Hearing The Voices Of Others.

via Facebook

"Fiona Grant10 June at 20:50 · 

The following status is rather long and for that I apologise but, I would urge you to take the time to read it. I have stalled making this letter I wrote to various MP's public as I did not want, in anyway to impact on Andy Grant PIP assessment however there are no such constraints on me!!! Please feel free to share this with as many people as you wish to as the more people who are made aware of the callous nature of this process the better..............................

For those who have never met him, let me introduce you to Andy, my wonderful Partner of sixteen years and amazing father to our two beautiful children. He is the most exceptional man I know; funny, caring, generous, determined, handsome, abundant in patience, he understands me like no other person, accepts me flaws and all and is our family's protector. He also happens to be disabled. I tell you this bit last as this does not define him. He goes about his daily life with little or no complaint, despite being in constant pain with a permanently dislocated hip, agony with his lower back and pain and discomfort in many joints and muscles throughout his body, not to mention the 'bubble' we have created to live in to ignore the constant stares, giggling and sometimes photographing and filming when in public because he happens to look a bit different. He is unable to walk long distances, can not stand for long periods of time among many other limitations.

For the last twenty-three years, Andy has qualified for High Rate Disability Living Allowance meaning he is eligible for a Motability car. This is not Andy sponging or scrounging off the state, it was a non-means tested benefit, in part put in place to contribute to the extra costs faced by disabled people. His Motability car is his lifeline, "my legs" as he describes it. By the 31st May 2016, Andy was told he had to return his car, rendering him housebound. This is following the 'reassessment' of his abilities and needs brought on by the change from Disability Living Allowance to Personal Independence Payments.

The process for Andy started in October 2015 when he had to return a convoluted application form, forcing him to lay bare every element of his life and try and put into writing the impact his disability has on his daily living. For someone who has always been determined not to be labelled as 'handicapped', this was a truly embarrassing and humiliating process. He accepted however, this was a means to an end. Then came his wait for a face-to-face 'medical'. On the first occasion this was cancelled two hours before he was due to attend, following numerous sleepless night leading up to it. For the last six months Andy has faced the daily stress and anxiety of not knowing what his future would be.

On 21st April 2016 the dreaded brown envelope landed on our doormat. In it contained the words which, relatively simple, have changed Andy's world......."I have decided you're entitled to .....Standard rate". He was no longer deemed disabled enough to qualify for 'Enhanced rate' and therefore a Motablity car. It has broken my heart to watch my once, confident husband reduced to tears, being left feeling like, to use his words, a "useless cripple" and trying each day to shelter our children from the impact this was having on him. The DWP's assessment (with input from ATOS), among other things, was that he was able to walk 20metres but no more than 50 metres "reliably and repeatedly", not only was this incorrect, but did not take into account the complex and diverse nature of his disability. In trawling the internet and watching numerous documentaries on the subject, this element appears to be the crux of most people's assessment and seems to be the main deciding factor as to whether Enhanced or Standard rate is awarded or not.

On receiving and digesting the content of the report from ATOS, completed after his 'medical', we both had had serious concerns about the quality of the Health Professional’s report, her understanding of Andy's condition and in particular the impact on his mobility, as well as how the assessment itself was conducted. Aside from the typographical errors, there were also inconsistencies, inaccuracies and assumptions made by the assessor which we felt impacedt on the reports validity. For Andy to have to read this document was a further kick in the teeth that, despite being honest and transparent with the Health Professional, at times they did not appear to have taken any notice of what he had said and it had been merely a paper exercise.

The Government appear completely confused. In their State of the Nation Report on Poverty, Worklessness and Welfare Dependency in the UK (3rd June 2010) they wrote, " There is a high degree of persistence among claimants of many low income and out of work benefits; For example around 2.2 million people, including 1.1 million people of working age have been claiming Disability Living Allowance for over five years". This completely ignores the fact that DLA is not, nor has it ever been, a low-income or out of work benefit. "Persistent" you say......disability by its very nature is this. Andy isn't suddenly going to sprout 'normal' length legs, his Arthrogryposis multiplex congenita can not be cured, or his hip replaced satisfactorily enough to increase his mobility. He can't just get rid of his disability.

I hope she will not mind, but to quote Michelle Maher from the WOWcampaign, "Sick and disabled people are being punished for something they had no part of, caught in an ideological attack by the Tory party determined to (remove) all forms of support". These cuts are forcing disabled people to be locked away from society, a return to the old days of dependency, isolation and poverty........how totally degrading. Do we really want to live in a society where difference is not supported, where equality is no longer valued and where in order to function in society you have to be deemed perfectly able? Andy's car is not a 'luxury item'; it is part of what helps him be an equal member of society with the same opportunities as others.

