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.

She doesn’t know much about disability either or mental illness.

And not everyone will get the mobility component, so potentially only £437 a month for daily living - and again that’s at the higher rate, which not everyone will qualify for.

I remember seeing a documentary in the 1990's in which a crackhead said he'd sold his car for £1500 and popped into the crack den on his way home. He left in the morning owning his dealer money.

I'm happy to pay taxes to fund addiction treatment, but I object to funding addiction lifestyles i.e. paying addicts 'disability' money so that they can use it to buy drugs and booze.

On the subject of addiction, as it's been brought up and despite it being a bit of a de-rail obviously designed to get people frothing in indignation at misuse of public money, how much do you think it costs to prosecute crimes committed by addicts etc and then keep them in prison? People who need mental health intervention if there is any hope of them achieving a shred of self worth or remotely decent standard of living?

I suspect the numbers have been crunched and the current system is the most cost effective. Aside from just culling of course. The way some people behave, I wonder if they would prefer a society where people were just quietly euthanized to save money. Because of course it would never in a million years happen to them.....

Yeh. Thought you’d left the thread. Can’t help sticking the boot in a few more times

"Can’t help sticking the boot in a few more times"

That's very ableist language for you to use to insult somebody that has declared a disability.

The list is anything but an absolute shocker if you aren’t using it to demonstrate your own utter lack of knowledge as to how disability works. Most of those conditions on the list you linked have mild to severe forms, and in most cases a PIP claim will only be successful for the more severe forms. You seem incapable of understanding this and you’re googling for information which supports your own narrative which for the most part is based on assumption, not fact. The list only gives percentages of successful claims - if you look carefully you’ll see that no actual numbers of claims are mentioned, so it’s not indicative of anything, other than your own desperation to prove a non-point.

And if you have a look at my post upthread regarding writers cramp you’ll see that it’s actually not what you think it is. And that applies to many of the conditions listed in that link. Successful claims are in the main awarded in respect of significant disability because of a stand alone condition or one that is a symptom or indicator of another more severe condition.

It’s bloody ableist isn’t it.

Everyone on here keeps talking about ‘how disability works’ or ‘how mental health works’, which is a fallacy as nobody does and the scope and complexity of human health is so vast and different in every person that there is no single person who understands ‘how it all works’.

I’m sorry but nobody with writer’s cramp (pretty sure if it was nerve damage proper then it would’ve come under ‘neuropathies’ which, if you knew how disability works, you would’ve picked up on 🙄 or one of the many other categories for muscular issues) needs disability benefits.

It’s like you’ve all become so entrenched in your general position of ‘everyone who says they need benefits deserves them’ that you’ve lost all sense of reality. You’ll sit and defend something which, to those of us who weren’t born yesterday or who can exercise a degree of scepticism, know is extremely feeble.

Either way the fact is too many people - 4 million - are claiming benefits for health conditions and it’s unaffordable, especially given the enormous numbers out of work. STILL nobody has answered why Labour have admitted we are financially up shit creek if simply ‘taxing the corporations’ was actually an option.

And ultimately that bill is being stripped back and will continue to be stripped back regardless of which party is in power, because benefits and healthcare aren’t the only things that matter.

I think PP is correct when they say it’s a choice between reducing payments by 20% or reducing claimants by 20%. I would rather the latter because I’m not disingenuous enough to pretend somebody with ‘writer’s cramp’ or Munchausens needs the money as much as somebody with Huntingdon’s or muscular dystrophy.

@GoodnightAdeline

I completely agree.

"Either way the fact is too many people - 4 million - are claiming benefits for health conditions and it’s unaffordable, especially given the enormous numbers out of work. STILL nobody has answered why Labour have admitted we are financially up shit creek if simply ‘taxing the corporations’ was actually an option."

1 in 4 people are classed as disabled so it's not a surprise that so many claim something.

And ultimately that bill is being stripped back and will continue to be stripped back regardless of which party is in power

Try watching last night’s Question Time. Wes Streeting explains why you’re wrong.

"1 in 4 people are classed as disabled so it's not a surprise that so many claim something."

There's no way on earth that 1 in 4 people are 'disabled' in any meaningful way.

Doesn’t change the financial restraints.

Agree

He said GPs ‘dish out sick notes’ and we need to get people back to work.

Christ you're obtuse. Your position is entrenched despite many people patiently explaining the complexities of conditions, their variability etc. The system in place is designed to prevent people getting into worse and worse positions that will end up costing the state even more money.

Taking money from the most vulnerable rather than looking at where the most money is wasted for example by bloated corporations milking state expenditure via their government cronies is ideologically driven because kicking people while they're down is apparently our national sport. And you're thoroughly enjoying it.

You must have watched a different version to me. Or mixed him up with Chris Philip.

Drug and alcohol abuse are not listed as disabilities under the Equality Act 2010, but they are still legislated for if the effects are the cause of associated physical and mental health conditions. PIP works in a similar way. Everyone who applies for PIP who uses drugs and/or alcohol problematically has to show how their addiction affects their health and their ability to carry out the range of daily living tasks assessed, and if appropriate, how their mobility is affected. Just as PIP is not awarded for a disability itself, but for the effect of that disability on daily living, addiction in itself is not the reason an award for PIP is made.

Just to be clear, it’s assessed using the same criteria as for all disability, and is awarded appropriately for the level of disability caused by the addiction, not the addiction itself. Addiction can also be linked to mental health problems, and in the same way, it’s the level of disability caused that’s assessed, not the addiction.

Verbatim:

Yes I think it is true and I've said so myself in the past I think there are GPs who are dishing out sick notes without being able to see their patients

If we can get people treated and back on their feet we can get them back to work

Liz Kendall:

But in return for these new opportunities, you will have a responsibility to take up the work or training that's on offer. Under our changed Labour party, if you can work there will be no option of a life on benefits

I’ve tried my best several times upthread. I’ve given up now. The level of ignorance and stupidity is breathtaking. Terrible thread - mostly down to the same few posters who keep digging and digging to support their own narrative, despite all the evidence to the contrary. I’m out.

So again, try more carrot before you try more stick.

People returning to work need fixed hour and pay contracts. Not as and when. Fix that first.

@BIossomtoes you still haven’t answered why Labour are scrapping expensive policies when they could just tax the big corporations more?

I think certain posters here think if you waltz into the benefits office and say "I'm an alcoholic" or "I'm suffering from writers cramp" they get handed a wad of cash every month no questions asked. Which I can personally testify is not the case. My mental health is I'm the toilet after several years if unfortunate events and after being otherwise healthy for 55 years I'm now medicated for high blood pressure and have CPTSD. I had to pay for evidence to appeal against being placed as fit for work related activity when I'm patently not as I'm being evicted, can't find affordable housing and appear to be having a prolonged panic attack. Crying in benefits offices is really not where I saw myself at this point in my life and I spend every day loathing myself for lack of resilience and pondering suicide.

Fear is the mind killer and trying to fend it off is exhausting.

You’ve just been quoting from the list of disabilities used to assess PIP. You do know that PIP is not an out of work benefit, and does not assess the claimants’ ability to work ? It’s a cost based benefit to mitigate the cost of living with a health condition, not a sickness benefit. It can be claimed regardless of whether the claimant works or not. Just checking because you seem to be mixing up the terminology and now the eligibility.