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.

I think you would have been better not coming back to the thread at all if that’s all you’re going to contribute. I posted upthread about the specifics surrounding the assessment and reassessment of disability benefits and why claimants were so afraid of them. I predicted that those who are only interested in arguments perpetuating their own narrative would ignore it. Thank you for proving me right - if you’d read and understood it you wouldn’t have posted as you did. And yes, as a lifelong disabled woman who takes a cocktail of meds not to die in a few days you should have a lot more empathy. The fact that you don’t claim indicates that you don’t need to. Not everyone is so fortunate or worthy of being judged by such skewed arguments as you’ve put forward on this thread.

@GoodnightAdeline The language that you have used in your post, just now, tells me not to waste my time. Your lack of empathy is for you to grapple with, or not. Hth.

@Rosscameasdoody I think that your posts are so informative, and helpful. Thank you. I have learnt a lot reading them.

🤣

No, the discussion was centred around continual reassessment for those conditions which are permanent and unlikely to change - which is expensive and unnecessary. There is a lot of discussion and detail upthread as to why disabled people fear any assessment, and it has nothing to do with not believing it’s necessary, it’s the unfairness inherent in the system.

If that’s aimed at me, I find it really interesting. I’m severely disabled myself from a congenital condition and several acquired conditions over the years. I’ve worked for over twenty five years as both a benefit adviser and a support worker for disabled people and have posted from my extensive experience in these fields and both personal and professional insight into how disabled people view the benefits system. So I think the fact that you find my posts amusing says rather more about you than it does about me.

Perhaps the objective, and they haven’t outlined anything in detail so we don’t know as yet, but perhaps the objective is for those on PIP to use those additional finances to help them work.
So eg….travel support, etc
Perhaps the revised point of PIP will be for those that need additional care or support to carry out tasks they can’t do and for them to attend, if they are able, courses and so on to get back into work. As you say if PIP is to help those stay in work.

Whether those payments for people to help dress, cook, travel etc are supplied by some new workforce or a dedicated carer and paid directly to the carer/ helper or whether they are paid to the PIP applicant to then pay on….who knows.

I do think, however, that as yet there’s not that much detail and Sunak won’t be the only one looking to reduce either the amount or the number of payments. Whether that’s even possible remains to be seen.

Did any of them have writer’s cramp or Munchausens? Because they’re the kind of claimants we are talking about here. It’s funny how nobody responding to me can bring themselves to even say ‘writers cramp’. That list was an absolute shocker. A disgrace not everyone with Huntingdons is eligible but somebody with writer’s cramp is. And before you say ‘but they should all be eligible…’ remember the money is finite.

Thought you were off?

Do you seriously believe someone with writers cramp will get pip? Try it and see what happens

OPs case, with the exception of autism, so anxiety and depression could however change over time. So the thread is centred around issues that are variable.
The affects of autism on daily life can also change by learning strategies to cope. ( appreciate that depends on its level of severity and also whether OP is getting support to deal with that ).

It would, therefore be relevant to reassess whether situations have changed both in terms of whether they have got better but also worse.
If people could, for example walk /drive their kids to school but now can’t do that, or go on holiday but now they can’t do that or visa versa it changes everything and would change the support required.

1 in 3 do. Yep, it’s unbelievable isn’t it.

https://www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/personal-independence-payment-pip/success-rates

I always assumed PIP was to pay for additional support.
Im very confused what it’s all about now.

If someone lives independently but can’t cook then additional money is needed to pay for that or if they can’t clean because of physical disabilities it would pay for a cleaner. Or if they need someone to drive them to work and do on………
I’m getting the impression it isn’t for that at all. I’m finding it very confusing.

PIP is not an out of work benefit. It’s a cost based benefit. The assessment process and the legislation used to underpin it doesn’t call for assessment of the ability to work - that’s currently the job of the work capability assessment and whatever replaces it when the planned reforms are introduced. It’s an accepted fact that living with a disability is expensive and that disabled people in work are among some of the lowest paid, so PIP and its forerunners were designed to address that by assessing how disabled people manage in their daily lives and to mitigate some of the extra costs involved.

There is no suggestion of scrapping PIP or for it to be used to get claimants into work - it accepts that there are people claiming it who are simply not capable of work. If the consultation plans are anything to go by, the reforms will once again be directed at narrowing eligibility and replacing ongoing cash payments to some claimants with payments for one off costs, and in some cases fast tracking to appropriate treatments.

