To be shocked that over half a million people under the age of 35 are out of work due to long-term sickness

[puncheur]

I had no idea. These numbers are extraordinary. 560k people between the ages of 16 and 34 economically inactive due to long term illness.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/dec/24/500000-under-35s-out-of-work-long-term-illness-uk?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Perhaps they are all "signed off with stress" as is so frequently advised on Mumsnet.

So you want to punish disabled people by removing their passports and driving licenses to make an example of them - under a pretence of "so they don't cause themselves undue stress"?

So that no-one is tempted to fake a disability?

But it's ok if disabled people are collateral damage in your disincentivization scheme and have their human rights taken away?

You don't really consider disabled people fully human, do you? You are transparent about that.

Not every disabled person can pass the medical required to get a driving license, that's how the cookie crumbles. But if someone can safely drive who are you to remove their license?

I mostly use my passport as ID. So if you remove my passport, what do I use for ID?

As someone who cannot drive due to a disability its a completely fucked up idea anyway

You have ME, things exhaust you. You have a doctors appointment. You can either step outside your front door, get in your car, drive for 20 mins, go to your doctors, get back in your car, drive for 20 mins, step back inside your house.

Or you can walk half a mile to the nearest bus stop, stand around for 20 mins waiting for the next bus (and you can't sit down properly because they have those stupid perch seats just in case a homeless person might get a tiny bit of comfort under a shelter at night), then you sit on a bus for 40 mins which drops you a 5 minute walk from the doctors. Leave the doctors and repeat on the way home

Because sure that's so much less tiring than driving for a person with chronic fatigue... 🙄That poster is just being a goady fucker whose idea of fun on Chrismas day is to spread joy by making disabled people feel shit about themselves. They must have a very sad pathetic life tbh

Remove driving licenses from people with a disability?

Yes, brilliant idea. Let’s make it harder for people to attend doctors appointments, do their shopping or visit friends or family just in case they have the cheek to have a trip somewhere too far…

No wonder the Tories get away with what they do with vile attitudes like that.

DH suffers from sleep apnea. It took over 1 year to get seen to by an NHS specialist. If he hadn't been able to self treat, he would have been out of work.

TBH, I'd probably fall into that category, as I've been declared unable to work because of my multiple health conditions, in reality, it doesn't mean that I don't.
It means that I work for short periods of time, then I'm off, then I'm back, then I'm off because both my mental and physical health are pretty bad and I can't continuously juggle my health and work.

I've been ill on both accounts since I was very young.. in fact, I have an equivalent of a year 9 education because I was so unwell that I couldn't attend year 10, bar 2 days so it's hardly surprising as an adult I'm classed as too unwell to work.

I suppose you're getting at the level where people cannot work is potentially quite easy to get to? I don't agree.

If you're looking for an answer as to why so many people are unable to work? I'd look at ensuring that children are brought up in adequate homes with adequate conditions, and adequate parents. I would think a look at improving the general health of each and every person within the country would create a significantly different situation, however it would probably not be cheaper for the tax payer.

It’s going to become more and more of a problem the more people are on waiting lists.

One of my Uni age DDs has narcolepsy. Her medication has stopped working as well as it did. This isn’t uncommon, and there is a clear pathway to what the next choice of medication will be. However, it can only be prescribed by her specialist and her appointment (that she received in September) isn’t until May - and that’s an urgent appointment!

She’s had to cut a day at work so that she can continue her studies and may have to drop more if the current medication continues to decrease in how it is works.

Sadly some people are that vile.

I work in an environment where most people earn 100k+.

I don’t know a single person in the last 20 years who has had to leave such a role due to ill health.

I also don’t see anyone attending work who is clearly unfit to do so.

This leads me to believe that huge swathes of sickness from work is not genuine.

It’d be interesting to see the stats on average lifetime annual salary vs average time absent from work. If sickness was random then no correlation should exists however I’d wager it is heavily related.

@Charlie2121 Or could it be that, having earned 100k+ for a year or two, those people have health insurance that allows them to resolve physical issues quickly, or to take a voluntary break from work if suffering mental health issues.

But I accept that those who are earning such high salaries are probably highly motivated, with a stronger work ethic.

And to be fair, if someone is on minimum wage, they probably are less motivated to drag themselves into work when feeling ghastly, and keep their job than if they are earning a high wage.

