To wonder if the new PiP is just the beginning of a systematic attack on the most vulnerable in society

[madhairday]

Posting this here because this issue needs to be raised.

I've just seen the possible new Personal Independence Plan criteria and am even more terrified about the future for the disabled and chronically sick than I was before.

The criteria has narrowed dramatically from DLA, and become even more of an automised tick list suitable for the ATOS robots to fill in, condemning thousands to a life sitting indoors staring at four walls. I notice the criteria goes straight from 'unaided' to 'constant help' with no inbetween. So many will be caught in the trap of not being disabled enough, so losing DLA, not being able to get ESA because of apparently being fit for work, then losing Jobseekers due to not being able to get to the Job Centre because they have lost their mobility allowance.

Is anyone else frightened about this? How many people are going to begin to believe life is simply not worth living any more? How is this society being civilised, and looking after its weakest? What is the future for disabled children? I notice there being very little (nothing) about autism, and very little about mental health issues. This criteria seems to me a cynical and hard way to get as many people off this benefit as possible.

The future looks cold to me.

I am genuinely suprised that David Cameron (father with disabilities, child with profound and multiple disabilities) can actually lay his head on his pillow and sleep at night.

long, but worth a read as it puts across a comprehensive review of all the issues and difficulties

Anybody who hasn't and would like to, could you add your comments to this thread: What does DLA mean to you? Collecting testimonies for MPs select committee.

I haven't sent this batch of comments in yet as I was wanted to get more people (and should have bumped to get them. Sorry ).

And I know we're probably the same-old-same-old on this thread too...

PIP is NOT the beginning. The attack has already started.

In March, changes to the Work Capability Assessment, which decides whether one is ill enough to claim Employment Support Allowance, came into effect, making a test which was already unfit for purpose even more so.

Everyone on Incapacity Benefit will be transferred to ESA under these much more stringent rules. Many will be found fit for work (so called). Those who get onto ESA will have it as a contributory benefit - but after a year this will cease, and will become means tested, with savings and partner's income taken into account. I think it will affect people whose partners earn over about £12K. Jointly, they will face a sudden drop in income of nearly 5K.

I could go on. I am furious about this, and saddened.

For more info, go to the Benefits and Work website. There is a lot there to see with no subscription, including some stories in the forum. If you are being reassessed for DLA(adult) or ESA I have found it well worth subscribing.

Benefits and Work

Just to add, that your doctor's and consultants' opinions count for almost nothing in most cases, an ATOS nurse or doctor fills in a computer screen, and pleasantries such as what TV programmes you watch are taken as evidence you can do all sorts of things.

Many people are winning at tribunal (where Drs evidence is considered more), but the waiting list is months long.

Basically the threshold for Incapacity Benefit was, are you fit enough to earn a living?

The threshold for ESA seems to be, are you able to do any economic activity at all?

So people who can do very limited scope or hours of work are thrown into the general "unemployed" or "work refuser" pot.

Adding my support to those worried about cuts in funding.

I saw a lovely tag line on someone's profile, saying "A banker and a lowly clerk were sitting in a cafe with a plate of 12 biscuits. The banker took 11 of them. He turned to the clerk and said, "I'd watch out for that disabled person over there - he's trying to take your biscuit, the scrounger!".

Feels like that in society right now. The elite industry leaders can get paid £8 million a year or more 'because they're worth it', but disabled people aren't worth even a ten thousandth of that. I'm all for a free market, but ours has actually gone mad.

I've recently had my Incapacity Benefit stopped after a medical earlier this year. The DWP aren't even sticking to their own guidelines about reconsiderations and appeals so I haven't a clue what's going on. Nor did the benefits adviser I spoke to at a disability charity.

I have ME/CFS and after completing a self-management programme I was discharged from NHS services so I don't see any doctors any more. I don't even have a regular GP because there have been so many at my practice who have left and moved on. None of those left is prepared to write a report to support my claim as they don't know me well enough.

I've just spent five weeks putting together comments from the medical report (I got zero points ), trying to justify myself. Ironically the whole process has made me sicker than I've been in a long time. My benefit has been stopped and I'm now totaly reliant on DH's income as I have none of my own.

midnightservant is right about the on-screen process. Apparently the fact that I live in a two-story house is evidence that I don't have a problem with climbing stairs, and watching a film with my family means that I can sit for long periods. Neither is true - the examiners are trained to be devious and look for any information they can twist against you to justify cancelling payments. In many cases they've just outright disbelieved what I've written and told them without any justification.

The system has no empathy or tolerance and it's all about cutting money. They deliberately make the process as difficult and confusing as possible in the hope that vulnerable people will think it too much of a challenge to keep fighting and give up - unfortunately it works.

Thank you for bringing it to my attention.

At the start of the year a former employee of ours who was crippled in a riding accident had most of her benefit money stopped imo completely wrongly and unfairly. The main point against her was she had her sisters 3 bairns aged 5, 7,8, after school they are very well behaved and walk from the village school to their Aunties themselves. There was also a bad mark against her because she has a pet dog (?)

