So they want to replace PIP/DLA money with vouchers?

[moneyinthebinthatsmrtim]

I don't understand it. It is really worrying me.

This payment helps pay for so many things. I doubt these vouchers would cover that, or give the freedom to shop or buy from where you want or need to.

I included DLA because it's really just the child's version of PIP. Eventually, my profoundly disabled child will be an adult and will have to be on PIP

Is there really any truth in this? I can't see any articles directly quoting Labour or Conservative. I might just be in such a worry that I have missed that bit

Apologies if there is another thread on this too. I am happy to get this one taken off if that's the case

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/pip-disability-benefits-plan-rishi-government-critics-b2537209.html

Maybe you should read my posts properly?

My mum takes me to hospital - that costs money. She'll be late to work next week because of an appointment. She has to take time off work for my appointments.

It costs her in petrol too.

People find things difficult because billion pound companies don't pay their fair share of taxes and get away with paying wages so low the working class have no choice but to top up with benefits.

But keep focusing your frustrations on the real bad guys: the disabled person getting £500/month.

There is another thread on this, where the OP asked people to look at the Gov consultation and respond:

https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/modernising-support-for-independent-living-the-health-and-disability-green-paper/modernising-support-for-independent-living-the-health-and-disability-green-paper

I haven't read it in full, but it seems they've looked at how a couple of other countries manage similar payments and are asking if that could work here e.g. giving you a voucher to choose necessary items (like a wheelchair) from a catalogue, or asking you to pay for things up front and claim the cost back by sumitting receipts.

Personally, I don't think either option is fair or reasonable - it denies those who know what they need the choice of obtaining what is best for them in their circumstances and, let's face it, any catalogue is just going to be full of potentially useless shite supplied by the best mates of those in power at the time. Asking people to submit receipts adds administrative costs to an already poorly administered system and makes a huge assumption that people actually have the cash to pay for their needs upfront. Given the very real barriers disabled people face to employment, I suspect people will go without even more than they do now.

Which is based on evidence of explicit fraud, which can't be alledged as the people claiming PIP are claiming it based on functional ability on how they are 'the majority of the time' - though many advice forums advise to only document or talk about 'worst days' and requires no diagnosis, but is more likely to be awarded if there is one.

It's not like other benefits where they can say 'well you're claiming as a single Mum but your BF spends this many nights at your house' or 'you're claiming ESA because of a back injury but we saw you playing golf'. With PIP, the claimant can say ' yes, I played golf that day because I was having a good day, most of the time, I can't, and my PIP application was based on most of the time'.

So no-one can say 'you're not entitled to it' because they way it works is people are entitled to it if they give enough evidence about their worst days or the majority of their days and if they persist through mandatory reconsiderations, appeals and tribunals, they'll usually get an award. And there are numerous websites and forums advising people exactly how to do that with the best chance of success.

But that doesn't take into account, all the people who have 'worst days' very rarely, or it really isn't how they function 'the majority of the time' and the people with changeable conditions who are making no effort at all to change those conditions, or recover or even improve, because there's no incentive for them to do that because they're receiving PIP.

It's an in-work benefit so you can claim if working and that's correct and should happen.

But it's also a gateway benefit where receiving it also gives top-up payments to numerous other state benefits.

To be honest I'm baffled by how some people get it. Then again I'm also baffled by how some people don't get an award. It often seems very random even when it's meant to be properly scored on a points system and backed up by medical evidence. I understand some conditions are variable though so we perhaps don't always see the full picture. My friends mum is mid fifties, gets it for COPD but there's constant pictures of her on Facebook singing away at gigs, managing foreign travel on public transport abroad ( no wheelchair, mobility aids etc). so seemingly just leading a normal life but there must have been some degree of breathlessness or limitations to get it backed up by medical evidence and I guess we perhaps don't see the bad days and it's too easy to judge without seeing the full picture? Another ex colleagues husband hasn't worked in years, on PIP and ESA but can trail round on European holidays sightseeing and look after his multiple young grandkids whilst his daughter works. So yes I just don't get it sometimes ! There are others though who get turned down and I just think how can that be possible when they just have such awful problems - one guy I was helping had such bad ulcerative colitis, in constant pain, spent half his life on the toilet passing blood and kept getting turned down again and again. he couldn't live his life at all ! There just sometimes doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason as to who gets awarded and who doesn't. It's based on a very narrow set of criteria .I honestly think the whole assessment process needs to change, although please don't ask me what the answer would be !

any catalogue is just going to be full of potentially useless shite supplied by the best mates of those in power at the time

Yup, and it won't contain a freezer or a Huel subscription or money off pre-sliced veg or taxi vouchers or vouchers to go to the pricey single-chair hair salon where the stylist turns the radio off and dims the lights when I walk in through the door because we've built a relationship in which he understands my autistic sensory needs.