I haven't read the full thread but shall say my dd took a Cambridge First and aged 25 is an English Teacher.

This is because we had the £8k available to spend on therapy, a consultant psychiatrist, ADHD diagnosis, etc., (BUPA picked up the day therapy charges), when she was cutting, overdosing and withholding aood aged 15 to 17. CAMHS offered group therapy and when I asked for an alternative wrote to the GP to say the case was closed as the family had declined an intervention. A CAMHS nurse also told me dd was too old to be diagnosed with ADHD. The ADHD was the root cause.

I am not convinced it's all about resources. CAMHS assessed dd five times to tick boxes to say she wasn't urgent and didn't need help within three months. Some actual therapy and advice, however limited would be better. Our local CAMHS service also was given £2.5m in 2015 which they wasted on an ineffective additional tier of bureaucracy. This was subsequent to a review in 2014 which said they were poor and things had to change. There was then another review after the 2015 fiasco, in 2018 that cost hundreds of thousands. The service is still, I believe poor.

CAMHS are a 9-5 service. That is not acceptable if young people are trying to stay in education, notwithstanding the fact that dd was given a 9.30 appointment. We arrived at 9.15. We had to wait on the doorstep because not one member of staff had turned up on time. Evidently they can't provide the first slot before 9.30 - and yet they are a 9-5 service.

I have no doubt that if we hadn't been able to pay for dd's care and treatment she'd have dropped out of school. The impact on her selfcesteem would have been catastrophic and she would probably be working in a care home or a shop on zero hours contracts at best. She would not be teaching English to GCSE students and doing rather bloody well.

If anyone disputes the provision, Surrey and Borders. Utterly disgraceful and abhorrently wasteful. We saw only disorganisation and incompetence. Resourcing is a double edged sword - it would be helpful but nothing persuades me that additional money would be spent for the clinical benefit of young people. They would likely just tiddle it up the wall on rainbow crossings, unnecessary bureaucracy and sending MH Nurses on trans awareness courses rather than upskilling them to recognise potential neurodiversity.

For every one of my daughter, there are probably 20 more who drop out and never get back on the merry go round. The mismanagement and self congratulatory representation of well manipulated data is terrifying.

This shows a quite worrying lack of logic.

First, you may have worked in "an environment" where people were high earners, but how many of those people did you personally interact with on a daily basis, and be close enough to be privy to their intimate medical problems? Every job has turnover, and most jobs have people who wfh or have flexible working -- unless you've personally kept track of every single person who's ever left your company (which would indicate a tiny company, see point 2) and you've also personally investigated every single co-worker who's ever done flexible working or had a period of leave (ditto) then you have no idea how many people left or went on flexible working due to chronic illness.

Second, what's the actual number of people in question, because you're extrapolating for the entire country based on what logically must be a tiny sample size?

Third, you're assuming that anyone with a chronic illness will be obviously visibly "clearly unfit" which is just bigotry. One of my close friends has a severe chronic illness and has had multiple hospitalisations and surgeries, yet she's a very successful actress and has starred in major theatre productions in the West End and starred on TV shows without anyone except a trusted view ever knowing she was ill. Plenty of people with chronic illness work, and no one ever knows.

Fourth, very few jobs pay £100k straight out of uni. You usually have to spend years working in positions that require very long hours, often very stressful environments, before you start earning that kind of money. Those jobs naturally draw people who have a much high level of stamina and capacity for stress than the average person. Obviously many people with chronic illness are simply not physically capable of putting in all years of working 100 hour weeks or whatever to get to the point where they're earning £100k, so it makes sense that your "environment" selects them out before they even get to that point.

It's a very weird point to make - a bit like saying "I'm an Olympic sprinter and funnily enough out of all the thousands of other sprinters I've competed with over the decades, I've never met even a single one who's a wheelchair user, HMMM how suspicious."

Fifth, confirmation bias is a very real thing. Plus it's just common sense that people tend to be drawn to those like them. You have judgemental attitudes about disability, so it's likely that disabled/chronically ill people in your "environment" (whether consciously or subconsciously) pick up on that and avoid getting close to you.

I wish people would stop assuming that working at home is a soft option. It's still work.

@HolyZarquonsSingingSeals I agree. The hardest I ever worked was during the lock downs. We are now hybrid and training people and getting them on board is hard Things take longer.