And there is already a payment which goes direct to a carer - Carers Allowance. To qualify the person must be caring for at least 35 hours a week and the person they are caring for must be in receipt of the appropriate disability benefit. All disability benefits are currently included in local authority assessments for paid care in the home, and to replace those with a ‘new workforce’ to address these needs in place of the PIP system would cost considerably more that the disability benefit system as it stands now.

There are a lot of people talking at cross purposes here and confusing out of work sickness benefits with disability benefits like PIP, which are paid regardless of the ability to work. PIP, DLA for children, and Attendance Allowance are all paid to mitigate the extra cost of living with a disability and assess a range of activities essential to daily living and mobility, to see how much extra help disabled people need. They do not assess the ability to work, and are paid regardless of whether the claimant works or not.

Personal Independence Payments are to help people with some of the additional costs involved in having a disability.

They aren't to help you pay for a cleaner, or shop (you can have shopping delivered). They won't pay for a cook (you can buy ready meals and a microwave.) They aren't to help you get to work.

''You might get the daily living part of PIP if you need help with:''

• preparing food
• eating and drinking
• managing your medicines or treatments
• washing and bathing
• using the toilet
• dressing and undressing
• reading
• managing your money
• socialising and being around other people
• talking, listening and understanding

https://www.gov.uk/pip

Ok
Thankyou.
Its sort of what I thought ie to help pay for additional support. I didn’t think it was just for working people but for all, if they have extra costs.
It sounds like the intention then is to be asking what a claimants additional costs are, both regular and one offs.

So the reassessments won’t just be based on ability to receive PIP but also the claimants associated costs
Does that sound about right. ??

( I’m aware of the carers allowance, as an aside I didn’t think they’d reduce this as most carers doing the hours are family members, it would be mental to remove that system. )

I've just spotted another two.

Alcohol Misuse = 61.60%
Drug misuse = 56.90%

So an extra £800 p/m for costs associated with drug dependencies.

Is giving extra money to alcoholics and junkies, to fund their addictions, really helping them?

Would you expect someone with mobility issues to accept a job that required standing, walking around, and climbing up ladders? No? So why should @Universalsnail accept a job they cannot do without exacerbating their health conditions and becoming seriously ill.

It's up to £737 every 4 weeks. Not everyone will get the higher rate.

Thankyou @Rosscameasdoody and @Thelnebriati
so PIP is, as you say, to mitigate the additional costs of living with a disability.

Thats what I thought, tbh I’ve been getting very confused with all the different names for everything 😳

So perhaps Sunak et all are looking at something like my earlier thoughts. ie itemised care where individual costs are paid for. That’s much more expensive to run than the current system……..time will tell I suppose whether that’s affordable.

At the very least "funding addiction" in the absence of adequate support systems and treatment might prevent crime against people and property due to the desperation of needing their fix.

I wonder what drives people into addictions that ultimately result in debilitating conditions? Could it be series after series of unfortunate events that just drive people to any mechanism to blot out their suffering? You know like bereavements, physical and sexual abuse, grinding poverty, trying to get support when one realises one has a problem and then being judged and batted around the system with no concrete assistance leading to sheer hopelessness? Oh yes, I forgot, it's just lack of resilience isn't it?

As an aside
My mother was terminally ill with cancer for a long time and it’s only because of this thread that I’ve found out that she could have claimed financial support. She didn’t, we didn’t know!
Whilst I appreciate OP and others are extremely worried at the moment this thread, I’m sure, will help people understand the system which for some of us, we rarely dip into.

Firstly let me correct you. It’s not that one in three people with writers cramp claim for it. It’s that one in three people who actually make a claim for PIP are successful. The table of claims in your link doesn’t give the actual numbers of claims made for individual conditions, it only gives the percentage figures of successful claims. So the percentage rate isn’t an indication of the number of claims made.

Secondly, writers cramp as assessed for by PIP is usually either a severe form of repetitive strain injury or caused by abnormal muscular formation. It’s an autonomic nervous system response failure causing associated pressure in the muscle and frequently requiring surgery. It can cause permanent disabling nerve injury. It can also be connected to, and a symptom of, other more serious forms of illness such as diabetes and cardio vascular disease among others. It’s also quite common, so the one in three people who make a successful claim will have a severe and disabling form of it, or have a more serious condition with which it is connected. So, no, not unbelievable.

You don't know much about addiction do you?