And those examples are just mine. Other disabled people will have lists of things they need that aren't in any catalogue.

We are the experts in managing our own lives and treating us as anything else is ableist, infantalising, and dehumanising.

The problem with a catalogue is some of us (as I have multiple conditions) find certain aids aren't overly helpful. And it's usually the more expensive ones that help.

You and the poster you are replying to don't see the days when someone is in bed or laid up on the sofa because the person is in the house, out of sight.

My colleagues don't see my bad days because I mask heavily and then spend the weekends recovering or else am off sick, so they don't see how bad my bad days are. They don't see the panic attacks in the supermarket. They don't see me crying multiple times per day because, when I'm that ill, I'm off sick.

DLA/PIP doesn’t always give access to other state benefits. It depends on other income.

But, yet again, with a combination of non-truths, inflammatory rhetoric etc, the government have managed to scapegoat a group of people.🙄

Will these vouchers also go towards people who have sky high electricity bills, due to running life saving, medical equipment, or charging wheelchairs etc. How would this all work, for the numerous conditions that people suffer from. This is just another tinpot idea, from a failing Government, that has failed its people, left, right, and center, and are just looking to shift the focus from themselves, onto others less able to fight back, against the tide of unfair public scrutiny.

DLA/PIP doesn’t always give access to other state benefits. It depends on other income.

Correct. In my household, we have a member entitled to DLA and in our situation it acts as a gateway to precisely nothing else. It's just plain DLA.

There's also the problem that if you leave people whose issues are around addiction without benefits, it means that they have no money. They're not suddenly going to not be addicted, rehab places cost a fortune and are only very rarely funded, so watch and see what cutting these people off financially will do to the crime rate.

Which is why we shouldn't be looking at the usual punitive financial sanctions but at building a robust system of care and prevention - which will save an absolute bloody fortune in the long term, but will cost a lot in the short term.

Yeah, i think you're part of the problem that the Government needs to address to be honest. But i'm sure some Mnetters will back you up as to how you need the tax-payer to pay for your expensive meal subscriptions and expensive bespoke hair-do when many working people are struggling to put Iceland priced food on the table.

Yeah, i think you're part of the problem that the Government needs to address to be honest. But i'm sure some Mnetters will back you up as to how you need the tax-payer to pay for your expensive meal subscriptions and expensive bespoke hair-do when many working people are struggling to put Iceland priced food on the table.

Tell me you don't understand what being disabled can mean without saying 'I don't know what being disabled can mean' The poster who posted this example WORKS.

Fair comment.

Have you always been so nasty? Reported.

God help us if we have to provide receipts and expenses for those we care for. The admin is already monstrous, the day to day care exhausting, and the education and/or medical appointments arduous. The lived experience is really not what you think.

The issue is that things that are necessities for disabled people are marketed and priced as luxuries for non-disabled people. Then, when disabled people use them because they need to, they're treated as if they're taking the mick because "surely nobody really needs that". And they cost more because, again, non-disabled people pay for them at a luxury price point.

Some more examples:
A cleaner
Straws
Ready meals
Pre-prepared ingredients and meal-prep services eg HelloFresh, Gousto
Taxis
Voice controlled lights

And some things that are luxuries for both disabled and non-disabled people, but the disability version costs more. For example, the ability to go on a hike (you know, get out in nature for your mental health blablabla). Before, I could spend a few hundred pounds on a very nice pair of hiking boots. Or fifty quid on a cheap pair. Now, an all-terrain wheelchair would run into the tens of thousands, so I can't go hiking.

Tell me you didn't read my posts without telling me you didn't read my posts:

• Huel is not expensive.
• I have depression with a history of cutting myself to self-harm and a long-standing wrist injury that prevents me from slicing anything harder than a potato, so I need to avoid using kitchen knives.
• My haircut is very simple, all one length. I'm paying for the quietness afforded by a single-chair salon, not a fancy cut.
• If you'd read my earlier posts, you'd have seen that I don't actually claim PIP. I'm on a high enough paycheck to be able to look at the dehumanising PIP process and decide that I can afford to opt out of it. Many other disabled people don't have that luxury and I am absolutely here to fight their corner. My list is an example of how being disabled is more expensive in ways that non-disabled people don't understand.

