AIBU to think that those with disabilities are being hit particularly hard by the cuts ?p

[BigChocFrenzy]

Just 3 of many grim reports:

Because her care package was slashed, Rachel has to sleep some nights in her wheelchair, in pain, cannot get enough to eat and was diagnosed as malnourished.
Is the aim to kill her off, to save money ?

Luke who had schizophrenia and was unable to perform many simple daily tasks, committed suicide after his incapacity benefit was removed and his housing benefit cut.
Well that worked. He's dead now. No more costs.

Nick who has advanced MS cannot walk, feed himself or talk. The DWP said he would lose his benefits if he did not attend an interview.
Since he can only communicate by blinking, he was saved by having a partner who could phone on his behalf.
Curses, the Master Plan was foiled there.
Never mind, the DWP will try again later. He's too expensive to live.

How did we come to this ?
All in our name ?

Incidentally, the forms have so pissed me off I am now going to get my (severly hearing impaired but still works for a living) husband to apply as well. Just to spite the fuckers.

"I suspect the new system would be easier to defraud than the old one was, and that's the brutal truth."

so agree we got so many back up statements from professionals when applying for DLA. I live in dread of PIP as I have no idea how they will assess her. do they allow a carer in? ( I imagine dd will either kick off big time or ignore them) thats even if we can access the building with a wheelchair.

"I suspect the new system would be easier to defraud than the old one was, and that's the brutal truth."

sorry being thick here i dont understand that statement

Dbro is a tetraplegic. Because of how it came about, he is very fortunate compared to lots of disabled people. I am sooo thankful that is the case but feel awful for people not so "lucky". The only thing he's had to worry about lately is the knife hanging over Access To Work funding, which currently allows him to work four days a week. Of course, should it get chopped at any point, he'd then be unable to work and require more financial support from the government, which seems silly. (Although I daresay his excellent colleagues would be happy to help him with things like eating and drinking during the day, but that's not fair on them and its embarrassing for him to have to ask.)

seasidesally because before you had to get countless back up statemants from professionals.

Is was estimated that only 3% of DLA claims were fraud cases. PIP has been brought in purely to cut people's benefits.
If anyone needs help filling in a pip form contact your local disability centre or if you don't know of one the citizens advice buro and they can point you in the direction of somewhere who can help you fill it in and give you guidance

seaside Sorry for not being clear. My point was, that nder the old system you had to have reams of evidence from VERY highly qualified people, so this tory idea that the system was full of scroungers and spongers and people swinging the lead - was actually nonsense. Of course, there were people who played the system but such a tiny minority that attacking genuinely disabled people to knock off the fraudsters, is like taking a sledgehammer to a walnut.

Under the new system, you are not assessed by a person with any knowledge of expertise in your particular disability. A national charity told me on their phoneline that the government is stuggling to recruit people at all, in some parts of the UK, to do the face to face interviews.

Interviews under the new system can be done by people like physiotherapists - and the 'training' is a few weeks, as all they are doing is administering the same questions over and over, and ticking boxes.

To get his DLA, my son had lots of in depth info from what happened to be well known consultants, top experts in their field, and he was diagnosed and had reports from a very good specialist clinic.

To get this he will have to be grilled about what he can't do (thus wrecking the self esteem we spent years building painstakingly) by a person with no qualifications in his particular disability, who has a much lower level of knowledge, presumably, than all those people whose evidence got the DLA in the first place.

Now if I wanted to defraud one system (and I don't but if I did...) which would be easier to convince I had autism? A ticking boxes exercise administered by someone who's been on a brief course? Or the top paediatric consultant in the field with years of experience, who has run a battery of tests on me?

And I say all this because one of the (lying) justifications for bringing in the new system was to catch people who were lying.

Also I think it's disgusting that Ian Duncan smith is saying most disabled people can work but is then going on about cutting access to work

The new assessments are awful and the people doing them are basically following a computer system. 75% of decisions made by them not to give benefits or saying someone is fit for work are overturned. The cost in having such an ineffective system basically means the PIP system is taking money off people but due to appeal costs is not saving any money.

Dolly that is good advice. I would have felt perfectly capable of filling in the old (100 odd pages, at some points in its history) DLA forms. And probably can do these on my own (I am my son's appointee). But I have been advised to go to a local disability centre because if they help you fill in the forms, and then your benefit is turned down, they will help you deal with an appeal (and many if not most appeals are successful, I'm told).

Of course all this begs the question - how much public money is being wasted on disabled people who are patently, obviously, disabled, having to go to appeal?

I also wonder about the brutal effect on the Motability company. The criteria for help with getting about basically now rule out the vast majority of folk who previously got a Motability car. Motability were going for over 30 years. That will be a lot of jobs gone - in car dealerships and across the board. Not that the government give a flying feck.