Yep. I do exactly the same at home or in the office. At my desk for 9hrs a day except for scheduled breaks and lunches
The reason I've been allowed to carry on WFH when others haven't is because I do exactly the same some people don't and it's very obvious
My work is so heavily monitored that anyone skiving gets caught immediately anyway

And how many of those are milking the system?!

There still are those people.

My DH has a genetic condition which is a disability and has led to three additional chronic illnesses. He was able to go to university with support, got a first even though it took him 6 years rather than 4 due to serious illness, and qualified as a solicitor.

He is clever and hardworking enough that his firm have recognised that he will take more sick leave than many others but will make up the time / get his work done. If he wasn't able to do a 100k+ career job, he would be unemployable.

He was lucky that his parents didn't send him to a special school (which was recommended by his primary) and could afford support, aides and physio. This support is vanishingly rare and far more children with disabilities just aren't able to achieve anywhere near what they might be capable of.

I'm not sure if this is a tongue-in-cheek post or not.

There is a well known link between income and health, at a public health level. It is indisputable. The less money you have, the shorter your life will be, at population level.

QALYS (Quality Adjusted Life Years) and DALYS (Disability Adjusted Life Years) are public health population level measurements of how many years are lived in good health, and how many years are lost to illness - less desirable outcomes are interwoven with low income.

Low income is dangerous for your health. The gap between the haves and have-nots has become more entrenched in the last 10 years compared to how things were in the 90's and the early 00's. Things are going backwards.

It is not surprising that the health of young adults is being affected by wages that have not kept pace with inflation.

You just don't see it because the majority in your workplace earn 100k plus - which is a tiny sliver of society.

Since when could you see uncontrolled epilepsy, hearing and sight impairments (you can see some sight impairments but not mine) Autism, mental health conditions, etc?

But this is a self-selecting group of people who are extremely motivated and thrive in a high stress environment. And I doubt you know the personal medical details of everyone at the organisation and who is on holiday or off sick. Or who took 'early retirement' because they could no longer cope with the workload.

They're able to afford private healthcare so a lot of things will be nipped in the bud before they can develop into worse problems. They can afford to contract out parts of their life which someone on minimum wage still has to do themselves - nanny (vs fighting for childminder space availability that doesn't match variable working hours), cleaner, bought in food/meals out).

It'll be high stress work but I doubt it's 12 hour shifts on their feet dealing with the general public which a lot of minimum wage jobs are.

"At the same time they should probably have their passports and driving licenses taken away so they don’t cause themselves undue stress by unnecessary long travel activities"

You need photo ID to do so many things in this country - take out a mortgage, rent a flat, start a new job, get security clearance/DBS etc, open a bank account, claim benefits and vote.

If we take away disabled people's driving licenses and passports, how will they do all of the above?

Many disabled people are able to drive safely and rely on driving to appointments etc. My MIL receives PIP at HRM and HRC and she drives. She would struggle to use public transport (if there was a reliable bus network near her, which there isn't).

I am medically unable to drive so I rely on my passport to prove who I am. If you take that away I wouldn't have been able to get my job, claim PIP or remortgage my home.

For someone on a supposedly high salary you don't really have a lot of common sense or critical thinking do you?

It’s not a shock. State dependency is the highest on record. We have one of the highest economically inactive populations in the world. A tiny portion of people on PAYE fund the welfare system with extortionate tax. There is no magic money tree paying for this. We now have a decreasing pool of net contributors, a nightmare tax system and it all leads one way - a collapse of the welfare state.

Unlese the reasons behind this are sorted urgently - then the state as we know it is finished. I already fear it’s too late. It’s all well and good sneering at people raising this issue. However, someone has to pay for the state and currently, not many are.

Unlese the reasons behind this are sorted urgently

And what would be the best policy, if it is found that the reason is that more people are unable to work because they are indeed unwell.

The assumption of malingering is all the government has to offer, with the assumption that because some people malinger it's the issue that needs to be clamped down on.

No issue with that, just as I support other measures to reduce benefit fraud and all forms of mis-spending of public funds.

But I simply don't buy the idea that there is a major increase in malingering - or at least not when the only 'evidence' is ministerial assertion - especially not just after the emergence of a new disease when we are still learning about its longer-term effects, and finding they are considerable.