There are autistic children who have to go to sensory hairdressers because they cannot tolerate a standard noisy bright salon. Those kids grow into adults who still have those sensory needs.

With cannabis and schizophrenia there's been a lot of debate about the chicken and egg question.

https://www.acsh.org/news/2023/05/22/which-came-first-cannabis-or-schizophrenia-17077

There can be an increased risk of developing schizophrenia if using cannabis but that's particularly because the concentration of the main psychoactive component of cannabis, THC, has steadily increased since the 60s

However studies have found that the gate swings both ways – that is, schizophrenia, in this instance, is a gateway to substance abuse. A diagnosis of schizophrenia was positively associated with the risk of developing substance abuse … primarily associated with an increased risk of abuse of cannabis, alcohol, stimulants and other substances

Might be worth noting that schizophrenia impairs the way you think, make decisions, handle emotions, and interact with reality.

https://www.webmd.com/schizophrenia/schizophrenia-marijuana-link

Interestingly, there's some evidence that medicinal cannabis can have a therapeutic effect. So perhaps it would be helpful to explore widening trials and provision of that.

Although the marijuana ingredient THC is thought to trigger psychosis, another component, cannabidiol (CBD), seems to fight it. In one study, people with schizophrenia who were treated with CBD saw their symptoms improve and had fewer side effects than those who took traditional antipsychotic medications

Another way to demean the vulnerable and poor.
Who would run the voucher system..let me guess one of their mates.
Fat backhander when no longer an MP.
Welcome old boy..here's a seat on the board.

Thanks I've just completed this.

Some of the questions are a dead giveaway to the proposed direction of travel - i.e. to dump the 'burden' on Local Authorities and NHS trusts, without any mention of any funding or organisational capacity.

Could a mobile hairdresser not do the same thing in a person's own home?

things that are necessities for disabled people are marketed and priced as luxuries for non-disabled people

"Lazy Garlic"! For me, it would be more appropriately branded as "Accessible Garlic"[1] because I don't have use both hands to crush the garlic if I buy "Lazy Garlic" or garlic paste. But non-disabled people wouldn't buy it if it was marketed as being for disabled people, and then it wouldn't sell in enough volume to be a viable product. So it's branded as "lazy", a luxury product, even though for me it's not lazy at all.

[1]: It's only even accessible because I can use a bench vice to hold the square jar, allowing me to use both hands to remove the lid.

I'm talking about people who have no other income, because their lives have always been based on claiming from the state.

I'm not scapegoating anyone. I know the people that are benefitting from it and shouldn't be.

The ' socially anxious' who are too anxious to work or look for work but meet someone from Tinder every week or go to festivals. The late teenager who couldn't go to school for several years and now can't get a job because she doesn't like loud, busy environments or bright lights..but is part of a theatre group with ya'know, all the bright lights and busyness of the theatre.

The families with parents in their late 50s that have never worked because they were in and out of prison and now their kids in their 30s have never worked a day in their lives because they are on benefits and prioritised for social housing etc because they use drugs, commit crimes, are abusive male partners, have kids they don't care for or provide for and are sometimes taken into care.

All receiving PIP for 'mental health' reasons which aren't at all helped by their drug use, drug-dealing, criminal activity and the fact they wouldn't accept or want any kind of MH support unless it's approaching PIP renewal so they get 'emotionally dysregulated' and cause a crisis which they can then document.

Or the extremely abusive sex offender, who has been housed, not expected to get a job and in receipt of huge amounts of public funds for 10 years so far including PIP because he has PTSD.

He does have PTSD because the local community beat him up when they found out he was sexually abusing his learning disabled 'girlfriend' DC. Which was a pattern of his.

He has no interest at all in engaging in any kind of therapy because that would require him acknowledging his abuse and criminal offences.

Smokes a lot of weed and, can afford a lot of takeaways and goes on holiday frequently though. While bitching about not having enough money to buy all the things he wants.

That doesn't detract from the fact most claimants should be supported. But the current PIP system is awarding people who should be expected to at least attempt to evidence what PIP is for, or aim for recovery or work. Or even community service of some kind i'd support.