white paper published today is not just about the new universal credit.  It is also about imposing a harsh new regime of sanctions on existing employment and support allowance claimants before the new benefit is even introduced.

Under the new regime, claimants in the work-related activity group of employment and support allowance (ESA), and the hundreds of thousands of sick and disabled claimants being forced onto JSA by increasingly harsh medical tests, face potentially indefinite 100% cuts in their benefit for minor ‘offences’.

Members can find out more about the coalition’s plans for a ‘fairer’ system of starving claimants into submission  (Members only) now and we’ll be doing a full write up of the universal credit in the near future.

Meanwhile, if you’re feeling angry about the cuts then do bear in mind that according to the minister for disabled people the plan to kick one in five claimants off DLA is in order to stop the media attacking claimants and branding them as workshy scroungers.  Oh and she also says that it’s ‘not particularly helpful’ to blame the government for anti-claimant propoganda when it’s really all the fault of the media.

Elsewhere, we have the news that the Youreable benefits forum has reopened after almost a year.  But we’re wondering if their threats of huge financial penalties and criminal prosecution for people who repeatedly misuse the site will put off more genuine claimants than troublemakers?

We also have news of a brand new website which allows private tenants to find out how much benefit they may lose under the coalition’s plans to cut housing benefit.

And it’s not just the DWP and local authorities who are after your money. We’ve heard from the Low Incomes Tax Reform Group that incapacity benefit claimants may soon be receiving demands for underpaid tax from HMRC.  Find out what to do if the taxman comes after you.

One bit of good news, however, is the announcement by the DWP that they are abandoning plans to introduce lie detectors for benefits claimants after discovering that they don’t work.

And finally, as always, we’re sharing some good news from our forums.

Higher rate mobility and middle rate care DLA indefinitely

Higher rate mobility and middle rate care DLA in just 4 weeks

ESA up from 6 to 15 points

ESA medical success before incapacity benefit appeal

ESA appeal success on review

Thank you – even though I’ve no idea of the result!

Good luck,

Steve Donnison

From Feckless Oiks To Malingering Liars.

As the focus shifts from feckless oiks to malingering liars take a look at Bendy Girl’s blog

Note the title.

There are a lot of excellent links to other disability pages on Bendy Girl’s page, in particular But You Don’t Look Sick offers one persons first hand account of being disabled.

In some developing countries people who are fit to work but who can earn more from begging will mutilate themselves or their children, knowing that the more obvious their disability the more money they will receive from charitable strangers. Of course, the terribly ill are unable to beg and disappear which is why religious institutions and later the State decided that a more collective approach to care would be less grotesque. And still we expect the ill to perform to prove how ill they are, sometimes to us and more often to someone from ATOS Healthcare the company which interviews people who need disability benefit. They’re notorious for their abuse of power.

There’s a great deal of information in these few webpages and they give some indication of the complexity of the system that a person who is physically ill or disabled must contend with. The person with a mental illness, who can indeed take a pen from a pocket, turn on a tap and sit for 30 minutes but will be entirely unable to work within the employment culture we have now has particular problems with a system that doesn’t welcome people in wheelchairs, let alone a hidden illness.

MIND offers analysis.

along with the LSE