Today, eight months on, and far sooner that he had been expecting, Andy received the outcome of his mandatory reconsideration. That on reassessment, he was 'disabled' enough to receive the Enhanced Rate. This should feel like a victory, a relief of months and months of stress and anxiety for him, but actually it feels almost like an anti-climax...........the point being that he should never have had to go through this hideous experience in the first place. He can, please excuse the sarcasm, 'look forward' to going through this whole process again in another five years. Andy knows how fortunate he is to have had a positive outcome to his reconsideration and is acutely aware that there are thousands of disabled people who continue to battle the system. Perhaps a reflection of his thoughtful and considerate personality, is his ongoing concern and worry for those people that have been unable to cope with this process, those who have been plunged into thousands of pounds worth of debt in order to buy a vehicle to remain mobile and those who do not have the support he has had from family and friends. Andy was very frank in admitting had the latter not been true for him, he does not know what he would have done.

I have not written this to gain sympathy for Andy's plight or to evoke pity (Andy would hate this completely!!!), I have highlighted Andy's story in order to give a face to these cuts, to try and give a glimpse of how they are affecting thousands of individuals and families with sometimes devastating consequences. Andy is a very private person and therefore it has been a big decision for him to allow me to share this snap shot of his life.

I would like to end with a somewhat sarcastic "thank you" to the Conservative government for making my husband feel more disabled than he has ever done in the last forty years of his life."

The Depravity Of The Poor Means That They Can Be Killed.

This blog doesn't get so many hits and as far as I know, it's the only one of its kind. It seems to me to be indicative of the state of counselling: talk about the latest research into the amygdala and there'll be some interest from counsellors. But the tsunami of poverty, anxiety, sheer misery that's sweeping the country doesn't seem to have the same urgency as, say, becoming a coach. Never mind that the state of the amygdala and the misery so often caused by poverty are often linked.


Never the less, a steady number of people do drop in here, and I'm grateful to you for that. It does feel as if I'm speaking into the void most of the time. But rather than join the apathy, I'm going to continue to post about the results of blank bureaucracy on the most vulnerable.


After returning a verdict of suicide at Westminster Coroner’s Court on Tuesday, August 23, Dr Fiona Wilcox said: “What I find particularly tragic in this case is this act appears to be pursued by a man who was not suffering from an illness and appears to have made a considered act in response to his inability to find employment. 

“The fact his housing benefit was about to be cut and the family would be at risk of having nowhere to live, and being ordered to give up his training course because of job centres rules, would appear to be especially poignant and tragic.” 

Or evil and catastrophic.


We can imagine some of the misery that Mr Sanderson endured before he succeeded in killing himself and some of it will have been caused by attitudes such as this:


"It is simply a fact that our social problems are increasingly connected to the depravity of the poor. If an American works hard, completes their education, gets married, and stays married, then they will rarely — very rarely — be poor. At the same time, poverty is the handmaiden of illegitimacy, divorce, ignorance, and addiction. As we have poured money into welfare, we’ve done nothing to address the behaviors that lead to poverty while doing all we can to make that poverty more comfortable and sustainable."

David French is honest enough to say what he believes which is what a great many people - by no means just Americans - believe, including some people who are poor. Which ignores poor people in stable relationships, without addictions or who may be innately more intelligent than a person with more income who has greater access to decent education or, after 16, any education at all.

 

We've heard a great deal about how the middle classes have begun to live hand to mouth but this is how people on a low income have been living forever. Mr Sanderson would not have been looking forward to becoming homeless with all the endless running around after bureaucrats that would have come with it. But I think it's fair to say that shame and humiliation would have had something to do with his sane decision to kill himself. Perhaps these feelings were amongst those that Christelle Pardo had as she held her child and jumped to her own and her sons death. Jenni Russell:

 

On websites there is a striking lack of sympathy for the Christelles of this world, and a marked resentment about the number of people demanding our collective help. 

 

It's quite clear: Christelle - and all the other women with babies who've been made homeless and destitute by the State, and all the men who are despairing at the thought of their families becoming homeless, and all the women wondering just what more they can do, since missing two meals a day still isn't making ends meet - can go to hell, and good riddance. 

