To be frightened about the Government’s plans for benefits reform?

[PilgorTheGoat]

I am one of the millions of people currently on long term sickness benefits. I receive the LCWRA element of UC and PIP due to poor mental health and autism. I have severe anxiety and depression and I am awaiting an appointment to see if I also have PTSD due to sexual abuse in my childhood.

I have tried every element of support offered to me. I’m maxed out on 2 different types of antidepressants. I have had back-to-back (excluding the 6 month wait in between) 12 week sessions of counselling offered via the NHS. I am on a waiting list for intensive CBT due to my possible PTSD. I am currently having twice weekly private, video counselling appointments.

I can’t leave my house alone due to panic attacks. I struggle to meet my own care needs and my husband has to do a lot of the work for us both (although he works full time). I have a very understanding friend whom I force myself to go for a short walk with twice a week in order to stop myself becoming completely imprisoned at home but I find this very distressing and we have to take the same route each time.

I am so, so scared about the government’s plans to end sickness benefits for people like me. We don’t have a load of spare cash, we’re just about getting by. There is no support available. I’ve taken everything offered and my husband has been very proactive in seeking out other services for me to be involved with. I’d love to be better, I’d love not to live in fear but there is no help.

It’s a ridiculous, “populist” half-baked, desperate Tory sound bite to whip up the blue rinse brigade who clutch their pearls at any mention of benefits. They won’t do it to you because of your needs. They won’t do it anyway. How could they? What would people like yourself live on? Take no notice. They’re thrashing about in the dark grasping at straws. Bunch of thieving cunts

'the benefits system was such a brutal process even then that I did everything in my power to make sure I never had to access it again.'

This is sad. Well done you! However, this proves, time and time again, that those who keep saying 'lack of MH support; having accessed all recommended counselling and support and medications and now told no more new suggestions for them as all had been done for them at that stage; insistence on more MH paces etc etc as the reason there is a MH 'crisis', do miss this other side: Many many pp with MH, those who now feel much better, had had to do it by themselves, or with help of family. One other poster turned to her passion: arts and craft to improve her situation (Yes, she is still on benefits because of fear of losing them without 'securing a job first or if she fails to keep a job, but that's another debate.

However, I agree that the long waiting list for everyday health issues, can cause people's MH to tank. Unfortunately when it tanks, they will have to try by all means to get themselves better as 'no adequate MH support'. But, we hear, once pp recognise this, they are determined to improve their own mental health just to escape the lack of support. And maybe this is where Rishi got the 'everyday life experiences'.

@Golftennis
'It’s not that disabled people refuse to entertain trying to work - it’s that the support from the benefit system disappears as soon as they get a job, so if it turns out they can’t cope, they have to start all over again with claiming - same if they relapse."

And...what is wrong with that? So people want 'forever benefits'? Benefits are meant to help, not to stop one from the need to attempt normal living.

Do you really think claiming is as simple as filling in a form? You haven't got a clue.
For disabled people, coping with the disability is 'normal living'. What they dont need is the added burden of attitudes like yours.

And maybe this is where Rishi got the 'everyday life experiences'.

He wouldn’t recognise an everyday life experience if it kicked him in the shins.

Well said @SabreIsMyFave 👏👏

Apols as I was not saying you were. I just added the bit to the post.

This is getting bizarre. You jumped the shark with your reply about tax evasion

Why would I want to say they're money grabbing and want to punish poor people?

Each time you respond you're tying yourself in bigger knots.

The last pip review I did you had a week to get it back in to them.

Good luck to anyone trying to get a welfare advisor appointment to that timescale.

I was given 4 weeks for my last ESA review, and that included the time I needed to collect the medical evidence and post it back to them.
They won't contact my consultant themselves, which would be the more humane and efficient system. I have to do it. He writes back to me (and he's pretty good about it despite the fact his clinic is desperately underfunded and he's lost most of his staff), and then I have to post it on. Emails are not accepted.

I think what @SabreIsMyFave says has a ring of truth. I’m in a good London borough but there are huge swathes of the country with people who are third (fourth?) generation benefit claimants. They have no role models. BUT what we mustn’t forget is that for many of these previous generations Mrs Thatcher shut down the coal mines. She closed the factories. Generations of people and their parents before them were proud to work in these industries. You can’t take away livelihoods then call people lazy. Many want to work. A company my husband worked for set up a centre in Darlington and the rush for jobs was overwhelming. Have you ever seen documentaries where some poor bugger is trying and trying to get someone at the DWP call centre to answer the phone whilst being told they’re tenth in the queue and probs on a pay as you go phone so desperately trying to keep the credit topped up and having to listen to piped muzak designed to destroy your soul? It’s not a case of filling in a few forms. It’s hard. Bloody hard. Who wants to live like that. We need to produce goods in this country. People need places to work and feel a sense of satisfaction on a Friday. It’s all one big fucking mess

It's not just about filling in forms though, it's about not having any money to eat or keep a roof over your head while you go through the whole assessment again. It's about having to do another traumatising assessment to plead for enough money to live on where you are accused by people who don't know what they are talking about lie about you.

And no there's not always someone who can help with filling in forms. Charities are often over subscribed and have wait lists. Yes someone in crisis often is required to fill in these forms and make phone calls to the benefits office etc.