I quite arrogantly I suppose said don't worry I'll sort this out for you what a load of crap its obviously to blind Freddy you can't work anymore. So we went together to her Appeal, well it was like talking to a brick wall. I have never come across anything like it they are the biggest bunch of twisting bastards I have ever seen.

There is no fairness or common sense anymore its all tick boxes.

The 'medicals' are a joke. I've known a few people who have asked to see the reports which are littered with lies.

One woman I speak to went to an ATOS medical, the 'Dr' refused to ask questions about a clot in her leg (which severely limits how long she can stand). The Dr also disputed how far she could walk 'oh come on, you're in your 30s you must be able to do more'. The Dr specialised in cardiology - the patients disabilities were neurological and rheumatological.

Most significantly the Dr adamantly refused to conduct half of the medical - she claimed the patient could then complain that the Dr subjected her to unnecessary pain.

When my friend got the medical report it refused her ESA on the grounds that she had refused to complete the medical.... she wrote, complained about the Dr, requested a different medical which took in to account ALL her medical problems and one in which the 'Dr' would complete all of the tests. This was refused. But she was 'too sick' for JSA.

It's obscene.

TheTimeTravellersWife That's really very shocking - when I did it you offered the horse as a charitable thing and happily paid for the stabling/shoeing etc as that would have to be done regardless of whether the horse was being used for RDA. It sounds to me like the subsidies were paying horse owners to keep the horses... That seems utterly wrong.

Anyone who can afford a horse can afford to offer them without cost to RDA once a week. It's the very least you can do to give back if you can afford to be in such a situation to afford a horse. I suspect that it'll go back to that once the subsidies/funding goes.

I'm truly shocked people accepted these payments though.

Another recommendation for the Benefits and Work forum.

PIP certainly isn't the start. DS' special developmental pre-school is due to close in July. The building (a health clinic) and the toys are there, it's heated anyway, no overheads just the salaries for two staff.

Our council have been told to save money and they have chosen to take it from the pot allocated to providing essential adaptations for disabled people.

Social services have for a while been threatening parents who ask for the respite / direct payments they are entitled to with trumped-up child-protection issues...

YANBU.

I read through those new criteria the other day and was appalled.

One issue that stood out for me is that if you can do things with an aid you don't get the money. So how are you meant to pay for your aid?

DLA is organised on the basis that BEING DISABLED COSTS MONEY! Never mind what the twats on the Daily Mail website say about scroungers in their free cars, anyone with ANY experience of disability (even temporary) should realise this to be true. It makes almost every aspect of your life more expensive! If you can't use public transport and have to take a cab - that journey costs you more BECAUSE YOU ARE DISABLED. If you have a prosthetic leg that rubs against your trousers and wears them out twice as fast, you spend more money on trousers BECAUSE YOU ARE DISABLED. This is without taking into account the truly staggering extra costs that you might have to cover if, for example, you have a child with complex needs. Or if you need personal care, or an interpreter, or an adapted house or vehicle. Everything costs more. DLA is designed to defray some (a pitifully poor proportion for many people, but some) of those extra costs. Hence why it is non means-tested and paid to those in work as well.

Whoever designed this new PIP bullshit doesn't seem to understand this fundamental issue at all.

The existing system is by no means perfect but surely the way to improve it is to ensure that there more consistency about how medicals etc are conducted and who by? This is going to be a fucking joke, tick boxes administered by minimum wage drones with no training and strict 'targets'.

They just don't fucking care. And frankly I feel that David Cameron has used his poor dead son as some sort of "pity me I understand you" marketing tool to distract from what he is doing. The idea that their experience as a family was in any way representative of the average... I just don't buy it.

Let's also remember that Maria Miller, MINISTER FOR DISABLED PEOPLE, couldn't even be ARSED to PRETEND to listen to them last week.

I think that says a lot about this government's attitude to disabled people.

As someone said on another thread last week;

Maria Miller = Dolores Umbridge

And her 'attitude' was to helpfully suggest there's more people claiming DLA for drug or alcohol abuse than there are people claiming for being deaf or blind.

What really annoyed me was that a protest march in favour of more cuts, attended by around 300 people was mentioned by pretty much every paper. Only the Independent and the Guardian mentioned the Hardest Hit March as far as I saw - attended by around 7000 people I believe?

But attacks to disabled people's rights just isn't a 'sexy' topic so it barely gets mentioned and is ignored by most of the press. But if one single person had done anything untoward, if just one window had been smashed, the papers would have been screaming about the dirty rotten benefit cheats and the inevitable 'if they can protest they can work' comments would have been flooding in.

Yes and the Daily Mail-ites were making such comments about those on the march - ie they can go to the march, they can work, the dirty scroungers sitting around with Jeremy Kyle all day

You're right, it's just not a sexy topic, proved by the lack of interest even here on MN. Thanks for re-posting your thread about what DLA means to recipients, ThisIsANiceCage. I guess it's all about keeping getting this out there and into people's consciousness.

I was actually told by my former employer that I couldn't be that sick if I was capable of calling in to say I was too ill to work. My contract stipulated that for sick leave to be granted it had to be the employee who called in, not a relative/friend/parent except in extreme circumstances. My role was largely telephone based and they said 'well if you can make one phonecall...'

