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.

And so far it seems none of that stuff has helped her.

At which point there is no help. There are stick a plaster on it therapies that helps some people. You have to wait on long wait list and the amount of sessions you get offered is half the recommend duration for those therapies, but it is there, but if you are one of the unfortunate people whose MH is poor that none of this helps you, but you do not have a condition such as psychosis you fall down a crack where you are too ill to be helped but you don't meat the threshold for secondary care therapies. My "help" consists of a psych appointment 6 months over the phone as they won't even see me in person anymore and 12 diazapam a month as all other medications I have tried make me worse. I was told I need specialist long term psychotherapy. Also told they won't put me on the wait list for it as it's 5 years long already. So I'm just stuck.

Until you have lived this you can't appreciate just how little help there is if you don't respond to first line treatment.

It's to scare people now into finding a job - any job . This hasn't been thought through because a lot of business such as retail, hospitality and care require flexibility and people with children or other care commitments cannot work unsociable hours .

OP
I know that as an initial statement this may sound trite, but if you are almost house bound, can you look for a WFH job?
If your skills to date were in a type of work that can't be WFH you could look into restraining into something different where that would be possible.
It would probably take a while but what have you got to lose? (Again I'm talking about online training and/ or self study - for example my professional exams were/ are all self study.)

It's going to happen sooner or later, regardless of who is in charge. It has to.

There are too many people in this country living on benefits for years (and even decades) out of sheer bone idle laziness. It's all a game to them, faking illnesses and all sorts to see who can get the most out of the system. People who have been of working age for over a decade and have never done a day's work claiming they "can't find a job".

The reality is that the people who abuse it may well have spoiled it for some people who really need it. But it's those people you should be blaming, not the government.

I think this is what the govt are going to encourage…

I could have this wrong but one of the most frightening aspects is that they are proposing changing the people who actually do the assessments so that they are no longer medical professionals but job centre staff.

💯 well said

Unfortunately my issues are more complicated than just not being able to leave the house, this is just one of the more debilitating issues at present.

I am a qualified accountant, I’m not an uneducated woman. I used to work full time in a busy city. I suffered from something akin to a nervous breakdown or perhaps an autistic burnout and now it is like my mind is mush. I can’t concentrate on anything for more than a few minutes. I am a liability to myself.

I have tried volunteering, tried to take gentle steps back into the working world but the more anxious I became, the worse the flashbacks from my childhood became to the point where it is now overwhelming. I barely sleep and when I do I wale up screaming. I’m exhausted.

Who are these people who having been faking illnesses for years? Where are you getting your data?

It sounds like you think it’s easy to get PIP.

I don’t claim it myself but two of my friends have virtually had nervous breakdowns from filling out the forms for their neurodiverse dc who need a lot of support. It’s no walk in the park.

I'm sorry but are you really the nieve have you never seen the scammers ..thete have been recently in the tabloids come on

There is evidence that the introduction of working tax credits meant that employers in the UK started to get away with paying uk employees less than they otherwise would as they thought the government would pick up the tab. Average salaries are much higher in countries such as Germany which didn’t go down this route.

we do need to reduce our sick pay bill as a country, but surely one of the most effective ways of doing this is to improve the health service? The majority of long term sick do - I’d imagine - want to get better. People in physical jobs waiting for joint replacements etc. just get it done. And how to improve the health service? Try looking at the funding methods used by other EU countries. Part privatisation seems to work well there. It’s not the US system or nothing!

It would just be more of the same then. Having to fill in difficult forms, and undergo assessments, and the merry go round continues. And people with serious conditions, that will never improve, will be caught up in the drag net.

This is spot on.
Shame for the people that need it.
Sadly a whole core of people who just can't be bothered to do life have ruined it for those that need it.

The Daily Mail/GB News is my guess.

Absolutely this ...something has got to change

Nobody said it was easy. But when your 'job' is to get as many benefits as humanly possible, you have lots of time and energy to dedicate to it.

I used to work at a school in a deprived area and the parents would be congratulating one another on their accomplishments (for lack of a better word) in getting more benefits. They'd give eachother advice and bitch about others who got more than them.

Anyone who thinks this isn't happening is either stupid or acting stupid.

Or are the p we are actually talking about

The fact that you get this news from "the tabloids" and believe it tells me everything I need to know about you and your intelligence level.

I have known people who have been prosecuted for benefit fraud... and it was stuff like claiming they lived alone when they didn't. And the fact you have read about it in the tabloids says a lot. Stop reading that shit. My own work coach at the job centre told me off for reading that crap too. It is sensationalist crap.

The trouble is, these proposals are making it sound like all people on benefits are scammers until they prove otherwise. And people like OP are in a huge panic that they are going to have their money stopped and be forced into work that they wont realistically last 2 days in... and that is if they even get offered a job to begin with.

You seem to believe the rhetoric that a lot of people are swinging the lead... you are the naïve one.

Many people can't even fill the forms in themselves let alone make a job out of it.

It's fact have I nice evening

Government who designed the 'system' and made it as difficult as possible to claim sickness benefits complaining about people 'playing' said system.

Meanwhile they cut the schemes helping disabled people back in to work and ensure mental health support no longer exists for most people, unless they can pay for private.

They have been in charge for fourteen years. Bunch of cunts. It hasn't always been like this, fuckers have run the country into the ground.

Of course things will have to change, if Labour get in. Both parties want to reduce the welfare bill.

It was Labour in 2008 ish, that bought in the ESA system, groups, and requirements about getting “depressed and bad backs” back to work, and bought in (then) individual assessments by ATOS and Capita.

Nothing will, however, change for the better.😗

there are some honest conversations that need to happen if people want better public services.

Yes there are. Stop sending billions to Rwanda, stop spending on useless vanity projects like HS2, reduce NHS waiting lists so people are healthy enough to work - those are the things we need to talk about.

And we need to stop talking about “net contributors” as if the economy was some kind of piggy bank - as a proportion of income some of the poorest pay much more tax when other forms of taxation like VAT and Council Tax are taken into account.