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.

But it's not the norm. Mine was renewed in 2013 and I had no face to face. I don't know anyone else who has either

I do wonder what would happen to public spending if we did have to face a major third world war though. Would spending on the NHS and benefits etc be able to continue at the level it is at now . When we had to fund defense for previous world wars there was no NHS and very little in the way of benefits. We have to spend currently on helping Ukraine but there is the potential for it to get a whole lot worse. How would it be funded without cutting back in other areas?

I’m not. If you’re all so certain we’re very rich, and have lots of money, and that £130 billion a year is not enough for social benefits, then you should be able to say what would be enough and what budget we should take from to fund it?

It’s mad - posters seem to think spending on anything apart from social benefits and healthcare is a frivolous waste which is merely dick waving by senior politicians. They don’t seem to have the first clue about the serious global threat the world is under at the moment, not to mention all the other essential services that we need beyond benefits and the NHS.

British people are so used to us being a wealthy country and having the best of everything they’ve forgotten it all needs paying for. They honestly seem to believe money grows on trees. It blows my mind.

The UK is completely infected with lazy group think where people circle jerk about evil Tories.

It's a lot easier to win elections by promising free money for everybody, more money for the NHS, more money for social care, more money for youth services, etc.

If it was as easy as that, don't you think the Tories would make those promises?

I didn’t say anyone or the country was rich. Not in one post

No because that’s not a Tory viewpoint

No because that’s not a Tory viewpoint

So they're just evil/uncaring rather than practical - i.e. the taxpayer/economy can only support so much government spending?

This isn’t about evil Tories and I certainly wouldn’t hold out any hope Labour could do a better job. I don’t think we need free money for everyone. I don’t need money and many people don’t. It’s nice if childcare bills were slightly less extortionate but I respect I made choices. I also respect that I have privilege. I can heat my house, feed my family and house them etc. I want to ensure all people have the same - the basics. By taking an overly draconian approach to benefits and welfare, some people will have their money removed. Despite the insistence on here that they could send emails from bed or find a coffee van, some people really cannot work and they will suffer. It’s not good for them on an individual level and it’s not good for society.

This is a great post.

The benefits of gardening (if you have one) or being outside walking amongst the trees, taking in nature, listening to birdsong, feeding the birds (if you don’t have a phobia) can have a real positive effect.

I dread to think what would happen in those circumstances. Hopefully we will never have a WW3. The state of the NHS as it is would totally collapse. And yes, tough decisions would have to be made. Thankfully these are hypothetical scenarios at this present time.

Don’t be absurd. There’s a huge difference between somebody who has MH conditions but clearly had lucid days (weeks?) at a time, and somebody as disabled as PP’s relative. The former said they WANT to work but seems to scoff at a perfectly normal small business idea that would be flexible and enable her to control her hours. Why?

Dunno. Ask her

You clearly have no idea about MH conditions if you think it is down to being lucid or not. No idea at all.
I said I want to be ABLE to work... but as it is, I can not. And how does someone with no savings, no business sense, no idea about catering or or the regulations around it or anything like that, not to mention the desire to run such a business, even go about that? A relative looks after my finances as I can't even do that... yet you think I should run a business?
I think you are taking the piss now, and it is getting pretty offensive, not to mention ablelist.

Not only that we as a country have been borrowing like mad to maintain that lifestyle.

Down to earth with a bump is coming. Suppose we can always tax Starbucks more..

Absolutely this. There is a MH charity where I live that has the most beautiful gardens that people get referred to as a way to help with their mental health. There is something soothing about nurturing plants and being out in nature.

And if getting to such a place (if there is one locally) is too hard right now, then working on your garden (if you have one) is a good idea too. Or even some indoor plants. You can get some really interesting ones. I have a black thumb though! I have managed to kill a spider plant

Sigh. Well we can’t say we didn’t warn them all.

You'd think that the genuinely disabled would be keen for the government to expose the fraudulently disabled, so that there was more money available per person and less chance of drastic future cuts if/when the system collapses.

Yep you, the great economist

Why do you assume they’re not? Or are you suggesting those posting on here are benefit fraudsters?

Because it wastes tax payers money. I was a benefit adviser working with the disabled. Explain to me how you’re going to make someone’s condition better when they have the following conditions - and this is one person.

Spina bifida - congenital deformity causing paralysis below the waist, amputation of one leg below the knee, total lack of control over bowel, stoma for pee because of no bladder control, constant pain. Confined to a wheelchair and needs help with changing padding for bowel incontinence and stoma bags.

Added to this diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis adding to the pain load, causing loss of function in joints and lack of mobility.

Osteoporosis which means they are a severe risk for injury from the smallest trauma.

This was ONE person, and it wasn’t uncommon. You have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about, and I really hope that you never have cause to enter the disability benefit assessment system because you’ll find out as have thousands of disabled people that the system is weighted against them and anything but a fair assessment of need. If it was, we would have no need of an expensive tribunal system to ensure people get a fair deal after the DWP have made a dogs’ dinner of their claim to benefit because they insist on perpetuating a deeply flawed system.

Versus ‘we can always find money if we need it’

The reason the ‘genuinely disabled’ don’t welcome plans to expose the frauds, is that over a period of years it’s been proved that changes to the system don’t root out fraudsters. They’re not intended to because it’s too difficult - easier to narrow eligibility so that almost no-one qualifies, and that means that the most severely disabled are the most affected because they cost the most to support. There’s little evidence of any critical thinking on this thread. Just more depressingly predictable examples of people believing everything the government tells them. Sheeple. BAAAAAAAA !!!!

You don't need to be a great economist, read some of the output from the OBR, ONS and many other statistics bodies.

Where is the money coming from when we are borrowing to pay day to day spending just to keep going nevermind to fix things?

All the governments know this but won't say what the electorate don't want to hear.

DLA is no longer in existence except for children under 16 and the few people who fell outside the rules for migration from PIP to DLA in 2013 when it was introduced. Face to face assessments were suspended during the pandemic but are the norm for those claimants for whom the paper evidence doesn’t provide a clear indication of entitlement.