Because making ONE five minute phonecall whilst laid in bed, arm aching so much from the effort of holding the phone to your ear it's almost making you cry means you're perfectly ok to sit in an office for 10 hours and make phone calls. Obviously.

When I first started there I found it bizarre how my colleagues kept going on about how I was such 'a bright girl'.

Then they made the 'but you're making a phonecall now... surely you're just imagining that you're more sick than you really are and you've let your Dr convince you of the same, they're not the experts people think they are you know' comment and I realised why!

They even said 'oh, but your Dr's just a Dr... he doesn't know anything about working for this company or this industry' when my Dr and I refused to increase my working hours to the ones they wanted me to do.

And people wonder why those people with disabilities who may be able to do some work are struggling to find jobs.

This country needs to do a lot more to enable disabled people to work if they're capable of working - withdrawing their benefits isn't the answer. It's going to cause more stress and slow people's recovery down.

We're damned if we do and damned if we don't. If we don't work we're dirty rotten scroungers.

But people don't like wheelchairs and scooters, I've seen loads of 'they should get off the road' type comments from Daily mail readers et al. 'they're a menace' 'they take up loads of room on the bus'. So when we try to leave our homes to shop/go to work we're a menace. I read an article about a disabled man who crashed his adapted car 'I just don't think these people should be allowed to drive, they're not safe' (because car crashes are so rare amongst non disabled people!). An article about people with SN (specifically Dyspraxia) and the challenges they face learning to drive in the telegraph prompted 'they shouldn't be allowed on the road' comments.

So we're not allowed to use cars OR public transport to get to work if we're disabled...

Then there's articles about a problem 'caused' by a disabled person, like that stupid story about a hotel serving rotten food trying to blame the Chef with dyslexia as he 'couldn't read the labels'. Story was ridiculous, most kitchens have other systems in place (I have family who work as chefs) to make it easy to see how old food is. Also the Chef wasn't the only person in the kitchen and everyone could have seen/smelt the going off food anyway, regardless of sell by date. But it caused outraged comments 'disabled people shouldn't work... they're a risk' 'people with Dyslexia shouldn't do this kind of job... maybe they could sweep streets'

We just can't win.

What vile colleagues you had, Minty :(

Unfortunately this is too often the case. When are these people going to begin to empathise? Seemingly only when it happens to them. Otherwise, they don't in general seem to get it, or even care very much.

We're right to be worried, but we have 2 options; give in or fight back. Any anti-cuts group will be pleased to hear from you. Ours ([email protected]) just demonstrated outside Atos last week. Try Coalition of Resistance, Right to Work, Anti Cuts Protests website etc. Don't get mad - get even!

I'll have a look at those sites. I wish I'd been well enough to go to Hardest Hit but I felt so ill that day :(

I just don't get why people don't seem to care. It could happen to anyone, it happened to me. It's just the luck of the draw. People always try and blame disabled people for being disabled as well, I was asked what I'd done to trigger off my illness - nothing, it just happened, it runs in the family and I was unlucky. Then they always ask what you're doing wrong to not be getting better - again, it's incurable.

I think people like to try and assume that we've somehow brought this upon ourselves, or that we could get better if we wanted to but aren't bothering because the truth that anyone could get hit by an illness at any time and be unable to cure it causes them too much disquiet. Easier to pretend it's our fault and that it won't happen to them because they don't do X for example.

Mad - yes, they were some of the worst examples of humanity I've ever encountered. Nasty, vile, self absorbed people - had I had understanding colleagues who were nice to me and didn't cause extra stress I would have been back at work full time much much sooner. At least I'm out of there now.

Ever since the election when Gordon Brown resigned, Labour had a leadership contest which left the coalition with no opposition at all, and thus the 'sky is falling' was unchallenged. the sky is not falling. The economy/debt/deficit is no different to any time in C2Oth post WW2, other countries, etc. Look on PCS website, they're the people who work out all govt treasury figures.

Just had a letter from MAria Miller

(Go on someone tell me she is labour and anti tory or summat )

Apparently disability income will be cut after UC comes in for all but teh HR DLA recipients. Now the only difference is night care: someone on MR care may need total attention and be impossible to get care for but HR only applies to night caree needs (in fact I have one of each). I will lose mroe than I gain by enough that I finally have to apply for housing in the next 12 months.

So- teaching places in Wales cut dramatically because of 40% unemployment in NQTs.

SW MA bursary cut so i can't do it.

minimum wage jobs won;t even touch childcare and unlike NT kids nor will CTFs as Sn childcare easily costs up to 100% more IF you can find it (big IF)

Tories- the party of opportunity eh?

(BTW she talks of PIP as a fait accompli not a possibility if consultation passes, and suggest it may apply to children)

"Apparently disability income will be cut after UC comes in for all but teh HR DLA recipients"

both girls get hrc, does this mean they're safe? one is up for renewal 2015, the other 2016.

nicevideo

Define safe?

the letter says that HR claimants will not lose out in terms of the transfer to UC but also makes it clear PIP is still under consideration for kids and autistic children do not meet PIP top rate criteria

i could cry :(