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.

Catching fraudsters, and stopping their benefit does not increase it for everyone else. It has never worked like that, and never will.

Show me where I said that.

@ThisOldThang

I don't see any reason not to reassess people's claims to ensure they're not receiving benefits they no longer require.

@Rosscameasdoody

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.

ALSO, 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 !!!!

Thank you for that @Rosscameasdoody Excellent posts. Sadly I don't think a few certain posters on this thread will take any notice. Even though you are posting facts. I have given up even engaging with these posters. It's just not worth bothering. Their narrow-minded and ludicrous views are set in stone sadly.

If you’re over pension age you won’t be migrated to PIP. There were rules in place at the start of the migration in 2013 and you clearly fell outside them so your claim to DLA will be ongoing.

I don’t even think they care. It’s just people-bashing

Thank you. I’m sick of trying to make this point on MN. Soooooo many people seem to think that if they rooted out fraud/assessed people more often to reduce unnecessary benefit it would mean more for everyone else. What it actually means is as less people claim, or are found eligible for benefit, the budget reduces year on year so there is actually less to go around.

The lack of critical thinking on this thread is astonishing. I’ll lay a pound to a penny if the government was targeting child benefit and the payment of childcare fees the opinions posted would be very different, but it’s fine to bash the sick and disabled. The cuts to disability and sickness benefits are ideological rather than necessary. If people on here choose to believe everything they’re told about how much is spent on benefits (typically 20% less than any EU country) and how it’s unsustainable to support the sick and disabled that’s their problem. One can only hope that if they fall on hard times themselves that they don’t wake up one morning and find the safety net has disappeared from underneath them.

Last post on here as it’s dragged out for ages now, but every single respectable economist says our welfare bill is out of control and the proportion of adults out of work not sustainable. Nobody here thinks twice about demanding expensive support in every aspect of their lives, a better (and still free) NHS, shorter waiting lists, better mental health services, more social housing, yada yada. Yet not a single person seems to have any idea about how the many billions will be found for this beyond sacrificing our national security or an imaginary corporation tax which even Labour know is a fairy story. And the notion that anyone who says they’re suffering should be offered benefits without stringent checks otherwise ‘omg so mean’ is laughable.

I suppose all I can do is wait for Labour to win the election later this year and revisit the thread when inevitably they are also forced to curb the welfare bill because we are broke.

As I previously said in reply to TigerRag:

I expect the vast majority of those decisions could be made using database filters, without you even having to be contacted, but the government is bureaucratic and useless.

GoodnightAdeline I completely agree and I think there will be a lot of disillusionment in 3 or 4 years time when the economic reality sinks in.

We have a crippling public debt, an ageing demographic and numerous other structural macroeconomic issues (that our peers are also facing, not helped by the pandemic).

If people want better funded public services, the money has to be found from somewhere (beyond the usual soundbites about taxing 'the rich' and non-doms, and raising CT so companies decide to locate outside the U.K.).

There's no easy answers and one way is to try to reduce the welfare bill. No-one has advocated removing benefits from those that need them, but it's reasonable to look at those that don't need them surely.

For those that don't work in IT, a database filter could be used to exclude anybody suffering with conditions such as spina bifida from the lists of people that need to attend face-to-face meetings.

But let's be honest, spina bifida is a 'real' physical disability that can't be faked.

Mental health can be faked. Easily faked.

The government has a duty to get those that can work back into the job market. I don't see any other way to do it, than face-to-face assessments. What's the alternative? Somebody like me sitting at a screen and making the decision remotely? Would you want that?

The government doesn’t look at clinical need. It’s about the extra cost of disability. OBR statistics say that current levels of support via PIP and other disability benefits doesn’t address all of the cost, just contributes to it. The way in which the government assesses need for benefit is via an assessment which looks at how much help you need, what aids and adaptations and how expensive they are to buy/maintain and what ongoing costs there are directly attributable to the condition. It might interest you to know that incontinence attracts some of the highest costs, and yet isn’t directly assessed for. And the mobility assessment doesn’t assess the claimants’ ability/inability to use public transport, or consider how accessible it is.

To give you an idea of how ridiculous some of the aspects of assessment are, the cooking test assumes that the claimant is seated (or standing if able) at a counter top with all the ingredients and utensils they need in front of them. It doesn’t look at the ability to bend and stretch to cupboards, move around the room or the ability/inability to use a traditional oven. I attended an assessment for a lady with spina bifida who had full length rigid callipers to each leg. She was assessed as being able to sit comfortably at a counter top to cook, even though she couldn’t bend her knees to do so. I’ve accompanied people who have had artificial limbs and witnessed assessors repeatedly asking them to wiggle the toes on the artificial foot !! I’ve also witnessed an assessor actually asking the claimant how long she’s had a congenital disability !! And there are numerous other incidences I could quote where assessors have had to ask claimants basic questions about the nature of their condition because they clearly didn’t understand what the effects were.

