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.

So many I managed it so everyone else should be the same posters on here

You can't seem to grasp that your situation isn't the same as everyone else.

Part of the reason why I can't work is because of how unpredictable my illness can be. I've had to spend a lot of this year in a lot of pain for which my medication doesn't help at all. How can someone work with such fluctuating illness?

Aren't there just...

That all sounds very hard, and it sounds like you have been through a lot@GoodnightAdeline . And good for you, that you have managed to be able to work, and not fall apart. But this is your story, and not wanting to diminish what you have just revealed, but other people who could have had your exact circumstances ( if it were a possibility for them too) would not necessarily have the same outcome. That is what I meant in my post. I do think there is sometimes this attitude, that because a person has been through such, and such, that other people should be able to overcome their difficulties too. Life is not clear cut like that.

Exactly. Quite a number of people have certain conditions - like Rheumatoid arthritis - that are unpredictable, and whilst you can feel OK-ish for a few days, you can suddenly be in so much pain that you can barely walk to the end of the garden, or dress yourself alone.

Makes some people struggle to hold down a job, as sadly they find it hard to be reliable. And this is what some benefits are for. To help and assist people like this (and like you.)

Ignore the 'well I can do it, and I was OK' brigade. They are breathtakingly tiresome and very tedious! (As well as narrow minded!)

!

Part of the reason why I can't work is because of how unpredictable my illness can be. I've had to spend a lot of this year in a lot of pain for which my medication doesn't help at all. How can someone work with such fluctuating illness?

This. And just having to cope with pain management as well, when it is not being effective. Some people really have no concept of what other people may be having to cope with. I hope that things improve for you soon🌻

Interesting article in the telegraph referencing mental health and Sunaks policy on benefits.
No idea how to add the link so here’s the title

I'm so happy for you, well done. 😊

It's great that the manager got involved and are letting you to restart the course with adjustments for you.

I wish you to enjoy the course and brilliantly pass all the exams.💐

’That is what I meant in my post. I do think there is sometimes this attitude, that because a person has been through such, and such, that other people should be able to overcome their difficulties too. Life is not clear cut like that.’

Thank you for saying this @LadyKenya its one of the things I’ve tried to get a grip on during therapy. I spend a lot of time beating myself up for not coping as well as other people. I feel a lot of shame and embarrassment over it.

I know it is very easy for me to say that you should not feel shame, or compare yourself to other people@PilgorTheGoat . I frequently notice people, who are probably 20years+ overtaking me, when out walking, and it made me realize my state. I am now in the mindset that they are not me, or likely have my conditions. I am kind to myself, because others are frequently not, in this dog eat dog world. Protect yourself, as best you can.

I probably spend at least 50 hours if not more worrying and torturing myself.

Depends on what you mean by ‘refuses to even entertain trying to work’. The benefits system is designed so that as soon as you start work, benefit stops.

So as an example: Someone who has been on contribution based sickness benefits engages with the system and finds work. All out of work support stops. A few weeks down the line, they have a relapse or find that they can’t cope with the job. As per the equality law the employer looks for ways to accommodate and can’t. So the person has to claim again and finds that they are no longer entitled to their previous contribution based benefits because the rules say they must have worked for at least 26 weeks of the last two complete tax years, and in both of the last two complete tax years, they must have paid or been credited with, Class 1 or 2 contributions on earnings of at least 50 times the lower earnings limit. So they have to rely on means tested benefits and may not be eligible, or the rate of payment may be significantly lower because they have to qualify all over again.

This is what stops disabled people trying out jobs. The government has initiated several schemes over a period of years and either under funded, or scrapped them. The latest one was announced last year and was designed to provide a work trial situation where someone claimed their benefits instead of a wage during the first few weeks of work, so that if something went wrong they would not be worse off financially. At the same time as Sunak was making his speech last Friday, the government were quietly cutting this support. Still think it’s taking the piss ?

And typing out responses on MN is vastly different from the commitment to work. Many MH conditions mean that the sufferer is not reliable, and even WFH requires commitment and reliability which they may not be able to give. I think it’s worth saying again that none of this is about health conditions - either mental health or physical disability- not being genuine, or not being severe. It’s about cutting the support by narrowing eligibility so that fewer people qualify. At the end of the day that’s the only way they can reduce the disability benefit bill. There’s nothing fair or balanced about it - it’s not about supporting disabled people, it’s about money.

