Disabled woman starved to death after benefits withdrawn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 Disabled woman let down by all the agencies and basically starved to death after benefits withdrawn.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

But there’s an awful lot going on here isn’t there- which your average LA benefit assessor or DWP processor won’t be privy to.
She clearly needed an appointee in place to deal with paperwork and benefits, there should have been adult SS intervention and mental health care in place. Poor woman.

Seems she was failed SS/MH/ DWP services not communicating with each other properly. If her benefits were still the same she still may have not eaten. My DM wouldn't leave the house and wouldn't pay the bills she wasn't feeding herself properly . she has severe MH problems I had to ring the police , SS and MH services to do something. DWP did an investigation and got help for my DM she has a support worker twice a week they helped her with benefits. It's easy for people to fall through the net if family don't advocate.

Yes, I know, but an impairment lasting a year/expected to last year/exempt from the timescale doesn’t have to mean the impairment will be permanent.

@Dadaya

Severe paranoid schizophrenia is a condition that is profoundly disabling because the person suffering from it is incapable of engaging with reality a lot of the time.

It is a mental illness that affects every aspect of a person's life - interpretation of official communications, ability to engage with medical providers, ability to maintain family relationships, ability to engage with bureaucracy, and ability to hold down any sort of job.

Paranoid schizophrenics are notoriously non-compliant with medication use and their condition is usually very poorly controlled if at all. This is due to the nature of the illness. It's a vicious circle.

A lot of paranoid schizophrenics end up living on the street.

HTH, as you seem to have no knowledge or insight whatsoever about the effect of this particular mental illness.

This is a sad event and I'm sure with all the publicity rules and support issues will be looked at but why is someone to blame. Pretty nasty really, the family could have had decades or worry and difficulties, DWP follow the rules or risk losing their jobs, GP, SS - she probably wasn't a great patient - but should the GP etc have let others wait longer for their appointments while more time and effort was spent on this patient.
Can't we just say it's very sad without blaming someone (never us).

PIP isn't based on income. There's also a chance (because you can get contributions based too, which don't take savings into account) her ESA wasn't income based either.

@Hyacinth2 do you think everyone has family ready to support them?

@Dadaya she had schizophrenia. Some people respond to treatment better than others but schizophrenia is a permanent life long condition.

This. Disability is legally defined in this country, and from the information in the article she fell easily within that definition. @Dadaya 's implication that the fact something can be treated with medication means it isn't a disability is also incorrect. It's well established law that the effects of medication are discounted when deciding if something is a disability - so if you have a disability and ongoing medication completely removes all your symptoms, legally you are still deemed disabled. A really ignorant comment from @Dadaya , both about the law and the huge impact mental illnesses can have.

Its also well established and specifically stated in the Equality Act that mental health conditions are capable of being disabilities. Its sad that 12 years on from that becoming law there are still people trying to argue otherwise.

It is so frustrating to hear of this sort of thing happening to people who are having to deal with enough already, with regards to their medical conditions. The system is too rigid. I think that they sometimes forget that they are dealing with vulnerable people.

@mathanxiety
Severe paranoid schizophrenia is a condition that is profoundly disabling because the person suffering from it is incapable of engaging with reality a lot of the time.
It is a mental illness that affects every aspect of a person's life - interpretation of official communications, ability to engage with medical providers, ability to maintain family relationships, ability to engage with bureaucracy, and ability to hold down any sort of job.
Paranoid schizophrenics are notoriously non-compliant with medication use and their condition is usually very poorly controlled if at all. This is due to the nature of the illness. It's a vicious circle.

I have had experience of this condition with 2 people I knew personally. It can be controlled with medication, but not cured.
The problem is that the persons I knew would take their medication for so long then decide that, because they felt better, the didn't need it any more. So they stopped taking it. This lead to psychotic breakdowns requiring them to be hospitalised in secure units for their own protection.

So, this condition is notoriously difficult to treat. In persons with schizophrenia, antipsychotic medications often provide dramatic symptomatic relief for hallucinations and delusions, and improvement for disorganized thoughts and behaviour. However, because they are associated with a multitude of adverse effects, some of which are medically serious and many of which affect patient attitudes toward treatment, discussions about these medications are often dominated by their side effects rather than their benefits.

Well that's very sad of course, but with the best will in the world unnecessary deaths can't always be avoided. Especially when poor MH is involved as the person concerned makes bad decisions.

It seems that not only was her claim for ESA and PIP rejected but also her family and friends had rejected her - the article states she was found dead weeks later in her flat. I'm not sure that her mother who had been cut off by her daughter in September, tried to contact her in October to let her know the grandma died can have really tried that hard. I'm assuming here the mother couldn't travel, but surely you'd contact the police immediately on no reply? Or send another relative or someone else round? Her body wasn't found until 6 weeks later, in November, by her new care worker who visited twice and got no reply and was worried so contacted the police.

I agree with @Skolo that schizophrenia is a permanent life long condition, having recently assisted a friend with it to claim PIP - she has been awarded it for the rest of her working life (not that she can work) until she gets her pension.
FWIW my friend has family who can't travel but I can (although I'm 3 hours+ away), we also have numerous contacts eg neighbours, nearby shopkeepers who would know if she's been in for milk/bread etc, etc, so a non answer would likely trigger a call to one of those to find out what's happened within a few hours. Or vice versa - if she'd not been in to the local shop for a day or two then the family would likely get a call.

While I agree she was failed massively, the authorities can't know what goes on behind closed doors. Maybe she hadn't reached out and they just weren't aware how she was suffering.
She resisted help on occasions from her mother so perhaps she resisted other help too.
Tragedy but we don't know everything about this lady's situation to say exactly who's to blame and why.

Really? Several of my patients have committed suicide over the last few years after their PIP was taken away. Some people are too ill to deal with the constant paperwork involved or do not understand it.
The situation is shocking.

Not everyone has supportive family. And someone this ill often does not have any friends. People this ill should not be reliant on family or the existence of friends.

I am the carer of a family member with schizophrenia. He has not had PIP when really ill as he could not cope with the process so did not engage.
But he has me so has been okayish.

Absolutely.

And that article says a lot of things that seem to just be inserted to inspire pity? Like - they put her in sheltered housing near a dual carriageway? And she had spent extended periods of time living rough in Siberia amongst other places?

I'm very sorry she died, and I'm sure the loss of benefits didn't help, but she clearly had extremely severe schizophrenia and not only wasn't being supported enough but also wasn't engaging with the support she did have. The council sending a letter because of late council tax payment is neither here nor there, in fact there's a lot in that article I'm not really sure why is included.

This.

The title of this thread is misleading. The woman did not die because she had no money and thus, no food, so she starved to death. This woman tragically died due to underfunded and poorly resourced health and social care services failing her and failing to work collaboratively. The fact there will be a SAR just goes to show that this is an unhelpful dig at the DWP. For what it’s worth, I think the DWP (as an organisation) is not fit for purpose and utterly useless in many, many ways but they did not significantly contribute to the death of this woman.

She was failed by mental health services, not starved by the DWP. She had money, but couldn’t spend it.

When I worked in a role dealing with the public one of the most difficult things was trying to help service users with high levels of needs who were considered to have capacity and lived alone, left to their own devices. This situation must happen often. Not everyone can cope with living independently no matter how much money they are given.

But if people have capacity and choose to do risky things there's nothing that can be done about it if they refuse help and advice - you can't force them.

Capacity level is set so high that it means people with severe mental illness without supportive family members are often left to flounder themselves.