Disabled woman starved to death after benefits withdrawn

[EllieBellend]

I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere but this is truly shocking. Disabled woman let down by all the agencies and basically starved to death after benefits withdrawn. Let down by everyone, the poor poor woman.

www.disabilitynewsservice.com/dwp-hounded-disabled-woman-for-years-before-her-starvation-death-papers-show/

That is shocking. And unfortunately a sign of things to come

I wish I could say the government will listen and amend things but no. Course they won’t. 100
deaths by starvation is better to them than paying out benefits they think aren’t deserved

That's awful, that poor woman. She was also failed spectacularly by mental health services.

It doesn't make sense because even if her ESA and PIP has bene stopped, she could still have claimed Universal credit. No-one is left with nothing to live on, everyone is able to claim a basic amount to live on. She may not have known what to claim but you would think that if she was mentally ill, she would have had some kind of support worker overseeing her care that could have advised her. It sounds like she has been let down by more than one department?

I think you can see that it was a far more complex case than just starving to death. She had money, but her long and complex mental health problems prevented her using it.

Tragic but you're sensationalising.

Blah blah blah, lessons learned .
Yeah, sure.

It's appalling that all the 'care' she should have been getting is so fragmented so that everyone can claim it wasn't their fault.

Could you explain what you mean?

Extremely sad and unfortunately her death is one of many caused by the Tory government.
www.disabilitynewsservice.com/secret-reviews-into-dwp-deaths-more-than-double-in-three-years/

@EllieBellend it’s not the first time.

Our minister is refusing to release the number of people who have died following the ‘loss’ of their benefits….
Of course Wo numbers, we can’t tell…. But in e has to wonder WHY they dint want to release them - aka are they so awful by any chance?

What sort of disability did she have? I’ve read the article and it sounds like she may have had an illness but was not disabled. She was obviously judged to be physically fit for work.

The lady did have money but did not want to spend it.

It’s yet another ‘fake news’ thread, I’m afraid to say.

Is she not dead then?

Her condition sounds very much like a disability from the article.

Severe paranoid schizophrenic

@Dadaya my friend was declared fit for work - she had not insignificant brain damage , was paralysed down one side , often doesn't remember what her name is and needs hoisting into her wheelchair. Thankfully her family appealed the decision.

for trotting out the bullshit line about 'judged to be fit for work' - the confirmed truth is that very high numbers of people who challenge this ruling have benefiits reinstated because the findings are absolute bollocks. People in hospital beds dying are deemed 'fit for work'.

I could not understand why people fall on the wrong side in matters like this but then I read about system justification and that made some sense to me.

Why do you support the state doing this @Dadaya ?

It says she wanted to protect her savings to buy a bungalow in Cornwall, and lived on a sandwich a day from a cafe.

She was hounded for sure, and needed more help to manage her finances and interactions. Perhaps her family could have helped in this regard.

What if she had no family? Do people with no family deserve to die?

Lol

you know that when DWP thinks you are fit fur work and you end up at tribunal their decision is reversed in70+% of the cases? Because their decision process is crap and they have targets etc….

in the mean time, before it arrives at tribunal, people have nothing to live on….
they get stressed beyond anything acceptable.
it ca go on fir months and months, sometimes a year between the first application and the final decision.

The article states that she 'did everything she could to protect the small amount of savings she had'. This story is very, very sad but this woman had a catalogue of health problems and was failed by many different services, it's not accurate to say she starved because her benefits were stopped, there's quite clearly more to it, she chose not to spend her savings on food but also had issues with the medication she was on affecting her blood sugars and not accessing the blood tests she needed to assess this - that's nothing to do with PIP being stopped. Not saying it should not have been stopped but this is pretty obviously a extremely complex case and likely exacerbated by lockdowns/COVID.

So in your world @Harridan1981 The whole system is based on the idea that family will pick up the pieces anyway….
so it doesn’t matter of the government treats disabled people as subhumans because somehow someone will step in the compensate?

It clearly states in the article that a part of her illness was believing her family were conspiring with the police to harm her. So no, I don't think her family could have helped her.

The relentless persecution of disabled people by the state is enthusiastically supported by the electorate of this country. It's what people want.

It happened to me for years as I had the audacity to care 24 hours a day for someone totally paralysed. We were investigated endlessly. HMRC and Concentrix put us through a five month tax fraud investigation at one point. I was lucky to be mentally equipped to handle this persecution, but for someone who was also mentally ill, it would have been impossible. It is mental torture and it never ends.

It's MH/Social Services or even family to blame- anyone who could have helped with her benefits claims.

Then again, if she didn't engage with services (as many people with MH problems don't fully) they'd have no way of knowing there was an issue or helping.

I agree with PP. It is tragic but you are sensationalising and focusing on only one of multiple contributory factors. At the very least, present all aspects of her case if you are looking for a proper discussion in a thread.

Care in the community

Such a success for society.