Disabled woman starved to death after benefits withdrawn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 Disabled woman let down by all the agencies and basically starved to death after benefits withdrawn.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/

This was my thought until I read about her mental health . It was far too severe for the average family to cope with and her own mother was disabled so had her own difficulties to cope with .

You’re wrong. Very wrong.

Given you are on the receiving end of the dreadful system, you seem very keen to argue the system is fine.
I just think if my mental disability doesn’t entitle me to financial support then it’s unsurprising that other mentally ill people aren’t entitled to financial support either.

People tend to think that any disability means you get benefits, and that’s not the case. You can actually be quite severely disabled and not be entitled to a penny. Your disability has to be pretty severe for you to get benefits, and they tend to disregard mental issues and look mostly at physical fitness because (as I’ve been told in the past by DWP) even if what’s inside your head isn’t working properly you can still use your hands to stack shelves.

YABU for writing a click bait title and posting sensationalist nonsense

This poor woman had money, but didn't want to spend it

All the tories on this thread giving it the “actually x y z” - vile

I'll also remind people that "unfit to work" and "entitled to PIP" are entirely different.

My ds isn't unfit to work. But gets enhanced rate for both.

PIP has a very distinct list of criteria you must be able to do.

I think it misses one important one - like shop. But other than that it's mainly around household tasks and caring for one's self.

Look at Stephen Hawkin. He could work despite needing full time care to do anything.

But this lady was clearly unfit for work or able to care for herself. She didn't have the mental capacity to make decisions about how to keep herself safe from harm. And not eating to save money is just that.

People with severe MH issues don't always act in their own best interests, its perfect reasonable to assume she had no means to access this money or if she even realised she had it.

So of course the stopping of benefits with no consideration of her health or circumstances led to her death.

Why on earth was her electricity cut off?

But this is what happens when getting people off benefits is the target, regardless of their well being, its about time the DWP and plenty of posters on here realised that many people on long term benefits will never work and are basically unemployable - we should be looking at what to with such folk, not trying to kill them off.

Some of the ignorance on this thread is astonishing. Of course mental health conditions can make someone disabled. The legal definition of disability refers to any physical or mental impairment that has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on the person's ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities.

It seems self evident that this woman was not only disabled, but that she was unfit for work due to her disability. It is disgusting that she was let down by multiple agencies who failed to put appropriate support in place

PIP is not about fitness to work.

I don’t think it’s fair to put the death solely down to benefits being cut. She was obviously too poorly to engage with them. Where was her support and who was caring for her?

How do you make out that she wasn't disabled but "had an illness"? She had a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia, frequent hospitalisations under the Mental Health Act, had attempted suicide, and had lived for months on one sandwich a day. There were multiple agencies involved in her care that failed her. All of that was mentioned in the article, so perhaps you didn't read it closely enough? The DWP taking the view that someone like that might be ill but not disabled is what led to her death - they were wrong. Too many disabled people are denied the support and help that they need, and the system is not fit for purpose.

It’s been happening a long time and the DWP have still refused to release the true figures.

www.leighday.co.uk/latest-updates/news/2021-news/investigation-reveals-150-dwp-reviews-into-deaths-or-harm-to-benefits-claimants/

You clearly don't know the system at all, you can claim either ESA or UC but not both, she was clearly not well enough to manage her benefits claims and the DWP are meant to have systems in place to help vulnerable clients, including those with schizophrenia, but they obviously didn't work here.

It looks like her PIP was stopped because she didn't fill in a form and DWP should have been liaising with her mental health team so that didn't happen but it looks like they also failed her.

The worst case I saw in welfare rights work (before UC) was a man with schizophrenia who had failed his assessment to be eligible for sickness benefits and told to sign onto JSA instead. When he tried this he was told he was too unwell to claim JSA. By this point he was being threatened with eviction and his electricity had also been turned off.

I also know of one man with schizophrenia, the day hospital noticed he was getting thinner and thinner and asked him why and it turned out he had been fit for work and had no money so his only meal had been lunch at the day hospital monday to friday.

There are so many people who fall through the cracks that stories like this don't shock me any more.

READ the article. All of it - not just the bits that you think justify your opinion.

She DID qualify for financial support - many times.

You and she are (were) two different people, with - it sounds like - different care needs. You don't get to say she wasn't in need.

1 Her savings were obviously below the £6000 threshold for benefits since they gave her a back payment. Nobody knows how much money she had in the bank.
2 It says she couldn't cope with shopping either in person or online so potatoes and pasta were useless.
3 She had no electricity in her flat so wouldn't be able to store food or cook it anyway.
4 She was psychotic which means she would likely not be able to manage to prepare herself those meals or have a regular routine anyway.

There is no savings threshold for PIP because its not means tested (and nothing to do with being fit for work)

As I said much earlier in the thread, this is a failure of Care in the Community

The issue here is that its very unlikely based on other factors in the situation that she would have engaged with the services she needed

She hadnt engaged with medication, with appointments, couldnt shop/manage money, make decisions, but yet theres no one with appointee duties for her, and she wasnt subject to any orders depriving her of her liberty. She would have been deemed as able to make bad decisions for herself

We are rightly cautious of removing peoples rights to make their own decisions but there are gaps which people fall through when they cant make their own decisions but wont engage with services which could do something about that (obviously against their wishes no doubt)

The woman clearly was disabled.

The Equality Act "defines a disabled person as a person with a disability. A person has a disability for the purposes of the Act if he or she has a physical or mental impairment and the impairment has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on his or her ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities” (S6(1)). Link

“Long term” does not have to mean permanent and the impairment does not have to be untreatable either. You will see from the guidance mental health conditions and illnesses can be classed as disabilities.

Things like this happen and will continue to happen. I'm not surprised.

This poor woman should have been sectioned for her own safety.

The article doesn’t say why her benefits were removed. It never says that the DWP thought she was fit for work. It sounds like her savings probably went above a certain threshold that triggered the removal of some of her benefits but who knows? It does seem like this was more of a mental health issue than a benefits issue.

They’ve jumped straight to headline stopping benefits giving the impression she had no money and starved because of this
she did have money there’s a lot of details missing and they’ve told 1/2 a story to sensationalise the poor woman’s death

The woman died because because of her mental health issues, not because her benefits were withdrawn. She had money. People are always going to slip through the net.

If you read the article you would know.

I know nothing about this case. But lots of people with mental health issues do not have a support worker overseeing their care. In most cases families do this. If someone has no close family they can easily slip through.

To be disabled it has to last for at least a year, or be expected to.