As you say you have no experience of this. It's not like how you imagine it to be. It's very stressful.

I would like to know what some posters would like me to do.

What I’m hearing is a massive amount of ableism towards those who are mentally unwell that would never been deemed acceptable if applied to those with physical ailments.

I wonder if I had horrifically injured my legs in an accident, if I had been given surgery, physiotherapy and a wide range of pain killers and none of them had left me able to leave a normal life whether PP would advise that I just need to get on with it, forget about the pain, forget about the inability to comfortably walk and think my way out of the rut?

I’ve stepped away from this thread numerous times now because certain posters have caused me an awful lot of upset - it was perhaps my fault for starting it in AIBU rather than Health. I started this thread looking for some reassurance which many posters have offered (thank you) but many others have used it to attack myself and other potentially vulnerable posters. You have no idea about the realities of our lives, you have no idea what we are or are not capable of but you’ve decided to pick apart everything we had said to criticise and accuse. It is shameful.

This thread has now caused me so much harm that I am going to have to step away from social media for a while, thus further isolating myself.

A great post and very balanced. Great read and a factual read. Many thanks

Pl pl loom after yourself. I think you're making the right call stepping away because for every good post there are 2 negative.

Maybe we should all start wearing badges saying mentally ill eh.

It's hard very hard not to let the eejits get to you. But you're strong enough to make it this far so keep going.

I won't even be cured but some days I feel almost normal and they're the days you have to live for xxxxx

I see. Why not give 2 or 3 weeks? Do you know?

Haven’t RTFT but I agree with this

Because of the post. They may send it out and say you have 4 weeks from the date on the letter. That letter may take a week or two to arrive

@DistinguishedSocialCommentator Thank you x

@Golftennis yes as @TigerRag said it officially is 4 weeks but the letter never arrives in a reasonable time.

You do you, OP. It is worrying times... please don't feel that you don't have a voice about this, and that you should isolate yourself further. There are plenty on MN that will kick you when you are down (as we have both seen on this thread), but there are also plenty who understand your worries, and are facing the same too.

I do wonder if some PP on here are PIP assessors, given they have twisted me saying I do arts and crafts as a way to say I can work but am refusing to because my benefits will be affected.

I think what @SabreIsMyFave says has a ring of truth. I’m in a good London borough but there are huge swathes of the country with people who are third (fourth?) generation benefit claimants. They have no role models.

Perhaps their parents need to be forced back into the workforce via a gradual withdrawal of benefits? Their children could then see their presents as role models and also learn that a lifetime of benefits dependency is no longer an option.

BUT what we mustn’t forget is that for many of these previous generations Mrs Thatcher shut down the coal mines. She closed the factories.

Thatcher!

Let's ignore the IMF bailout and national bankruptcy of the 1970s. Thatcher personally closed the factories and coal mines!

(More mines were actually closed by Harold Wilson and state industries were massively loss making due to ridiculous union practices - which is why they were nationalised in the first place.)

Generations of people and their parents before them were proud to work in these industries. You can’t take away livelihoods then call people lazy.

Nobody took them away. They modernised and reduced headcount or they went bust.

Many want to work. A company my husband worked for set up a centre in Darlington and the rush for jobs was overwhelming.

And yet other businesses complain about receiving no applications.

Have you ever seen documentaries where some poor bugger is trying and trying to get someone at the DWP call centre to answer the phone whilst being told they’re tenth in the queue and probs on a pay as you go phone so desperately trying to keep the credit topped up and having to listen to piped muzak designed to destroy your soul?

The DWP is an 0800 free phone number. Nobody is deliberately setting out to destroy your soul via the choice of hold music.

It’s not a case of filling in a few forms. It’s hard. Bloody hard. Who wants to live like that.

I'm not sure I'd want it to be any easier.

We need to produce goods in this country. People need places to work and feel a sense of satisfaction on a Friday. It’s all one big fucking mess

How is that going to help? All the people posting on this thread insist that they can't possibly answer a few emails. Are they going to take factory work?

I see. Do you think Libraries, many of which are closed, could help?

Look, I know people who complain about the VAT system. Taxpayers complain about none picking up phones. Trains, Roads, Crime etc etc etc. And that's Britain today. So, I see what's described here is another gov department which is barely functioning as it should. Added someone with MH or other issues, I can see how more support with forms should be given.

Social Workers visit pp who are vulnerable. Are these pp not eligible for a dedicated SW?

Actually, most of the coal mines were shut down under Harold Wilson. The rest would have been closed down under any government even if Thatcher had never existed. Thatcher can be criticized for the way she went about those closures that did occur on her watch, but coal mining was coming to an end anyway.

The math here is that 35 + 8 = 43 billion
So why can’t they tackle both?

Everything I’ve said is true. Where are the jobs going to come from? Who is setting up businesses in the UK? Where do you suggest these people work? They have been marginalised by society. I doubt it’s much fun having nothing to do all day, being piss poor then being told they’ve nicked all the money. The DWP might well be a freephone number. It should be, but how much help do you think you’re going to get once you’ve got through? It’s unlikely the people who work there truly give a shit. Please tell us all on this thread where people who want to work can work.