To Think the Tories Are Actually At War With Disabled People?

[JoffreyBaratheon]

I've been mired in the grim process of my son's DLA being changed to the new benefit, PIP. During this time, I have heard the stories of other disabled people and their loved ones. This may make me biased. Or human.

On every forum I have been on for help, can see that thousand of other disabled people, their carers, appointees and loved ones are being pretty well tortured by the vicious cuts and the new, brutal system being forced into place.

Benefits advisers and people at charities in the front line trying to support people like us also seem to report they feel like the disabled are under attack.

Now I will never understand why the most disadvantaged people in society are being forced to pay for the mistakes of bankers and rich people. Losing DLA will be a blow to our family - most of all my son but all of us - we won't recover from. To multi millionaires like Campbell, no doubt it's back pocket change so they are incapable of understanding what they are doing to ordinary people.

The past few months going through this hell, I've often felt like we might as well cut to the chase, sew the lack triangle on our clothes, and wait for the work camp to open. And I don't say that lightly, as someone whose grandad was present during the liberation of Belsen. (Wasn't it another tory - Gove - who said historians got it wrong and the British were donkeys led by lions, or words to that effect - so we know the contempt in which we are held by these chinless wonders already).

AIBU to think that people like Cameron and IDS are targeting disabled people and their carers, specifically?

I'm disabled, have been for years and disagree with your title.

OneTired we also have no idea what is going to happen. We already know we will lose the Motability car. So will thousands of others.

I have heard my son is getting a paper based review which is very rare. But I still don't trust or believe them. We're waiting for the decision maker now. I have heard (fro a disabled group's benefits adviser who sees the DLA to PIP process day in day out) that the new system is so appalling because the assessors are so badly trained, that it has become totally erratic and unpredictable. As a result people who she thinks don't have a prayer get enhanced PIP on both counts and people who are severely disabled are getting turned down flat, losing their car and their benefits.

I read that around 60% plus of Mandatory reconsiderations/appeals are won which also gives the clue that the PIP system is failing if it is making so many poor decisions first time round.

Apparently the random 'health care professionals' who are their assessors have only 21 days' training. In theory my son could have had a face to face interview with, say, a physiotherapist who had never met an autistic person in their entire life and had just a few days' training! Yet he got DLA on the word of top consultants - and several of them.

This alone tells us is it a useless system.

I lost a career many years ago to be my son's carer so the whole family live on my husband's minimum wage job. I have no clue how we will survive if our son loses the DLA. No clue. If tax credits had gone, like the tories wanted, I would already be homeless. I have no doubt.

Meanwhile their golf club mates continue to live totally unaffected by the financial crash that mysteriously those of us at the bottom of the heap, have to pay for, and pay for alone.

The worst thing about the tory system, for me, is the inbuilt assumption of guilt before proven innocent. Surely that's arse about tit? They are trying to actively knock people off disability benefits, starting from the assumption they are all scrounging liars.

It's got nothing to do with that. Tories hate anything to do with "the state" with a vengeance. (Except when it suits them). That's why anyone who has a dependency on the state is scum of the earth. It's an ideological stance, borne of a view that anyone with a few quid is Gods Chosen. In a party of 10 sharing a meal, the Tories are the one who will bleat on that they didn't have the whatever so why should they pay £/10 ?". You don't have to travel very far in cyberspace to find whole threads where people say "why should I pay whatever, as I don't have children ?"

Remember the ludicrous reaction of some USians to the idea of free healthcare ? That's naked Toryism - a horror that the state might supplant the opportunities for the privateer.

So you haven't actually been turned down then you're just going on hearsay for now?

Fill out the form using the points guide to help, include any and all supporting documents (copies not originals, as they tend to disappear) and keep copies of what you've written. Request a home based assessment and if you don't get it granted you have more than reasonable grounds for appeal if you can evidence that your son meets on x y and z

Caughtup, I don't know what your experience of disability or being a carer actually is, or whether you have been involved in applying for these benefits or not, but your posts come across as minimising at best, condescending at worst and I'm not sure if that is your intention or not.

