BEDROOM TAX related. Letter mentioning Childrens Services. AIBU to think this is appalling.

[Darkesteyes]

Apparently if a parent recieves a letter notifying them of eviction proceedings they will be considered to have caused this situation intentionally and Childrens Services will be notified.
Ive seen at least 3 copies of letters like this on Twitter over the past few days. So

twitter.com/robolollycop/status/397035649460498432/photo/1

In our area it costs £30k to home a child in care for one year. Much cheaper to keep them in their home but housing is district council (and their budget) and children's services is county council (and their budget) so evicting someone for rent arrears of a few hundred pounds comes out of a different pot to the cost of providing emergency accommodation which is approximately £30 a night. 10 nights and you've wiped out the rent arrears but as I said it's a different pot.

I wholeheartedly agree with encouraging people to live in homes which meet their minimum needs e.g. the minimum number of bedrooms necessary by the rules. The reason is that for every family who are underoccupying there is a cramped, over occupied house with a family desperate to move. What I do disagree with are the methods used to encourage people to move. And letters like this don't help.

The whole thing is a) disgusting and b) uneconomical.
My mum has a friend who is 62. She brought up her 3 dc's as a lone parent back in the day, before tax credits etc and was very poor.
When dc's were teens they got a HA house-nothing special, 3 beds, on an estate, but stable.
Later this lady took on 2 horribly abused children as foster dc, who she raised from age 6 and 9. The foster dc are in their 20's now, but, probably due to early abuse, have somewhat troubled lives. Sometimes they need to come home-to the only real mum and the only home they have ever known. Mum's friend at least has room for them, however, as she is on income support she now has to pay bedroom tax which is a massive struggle. This woman has brought up 2 very well adjusted children, and two more who regard her as their mum, but need extra support, and always will.
Why should she struggle and worry, when she has done something that is not only good for the foster dc's, but also for society in general?
Uneconomic, because, as others have pointed out, LA's are going to picik up the tab for the fallout.

I meant "3 very well adjusted children!"

u can appeal if you can prove you need the space. That's need, not it's more convenient. You wouldn't need a room for a wheelchair, I imagine you would for dialysis equipment etc.

Why the fuck should disabled people have to go through proving they are sick enough or disabled enough over and over again. Just because they dont happen to be able bodied. That IS persecution That IS discrimination.

First paragraph in my above post is copied and pasted from fifi It is NOT my view at all.

Of course Calum's list doesn't include the guy near where I live who had his ESA cut off as he was 'fit to work' - meaning he couldn't afford to travel to his five times a week dialysis appointments and so he died.

Who can work around several hours in hospital five times a week?

But no, 'fit for work'. So fit he died.

Persecuted? No doesn't happen round here...

Christ Gobby that is APPALLING And yet ive been told on this thread (and in previous ones) that i cant compare it to the persecution of disabled ppl in 1930s Germany Go figure

I thought that you only have to go for a fit to work interview in the first 13 weeks of being on ESA? The rate of benefit in those first 3 months is the same as JSA (which he would be expected to claim if fit but unemployed).

I don't think it helps to link a system of benefits to active euthanasia under Nazi Germany.

But it does have echoes of nazi propaganda. Having been healthy then become very disabled I can tell you first hand how prejudiced, nasty and irrational people are about disabled people - I'm like a one woman before and after study :(

Now I am not a 'burden on the state' although I go against all medical and ss advice by trying to keep on working... But I can see the giant hole I'd drop into if I didn't. And in spite of the massive toll on my health and life that working takes... People still assume I'm a scrounging layabout purely because I'm disabled. Nice.

I pay tax, I rent privately, I live in massively unsuitable and cramped accomodation far below what I should be able to afford as golly gosh, being disabled is actually an expensive business...

I am teetering on the edge of destruction as if I have to rely on the state I'll be screwed, for exactly the same reason other disabled people are screwed.

So it really really hurts when people puffed up with prejudice and fiction decide life is just fine and we re just whining. There is so much blame and hate directed at disabled people. I feel it everyday. Don't tell me it doesn't exist.

notthefirst the way the Nazi propaganda started was with posters saying how much disabled ppl cost and what scroungers they were.