 

If someone had stabbed Mr Sanderson twice in the heart, or pushed Ms Pardo and her baby out of her fifth floor flat window, or lynched a disabled man there'd be outrage from every media outlet and politicians making hay from it. But no one at all actually cares when it's done legally. Because they're poor.

Sally Goes To A DWP Assessment.

As soon as the woman comes out of the lift she said, “O my god” because there were 10 of us waiting outside the door. She rushed into the room and yanked tables around and then clicked her tongue and waved to make us hurry in. “Have you got the form? No that’s not the right form.” Even when it was. She reminded me why it isn’t so bad not having to work, she reminded me why I hated working with people like her.

Three men had been sent to the wrong college. One woman had been sent at the wrong date, it was all written down they hadn’t made the mistake but they had to come to the wrong place on the wrong day, and then had to make new arrangements. About 6 of us hadn’t been told to bring a particular bit of paper, we’d all been referred on the same day by the same person but it was our fault and so the 6 of us couldn’t register for the course that day, we had to come back with the form.

The computer assessment was alright, and then we had to go up to be told where to go next. There was another form to fill in but nowhere to sit. She was sat down, I had to stand, it reminded me of being at school. She gave me some dates and asked if I could do them. I told her about my sons appointments with the doctor and she said “You have to attend all of them.” So I asked her, “Why did you ask if I could do all the dates, why didn’t you just tell me I had to attend all the dates?” And she just said something about having to attend all the dates.

She had an assistant who was nicer, she was Japanese I think, very polite, very calm, and then this mad old bitch in charge of her.

Some of the men panicked, one had to leave, he said he felt unwell, A couple of others had never used computers so just clicked ‘next’ for 15 minutes and then left. The rest of us just got on with it. It was something I had to do, it could have been alright, it might be alright depending on what it leads on to and if the Job Centre allows me to attend all the days. I don’t know what I have to do about signing on, ‘cos you have to sign on and you have to be at this place 9-5.

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.

Loan sharks, the DWP and others who prey on vulnerable people.

Job Centre staff are being trained, at a cost of £8+m, to spot people who may be being targeted by loan sharks.

Jobcentre staff have five minutes to process each ‘customer’ and are rarely positively interested in the lives of the people they manage.

“There’s a fat pig of a man works in the Jobcentre, he comes in the pub and he only has to get slightly pissed to start in on his favorite topic, how much he hates people on benefits. ‘I took her money off her,’ he said and the landlady said, ‘What, you took her money off her and her kids just before Christmas?’ ‘Yes,’ he said. You can't say anything to him, he's a shit of a bully and if you need to go to the Jobcentre he'll make your life hell."

“This nasty tiny little woman who’s been working at the Jobcentre for fucking ever. She owns the place. Some woman kicked off because the computers had broken down and she’d been waiting for half an hour and then she walked out. This woman yelled across the office, ‘See when she came in, let’s see if she was late so we can get her.’ Bitch. You don’t want to catch her eye.”

Any intrusion by the DWP into a claimants life is perceived as a threat, because that is almost uniquely what it is. Have you done any work in the last two weeks? Do you have a boyfriend? Where does he live? Does your elderly mother who’s just moved into your already overcrowded home have savings over £2,000? These and other questions are about finding ways to reduce the amount of benefits paid to you not making sure that you’re receiving the correct ones.

Scambusters and Illegal Money Lending (IML) under the aegis of Trading Standards are already doing this important work pretty effectively resulting in loans being wiped out and imprisonment of the worst sharks (that they’ve caught.) The scheme sounds excellent and I hope it works to bring support and liberation to some of the most vulnerable people in our communities. But with the culture of contempt and abuse of power within the DWP I fear yet more money will be poured into another benefits project for no return and a quiet phasing out of the scheme, as happened with lie detectors being used when speaking with ‘customers’ on the phone.

 Nothing would please me better than to be wrong.

In the meantime, here’s some information about Elizabeth Finn Care a charity that offers money to poor people, no strings attached.

Government cannot sue for benefit overpayments

"I got a letter from the benefits saying I owed them thousands of pounds. How the hell am I going to pay that back? I'm on £90 a week!"  Darren

A coalition of anti-poverty campaigners had said many claimants were worried and frightened by the threat of legal action. Social security payments are extremely complicated and claimants often do not realise that they are being overpaid.
Campaigners argued that many had spent the money received and had no means to repay. Claimants in receipt of these benefits were likely to be on extremely low incomes, and could be vulnerable, elderly or in poor health, they said.