I care for someone with a severe disability and I filled in DLA last year and was given a lifetime award for the person concerned. We were visited in October to make sure this person couldn't handle their own money. In December I had to apply to get pip and I'm still waiting to hear even though I was only given 14 days to fill it in as it occurred at the same time as the Christmas post. I really shouldn't have to keep doing this. It takes about 4 days to fill it out, gather letters, get it photocopied and posted. Yet I can't not claim it as it would affect the social care package too

Did anyone watch PMQs today? Dave basically admitted it was to cut the amount of people receiving it.

I hate this Govt with a passion I never knew was possible. Hateful bastards all of them with their £7k pay rise while shitting on the poorest as much as possible. And even worse they are doing so safe in the knowledge that most people don't care any more than this Govt does.

YANBU OP...except I don't see it as a war. It is just sheer hate of anyone in poverty or need.

Missed that Owllady - but I did hear the minister or one of his minions on Radio 4 last week saying precisely the opposite, and totally denying it was a cynical cost cutting exercise. (I didn't catch the start of the interview so don't know who he was but he sounded like a vicious, smarmy get actually twisting the words of the interviewer at one point, then laughing about it).

So interesting that only days later they are now admitting it.

I thought I could never find another government as repellent as Thatcher's. But these Tory Boys actually out-do her in callousness.

CaughtUp, it's all done. I've been told we could hear in days - or months.

I actually did far more than you suggest as I went to a local disability group who have an adviser whose job it is to fill in these forms. I did the whole thing with her help and what an insight it was into their mindset.

If my son manages to claw back even a fraction of what he was originally awarded 'for life' then it will be entirely down to the volunteers and employee of a local charity. They tell me it is truly horrific, what they are seeing.

Still, you can see far more with your head firmly in the sand, eh?

Joffrey I really hope it comes through for you the waiting can be so stressful and upsetting. I know what you mean about working tax though I think they're going to try to sneak it through again anyway. I really hope things turn out for you.
I wish we could do something to take action against these cuts apart from signing petitions and getting in touch with our local MP's.

Lurking, I was having a kind of political discussion on a largely US forum the other day. I was telling the other folk on the thread ow we used to pay pretty well pennies for utilities, til the tories privatised it in the name of 'efficiency' and 'more competitive pricing'. Now, where I paid 30p for my water rates I pay... jesus knows. Hundreds a year.

The Americans answered with: "What do you mean the utility companies like water are privatised? We're the most brutally capitalist society on earth and even we wouldn't dream of that!" They were horrified.

And to think I believed it when the government of the day said it was like that everywhere and by having nationalised utilties we were somehow backwards.... What lies we were told.

Same with this. People who do not have disabled family/friends still are fairly naive - as we have seen demonstrated right on this thread - about what is really going on.

Now we can sew on those black triangles or call these people to account and shout from the rooftops what is going on so others are put in the picture. Because if you truly believe it is all easy and straightforward and not damaging and hurting the most vulnerable in society - the very people we should all show we're civilized, by protecting - then you need a wake up call.

zzzz only a couple of % of all applicants for PIP have what is called a 'paper based' assessment. The vast majority get called to a face to face interview with someone from ATOS or Capita.

Are you sure you're not thinking of the old DLA? Kids under 16 still get DLA, I think..?

I have only just heard my son's is going to be paper-based but the truth is, the woman who is a benefits adviser for the disabled wo has done this every day for nearly 3 years told me, that in the entire time she has been doing it for this district, she only heard of 2 people NOT called to interview. Which makes my son the third...

If you really did fill in forms for PIP and get paid out in weeks, you are probably literally the only person in your county to be so lucky. Take one look on disability related forums and you will see I am not scare-mongering.