Todays equivalent is the headlines we see in the Daily Mail/Express saying "75 % of people on Incapacity Benefit are faking it"

The figure is actually 0.3% and that includes errors.

In privatE rental of course there are no shortgages of properties, that's there business

The rent is about 75% more than council housing. So if someone moves from council housing to a private rent it will cost the tax payer more

This sort of stuff makes happy I'm in Scotland, as if we get Independence the SNP have said they they will abolish the bedroom tax

Of course disabled people need to prove that they have to have a spare room! You can't get say oh you've got a blue badge I'll take your word for it. Not everyone with a disability needs a spare room!

I've got no problem with supporting those with disabilities. What they need they can have. What you don't need you have to pay for, how is that wrong? It's the same with everyone else, it's actually equality not persecution! I bet more women then men are effected, that doesn't make it sexist!

gobby how someone who needs dialysis 5 times a week is deemed available for work I don't know.

The link to Nazis is crazy. No one is saying disabled people cost too much, just that people will only be helped with their rent to the level of their needs. Hardly holocaust stuff.

Godwin's law!

Gosh you must be so pleased to be able to shout Godwin's law.
Equality,too. Except that there is a difference between equality and justice and justice is not being done here.
If you want to know how someone requiring dialysis is deemed fit for work, try ATOS, then comeback and discuss Godwin's bloody law.

Comparing the Coalition with the Nazis shows how little one knows about either tbh.

Godwins' Law only applies when someone inappropriately cites the Nazis. In this instance it isn't inappropriate because the Nazis did demonise the disabled, and so do our current government and many sections of the media.

And several posters on this thread are coming across as distinctly lacking in compassion, logic and basic human decency.

ATOS will make mistakes as does everyone. The man talked about above was def a mistake. That doesn't mean the idea behind it is wrong. It's a new thing and there will always be teething problems. I understand that doesn't help those caught up in it now.

Many of the comments on this thread show how little some people know about anything to be fair. I include decency and empathy as two of the things some people have no idea of.

If you are genuinely concerned about how your taxes are used, instead of defending ATOS, you should be criticising them loudly for wasting your money. Their decisions are so flawed almost half of the people who are found fit for work by them have that decision overturned on appeal. If those people seek advice from the CAB or a solicitor the number of successful appeals goes up to 70%. This costs a fortune, paid for by you, the tax payer. ATOS don't care though, they have their lucrative contracts.

I am decent and empathetic. However that doesn't mean that the current welfare system doesn't need a shake up. Just because it's been that way for donkeys of years doesn't mean it's the right way.

Yes I empathise for those caught out by this and having to pay rent from limited funds. I also empathise with the family cramped in a bedsit. If those in bigger homes than needed had thought about the people that need the space they would have scaled down long before this policy was even thought of!

It's about need, not want, not convenience, not I want a room should so and so visit. If you need it, you'll be allowed it. There's already countless appeals that have been won on the grounds if rooms not big enough to class as bedrooms, rooms needed for medical equipment etc. It only takes a google.

fifi669 I'm guessing you have never had any dealings with ATOS .

ATOS making a mistake is not comparible to say, online shopping sending you some cheese when you asked for a cheesecake.

ATOS making a mistake is the difference between life or death for some people

11,000 people have died after being found 'fit for work' by ATOS in the past 2 years.

Can't have been very fit if they died, can they?

Yes, some were terminally ill. But don't tell me stress on a cardiac patient is healthy, or indeed on the severely mentally ill (see suicides).

It's not a few mistakes. It's widespread decimation of support for disabled people.

Also see Remploy closures, abolition of independent living fund etc.

Oh, and appeals to tribunal of ATOS decisions are succeeding at 42% currently.

"I am decent and empathetic. "

Yeah, and I'm Johnny Depp's pirate headgear ...

I'm leaving the thread now, I don't believe there is anything to be gained by engaging with people who refuse to accept basic fact.