Motability had to hastily work out a transitional scheme to help the (millions?) of people affected.

Depending on what evidence you both provide when you fill in the PIP form, your son might not have to do any face to face assessments.

And I totally agree how can someone you have never met assess you better then doctors that are experts in their field.

I still don't get how the word of a random box ticker at ATOS can override the medical evidence of a hospital consultant or doctor. It sounds like a costly and dangerous project but Scameron and his ilk don't care or realise that disabled people have the right to a decent quality of life.

Yep they will support you right through the process including appeals. They can not put words in your mouth but they can ask questions about how your disability affects you that you may not have thought of. We currently have a months waiting list as demand is so high but we also get I touch with the DWP and arrange extensions so people are not penalised.'

Incidentally most disability centres are not given any funding to help people fill in forms. Our advice service which deals with the forms has only one paid member of staff, all the rest are volunteers giving up their own time. Which means we are always out fundraising.

ATOS- don't give ATOS

It's fair enough suggesting disabled people can work. Many do. But if I may suggest the following problems...

1. This can really only applies to physical disabilities which limit mobility without causing chronic pain.
2. It relies on people having qualifications or training in a field where their restricted mobility is not a problem.
3. It requires work places to adapt and in some cases remodel to make their environment appropriate.

I don't see these problems being solved any time soon.

Incidentally, working is nothing to do with DLA. It was not an 'unemployment' benefit, so far as I recall (only had experience with people applying for it for their kids as I too used to work as a volunteer on a helpline where a lot of our queries were to do with DLA).

Having looked at the new criteria, I think it will be a push for anyone with hearing difficulties to get anything (they even got the mobility component on DLA, sometimes) but I will be getting my hearing impaired husband to apply anyway. Just because he should. Maybe now is the time to mobilise all those working but never-claimed-DLA folk like my husband to log-jam the system with their new applications for PIP as well. If Cameron thinks he can save money by robbing my disabled son - he can damn well pay it back by paying out people like my husband who probably could have claimed, and never did.

And let's not even go there that private companies like ATOS and CAPITA are taking public money - which we will never see again - to (poorly) adminster these amateurish 'tests'.

Wh should shareholders profit from my son's disabilities? Why is that ethical, but paying him enough money for him to go about his daily life, isn't..?

I do genuinely wonder how people who voted tory sleep at night.

I have been quite fortunate with my PIP and ESA reassessments and been awarded the enhanced rate for PIP and am in the support group for ESA. I do have quite high needs and I'm in regular contact with my consultant, so I had a lot of evidence and professional support behind me. I know many others who haven't been able to get the right evidence or advocacy who have had theirs cut though. It's a cruel new system.

For those worrying about transferring to PIP, I would say to get yourself educated as much as you can, there are a lot of disability forums and FB groups which discuss how PIP is assessed and how to present your case most effectively. I found it almost a full time job to keep up with it all really (and I'm one of those disabled who simply can't manage to work, because as a pp says, not all disabled people can).

I've been advised not to even tell my son about it, until we get a date for a face to face interview. And do everything in my power to avoid one and have a paper-only application but I am told, they are almost unheard of.

My son's biggest flashpoint is money - I have no idea how I will even get him to go to the interview, if it happens. The whole thing is ignorant and insensitive. I spent his entire lifetime trying to boost his confidence and the only way he is now going to keep even a fraction of his money, will be for me to rip him to shreds and contradict him at every turn - as he is in deep denial like many autistic young folk.

scarlets - 'benefits should be higher for the genuinely disabled'

Can you explain what you mean by genuinely disabled?

Joffrey My son, 19, also ASD with also OCD, Tourette's and ADHD, moved from DLA to PIP last year. I was dreading him having to go for interview, but as his DWP appointee I had help filling in the forms (and like you I'd had years of experience filling in DLA forms) and he didn't have to go for interview at all. So it can be done. I think that it is probably luck of the draw, but if you get help with the forms and put absolutely everything you can down about the difficulties he faces, you may be lucky. My son's issue is that he finds talking to people, especially official people, very difficult and that he'd need someone with him to help him understand what they're saying and to help him say what he wants. And he has little clue about money. Or officialdom (letters) etc. Admittedly, it was only awarded for 2 years (because you know how it is, his ASD will probably be gone by then... , and I by no means believe he won't get shafted at some point in the future - but just wanted to say it can go ok.

Having said all that, I'm still deeply worried for his future, when he doesn't have me to fight his corner for him. I am genuinely bewildered by the complete disregard the government has for people with disabilities - especially as Cameron had a son with disabilities, I thought there would be some compassion towards people reliant on help to survive. Yet IDS gets away with whatever he likes with no questions asked.