The benefits may stop for contributions based benefits but there is permitted work rules which allow people to try working without the ESA stopping. . On UC people can continue to get the extra £400 LCWRA payment when they go back to work, so that they can try working part time and see how things go. There are different rules for ESA, but for UC LCWRA there is no limit as to how many ohurs you can try working. PIP does not stop either.

PIP won’t stop because it’s not an out of work benefit. But not all benefit claimants are on UC. A significant number are still on legacy benefits, which is why I used that as an example. As I understand it there is a permitted work limit of 16 hours per week on UC LCWRA and an upper earnings limit of £183pw before deductions. The limit in hours applies unless the claimant is undertaking supported permitted work, which only applies in certain circumstances. Under ordinary permitted work rules any work on UC over 16 hours will result in the claimant losing LCWRA. And any kind of permitted work is taken into account for housing and council tax benefits. And there is another trap with permitted work. Those people who are awaiting migration from legacy benefits to UC will likely trigger a review of benefits if they start permitted work, as it will be viewed as a change of circumstances and will initiate the process for earlier migration to UC. Those people who are not eligible for PIP, as well as those who are claiming disability premiums on income related ESA will find themselves much worse off as a result.

Well, there we have it…

The level of ableism on a lot of MN threads is quite shocking. And a lot of the time reports are ignored or deemed to fall short of the requirement to delete. A poster upthread made a series of shockingly discriminatory posts and it took several reports to get them deleted. If some of the things that people seem to feel perfectly entitled to say about sick and disabled people were said about any other cohort there would be absolute uproar.

I replied to this post because some of the information given in it is either not accurate or omits information. The permitted work rules exist to give, what in most cases, are severely disabled people a chance to see what they can do, and the earnings figures quoted are maximums, not average.

Most of supported permitted work used to take place in specialised sheltered workshops for the disabled, such as Remploy, because the people taking part were so severely disabled as to affect productivity levels to a point which couldn’t be sustained in open industry. But along came the Tories and shut that down too. Getting the picture yet ?

While Mr Sunak was making his announcement on more tinkering at the edges of the benefit system, yet again aimed at the sick and disabled, employment support for those people was quietly being cut in other areas to make way for the system announced last year. Going on previous experience I would imagine the permitted work and supported permitted work systems will soon join the scrap heap in favour of ever decreasing levels of support for some of the most vulnerable in society.

They won’t do it. It’s empty rhetoric to whip up the blue rinse brigade. The disabled and those in need of support are not the same as benefit fraudsters. As I said upthread these are the claimants that need to be looked at; not those in genuine need. This government doesn’t give a shit about the vast majority of this country. They are self-serving toffs who don’t live in the real world

This is true. However I did do some work under this rule. Had checked it was fine before I did, and then when I officially declared it all my benefits stopped. Turned out it was a job centre error as someone should have made me an appointment to approve the work but they didn't. However it took me a month of phone calls and going to the job centre to sort out. In the mean time all my bills bounced, I got into debt, went into crisis as a result of the mental strain of it all and then became too unwell to do the permitted work and lost the position. I can't say I am thrilled but the idea of trying permitted work again when that happened. I would need to be confident I could survive without my benefits with the work I was taking up incase it all went wrong again before trying it.

The reason for them bringing in the PIP in the first place was supposedly to cut down on the miniscule fraud that they claim was costing so much. The system is now so difficult, that so many people are not getting the help that they really should. I do not have the stats to hand, but the figures for people who go to tribunal, and get the result in their favour is shocking. That tells me that the system is not working as it should, and some people are really having to fight for the help that they need. It is a disgrace.

I think the system is just too bloated in general. Like I said before there is proper fraud, aka people outright lying about their conditions, which as you say is a very small number. Much more common is ‘massaging the facts’ to cross the eligibility threshold. These people probably are a bit unwell in some ways and aren’t faking it as such, but they’re no more unwell than an awful lot of people who work or don’t claim. There are many groups where people swap tips on how to get their application across the line, or ask advice on how to play the system, but no doubt you’ll say ‘they’re doing what they need to do because the system is brutal…’

@GoodnightAdeline The DWP no doubt doesn’t have the budget or manpower to investigate fraudulent claims.

I've heard it's somewhere between 70 & 90% depending on where you look

I bet they're not. I think they're just really unpleasant.