Lurking, I was having a kind of political discussion on a largely US forum

Of course, one of the [US] political gods of the 20th century predicted this. He was uniquely placed to see it happening, warned against it, and was totally ignored. There's a sort of cosmic irony God-has-a-sense-of-humor quirkiness to it.

The man ? Eisenhower. The warning ? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military%E2%80%93industrial_complex

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."

Does that reframe the Corbyn/Trident debate ?

yanbu
the way scameron and his ilk have targeted the disabled is disgusting.

made even worse that scameron was supposedly in the know about being a carer.
sick is a polite word for it

Put bluntly, the Tories want to cut the state deficit at a time society is aging and the bill for pensions and use of the NHS is sky rocketing. If you look at the breakdown of where the welfare money is spent, the largest block is pensions, followed by housing benefit. Disability and job seekers is actually a really small percentage of it. But, because the pension benefits must be protected, they are the ones to be attacked. Which is bloody counter productive as it a) humiliates and degrades disabled people and b) pushes them into further poverty and ill health - so more pressure on the NHS. It won't even address the original problem that we are overspending; just read what IFS has to say about it.

Joined up thinking is not this Government's strong suit. I think we are better off than under a labour administration run by corbyn, but only because the markets trust them enough to borrow at low rates. If our borrowing costs rise, everyone will be screwed, with the poor and disabled at the front of the queue.

But, because the pension benefits must be protected,

Seeing as I am looking at working till 75 at least, that seems a tad wrong. Of course workers dying before they can claim their pension is a saving. Coming to the UK soon.

OP I was moved from DLA to PIP a while ago and I remained on the highest rate for care, with standard mobility as before. Just wait and see what you get awarded, if you've had help with your forms then there's every chance your DS will be awarded PIP. I was lucky and I didn't have to go to appeal, but I know many people who were initially turned down and managed to get it awarded on appeal, so don't be discouraged either if you get turned down at first.

I do see the unfairness in the style of the current assessments so YANBU. It creates a lot of anxiety and it seems so pointless for people with severe conditions which aren't going to improve. I know a couple of people who just gave up once their DLA was due to swap over, they didn't have the mental strength to deal with a new assessment and didn't complete the forms. They'd been on indefinite DLA and would almost certainly be awarded PIP IMO, but people underestimate the emotional toll of just applying.

I agree, think it's completely immoral, heartless and cowardly, picking on the most vulnerable who, through no fault of their own, really need our support. I didn't vote Tory, never will, I think they're despicable and shame on all of you who did vote for them.

Just read on Rightsnet a thread with contributions by benefits advisers, and they are swapping examples of insane decisions like - a client where they had no daily living problems so left that entire section blank and only filled in the mobility.... they got enhanced for daily living and nothing for mobility... And vice versa!

So I suspect even those people with positive outcomes probably don't realise it's only a lottery and the odds were against them getting it at all. Even if y son got enhanced on both (he won't) I'd go away feeling upset and worried for his future - what happens when his dad and I can't do this for him? Of course the odds are we will go through the hell of appeals. Which apparently, are equally a crap shoot.

I was told something similar on the phone, yesterday by someone at the disability charity I rang.

I have asperger's, by definition I am impaired in my ability to communicate (PIP points specifically mention non verbal communication too) and to engage socially, as that is part of the diagnostic criteria, if I wasn't significantly Impaired then I wouldn't have been diagnosed.

However, as I walked into the face to face interview and spoke directly to the assessor (with DH present) they 'decided that I can communicate effectively the majority of the time'

I'm glad they decided that. Meanwhile, in the real world, I still struggle with communicating, particularly non verbal communication and making my needs known rather than responding to questions. And to engage socially I need support and prompting from DH, left to my own devices I would be a hermit!

YANBU. The cut to ESA could be the final (and literal) nail in the coffin for some.

Can your son manage a simple journey by himself more than 50% of the time and do so reliably and keeping himself safe?

If he cannot you will not lose your car nor higher rate mobility component