Given the massively flawed nature of the assessment system and the inadequate level of training given to assessors, I don’t think it’s that disabled people object to being assessed. It’s that they object to being assessed and being at risk of losing a much needed benefit because the assessor hasn’t a clue about the actual effects of the disability. And that’s the whole crux of the problem. Instead of admitting the system is so flawed as to not be fit for purpose, and redesigning it to be fairer and more objective, the government have instead tinkered around the edges and actually made things worse for the very people they’re meant to be supporting. Fraud and error in the PIP system last year accounted for just 0.2% of the total spend on PIP.

How many times does it have to be explained to you that, regardless of what Sunak said last week (his advisers clearly don’t understand how PIP works or he wouldn’t have said half the things he did) those people who qualify for PIP on mental health grounds are held to a higher bar in terms of proving their eligibility. You seem to think that claimants can just pop along to their GP for a prescription for anti depressants and bingo, PIP is automatic. In actual fact to qualify for PIP solely on mental health grounds you have to have a severely limiting condition and be in receipt of treatment from secondary consultant led clinics, and to have any chance of getting an award, be able to provide medical evidence to support the claim.

For anyone who can be arsed, the link below takes you to the descriptors assessors use to assess for PIP. It will be evident to anyone with half a brain that the benefit is not as easy to claim as the government would have you believe. They’re about to embark on another round of cuts to disability benefits, so they will say whatever they need to say in order to get Joe Public on their side. And as this thread clearly shows, it works.

The point of disability benefits like PIP is to assess the effect of the disability - not the actual condition itself. So a database filter may give you a simple breakdown of who has what condition, but it won’t tell you how they are affected by it, and that’s what’s important. Even conditions like Spina Bifida present with different levels of disability ranging from mild to severe - just having the condition itself doesn’t qualify you for PIP, it’s how it affects the ability to carry out the range of activities assessed.

Mental health can be faked. Easily faked.

From Rethink.... Mental ill health is a symptom of Britain’s financial problems, not the cause.

But of course, the group of us on this thread who claim benefit for MH must be faking.... as has been alluded several times by a few posters on this thread. Which is fucking sick considered OP was after support and reassurance.

Sorry here’s the link https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/docs/default-source/mental-health/work-and-mental-health-library/pip-meanings-and-terms.pdf?sfvrsn=602f9333_2

It’s not a question of how much money. It’s a question of treating disabled fairly and with dignity, and preferably not putting them in the firing line for every single round of benefit cuts simply because it’s the easy option.

The clue is in the name ‘congenital’ meaning ‘from birth’. Permanent. Not going to improve.

@GoodnightAdeline @blue345 @ThisOldThang agree with you all

As a benefit adviser I’ve seen several assessors’ reports challenged for their veracity. The most blatant one was one assessors’ full page assessment of the range of motion of the claimants joints and limbs, requiring detailed examination, when they hadn’t actually laid a finger on them. I’ve also seen glaring inconsistencies such as above knee amputations described as below knee (and also the wrong limb quoted) and colostomies confused with different types of stomas. There was also a very well publicised case of an assessor being sacked and claimant being awarded damages as a result of his actions. He wrote up the assessment report without ever seeing the claimant. And DWP accepted it without question, until the claimant complained that the report bore no relation to their condition, and DWP were obliged to investigate.

I wonder how people would feel if the government decided to cut child benefit. If it was just absorbed into UC and therefore only those with a very low income would receive it. After all we all hear of these family who just put the money into a savings account for their kids so they obviously don’t need it

Or perhaps we should stop handing out state pensions for anyone with a decent private pension. All these old people rolling around in free cash, it seems ridiculous to me. We can’t carry on paying for their cruises and facelifts…

I say these things with much sarcasm, no political party would consider these things but reducing who PIP and other disability benefits can be paid to is fair game because obviously all those who are on long term sick leave are dirty scroungers.

I have heard that this frequently happens, that the assessment report bears little resemblance to what was actually said in an assessment. Do they think that the claimant will not challenge this when it happens?

Many claimants, either physically or mentally disabled don’t feel strong enough to fight the system.

There is no way I could have attended a tribunal if it were necessary, I would have given up on my claim way before then and hence DWP get away with it.

Unfortunately many claimants don’t challenge an unfair assessment, because they simply don’t have the support or the capacity to do so. They have to follow a procedure called ‘mandatory reconsideration’ a request to the DWP to look again at the decision - this has to be requested within 28 days of the original decision. DWP very rarely change the decision at this point and the claimant is forced to go to tribunal. Many drop out at this stage as they find it too complicated and too stressful and there just isn’t the support available to help with the process. And guess which cohort has the biggest drop out rate ? Yep folks, it’s those nasty scroungers with mental health problems. This is the most vulnerable group and the most likely to accept a wrong decision because the system makes it too hard for them to do otherwise.

Very well put.

Thank you for explaining@PilgorTheGoat , and @Rosscameasdoody It does stand to reason that some people would not be able to challenge the untruths told, if their reservoirs are low, or they lack some form of support. These are all things that some people, thankfully for them, will never have to experience, or think about.