Empathy as an economic tool

The long-term unemployed are likely to be pushed into 4 weeks full time voluntary work or lose their entire income for 3 months. The Arch Bishop of Canterbury believes, "It can make people who start feeling vulnerable feel more vulnerable.”

Like so much of our public discourse the arguments are presented out of context and we’re encouraged to polarise, so it may be worth some analysis of this situation.

Many unemployed people already volunteer. This is recognised by the Department for Work and Pensions who limit the number of hours that an unemployed person can volunteer to 16 per week so that it doesn’t get in the way of job seeking. How this squares with 35 hours of full time voluntary work isn't addressed by the new proposal.

Those of us who are angry with people who live on benefits as a ‘lifestyle choice’ may be interested in the following and the comments afterwards.

The DWP’s own research offers some insight into unemployed people’s perception of voluntary work, one of the most important things to note is that people who are unemployed are also very bored.

http://research.dwp.gov.uk/asd/asd5/71summ.asp

For some people this boredom is a spur to action, for others it is the beginning of a decent into depression, mental illness and crime. Being unemployed means that you can’t afford to do anything much. Things that employed people on a decent wage take for granted – taking public transport to a free gallery or museum or a beautiful park – become nearly impossible for the unemployed. Normal social life becomes restricted – you can’t buy a round in the pub, or go on shopping trips or other recreational events with friends. Holidays are out of the question. Children’s normal growth becomes a crisis – a £20 pair of shoes is a quarter of a week’s income for a single parent with one child. (Who are these families with 10 children rolling around in cash in a million pound house? No actual figures are available, which suggests they’re a useful aberration for the right wing media and people who need to whip up hatred.)

Young unemployed men in particular seem to be vulnerable to depression which may have something to do with their parallel poor achievement at school. Prisons are heaving with people who simply cannot read. Please read this report:

Literacy problems in the prison population are often compounded by a wide range of emotional, learning, and/or attention deficits, including:

Child abuse and neglect, linguistic impoverishment in the childhood home, low verbal ability, uncorrected visual and hearing impairments in childhood, unskilled teaching in the junior school and the mistaken conjecture about literacy practice, closed head injury and substance misuse, low non-verbal ability, childhood hyperactivity-impulsivity and inattention, impairments in empathy and social cognition, current anxiety and depression, and – often as a default and catch-all explanation – developmental dyslexia (Rice and Brooks 2004:4).

Those unemployed people who are not already doing some kind of formal or informal voluntary work are, I propose, unlikely to be able move instantly from a long term existence of extreme boredom to a 35 hour week. When they don’t they will lose all their income. Consider what that really means. I know we’re supposed to not think for ourselves and to absorb what we’re told about feckless spongers living a life that many of us envy but it’s not true. It’s not true. When you lose benefits you lose your home. There are not enough hostel places. Begging and street or hidden homelessness or prison will be obvious outcomes. Consider the effects of that on a person. If that's too wishy washy, consider the effects on the economy.

The premise behind these proposals is not a bad one. Getting into a positive daily rhythm, increased physical activity and social interaction are good for all of us. I trust that IDS has offered this proposal based on sound empirical evidence, but it lacks understanding and it lacks empathy. No one involved in this proposal has one pair of worn out trainers and one and a half tracksuits with some ancient underwear as their entire wardrobe. What is this persons self esteem likely to be like? What about their internal locus of evaluation? If this person is the best authority on their life, what might this suggest about their life? How is their self-concept expressed? How much denial and distortion are they indulging in and how much are we?

Rowan Williams is more likely to be correct in his analysis of how increasing compulsion and surveillance may affect the long term unemployed, simply because he starts from an attempt at empathy. Empathy doesn’t have a role in pubic policy and that's one reason why we have so many long-term unemployed people.

Finnoula’s experience with the DWP

“I went to sign on like normal and the woman said ‘You’ve got an appointment at 10.30.’ No one had sent me a letter but when I went over to the other side of the office there was about 10 people all waiting to see the man for the appointment and none of us had been sent the letter.

If you’re late for an appointment you get the third degree but they can keep you waiting as long as they like and you have to keep your mouth shut. The man didn’t know what he was doing and after waiting an hour he was very nice but there was no apology and at the end he handed me a letter that said that because they were doing something with national insurance numbers my benefits would be delayed by at least a week. I didn’t know this so instead of making £60 last 7 days I should have made it last 14. Now I’ve got no money for at least a week.”



NB when people on benefits say they’ve got no money they mean they’ve got no money.