To be concerned about what Liz Kendall is up to with disability benefits?

[Locutus2000]

The Times reporting just how enthusiastic Labour are about targeting the disabled.

I can only hope they are getting the worst ideas out there first, if not I dread to think what is coming in the upcoming review.

I was confident Labour would at worst be no worse than the Tories.

I was wrong.

Free archive link here.

It isn’t though, there are similar issues in other countries.

I do think that having a contributions based benefit system would help. Where I am from, unemployment benefits are linked to your last job, both in terms of duration and amount. It means you aren't instantly flung into financial disaster, and the incentive to work is greater. There is a separate system for ill health and disability.

I think that would make sense. At the mentioned all people get in terms of contribution based unemployment benefits is £90 a week for six months, no matter how long they have worked for.

They’ll have to raise salaries and perks in line with the private sector then. It won’t save any money. There will be a mass exodus to the private sector. The pension is the only perk of my LA job right now.

Is your son in residential care?

And that's bananas. In the Netherlands it's up to 75% of last wage, and you get one month for every full year worked. When it runs out, it drops but it helps bridge the gap between jobs and makes it really clear that you're better off working.

@Tangerinenets Does he claim PIP as well or is it just UC? If he claims PIP then someone could claim Carer's Allowance to help look after him. Apologies if you know all this but you only mentioned UC.

That sounds a great system - it so unfair if you have worked all your life the. Lose everything I’d say the form you work for goes under, yet someone who has never worked sits there and gets everything paid for them

I am saying that we have a generation of young people who will mature without the skills and resilience or the social conditions to function effectively as adults. Sadly, I expect the culmination of this may be increased suicide rates down the line, not necessarily during early adulthood.

There's a forum Called .. benefits and work. It's run by benefit advisors and is very good. Maybe worth a look to save any panic.

Go where? Employers in the private sector are either pausing recruitment or making redundancies, in preparation for the increase in NI’ers and the NMW?

This has been stopped by the courts as the Tory’s consultation process was unlawful. I think they’ll face other lawful challenges if they try to continue with it after a more in depth process. I know i couldn’t afford to stay alive if i lost my PIP. I’m mostly bed bound. I also have a young adult learning disabled son. We combine our money to keep everything afloat as my other two are at college, but we just wouldn’t be able to if they stripped us of PIP.

The consultation completely ignored that, as disabled people, we have added expenses that can’t just be covered by a catalogue. It won’t help me with the increased costs i have regarding gas and electric, it won’t help me with the limited special diet I need, it won’t help me when i need to order from somewhere like Deliveroo because something unexpectedly ran out, it won’t help me with the added detergent i need, or the more water i have to use. It sure as won’t help me with having to pay for services to cover things i can’t do (wash the upstairs windows, mow the lawns, taxis everywhere). It’s cruel to think there’s anything morally justifiable about it.

I didn’t vote for Labour because i knew they would screw over disabled people. But the top article refers to a Tory policy and consultation process. Now that’s been stopped and a proper consultation will take place- and any disabled people reading this, please write to the consultation and explain how this would impact you- the policy will be changed. I don’t trust how it will be changed, but i think it will differ from the Tory green paper

You make it sound as if 100% of private sector employers are doing this. Don't catastrophise.

My son has never worked. He is moderately learning disabled (meaning his IQ is between 30 and 70), autism, ADHD, processing skills disorder, and multiple other things besides. The people who’ve worked all their life and then become disabled are not more virtuous and deserving than those who were born with severe disabilities. I don’t know if you intended to sound that way, but i can’t fathom what else you could possibly have meant. I became disabled as a child, and managed some periods of work, but I’ve been out of it more than in it because of my health. We mainly relied on my husband’s income but I left him due to abuse. So now we’re totally reliant on benefits. Are we bad people because we haven’t/ have barely worked because we’re very sick? Do you know how hard it is to even convince an employer to take a chance on you in the first place when your disability is visible?

@Feelingathomenow But do they really just sit there and get everything paid for them when they've never worked a day in their lives? We'd never claimed benefits until my dh became ill and the process you have to go through to actually get awarded anything is extensive and exhausting. You are only excused from work after a thorough interview, where you have to provide medical evidence. That's just for UC, applying for PIP is a whole new nightmare of it's own. There are sanctions (benefits stopped) if people don't turn up for meetings with their work coach and don't spend enough time going for interviews and searching for jobs. If there are people sat at home doing none of this, then it's the work coaches who need looking at for not doing their jobs properly, its their job to make sure they aren't sat at home doing nothing and that they are actively seeking employment and attending work preparation training sessions.

We are just expected to starve.
Benefits are not a reward for working hard at some point, or paying in. There was a thread on here a while back about how you can't claim UC if you have so much in savings. Some people (who had savings) were actually upset about it and said they were being punished for "doing the right thing".

@Kitten1982 Surely that's what the welfare state should be all about, looking after people who can't look after themselves, not making them feel guilty or like second class citizens because they claim disability benefits as this government seems to be doing and encouraging the general public to think like that too. People ought to be grateful it's not them who was born with or developed a disability that meant they could never work and participate fully in a "normal" life.

You can get a lot of the same information free online elsewhere

It goes further than that - employers need to help neurodiverse people actually get the job in the first place.
My eldest has ASD - diagnosis of Aspergers from many years ago. He is a phenomenal worker, reliable, trustworthy, bright. His work ethic is amazing.
But he would never get past the interview stage.

You haven’t answered my question - where are the hundreds of thousands of job vacancies to take a mass exodus from the public sector?

I think it benefits the Government to have DWP make mistakes that mean claims are denied. There's a proportion that will give up and go away. They absolutely know that.

So many kids / young adults like this.

My son would have been given that diagnosis too. He's Autistic / ADHD. He's in mainstream along with a fair amount of ND kids and it's just set up to fail them.

It isn't even the teachers fault. They didn't expect this I imagine and what tools are they given to adequately support this growing population in a class of 30 kids? In primary my son was 1 of approx 5 ND kids in a class of 25.

But for the majority, those assets are in the property that they live in

The Government aren’t looking at those who have disabilities that make them unable to work though. They are looking at those that can work but are in receipt of a disability allowance.
I agree absolutely that the Welfare State was set up to look after those that cannot look after themselves, including pensioners who should be treated as equal.

Exactly
Plus those million pound assets are squeezed to those in the south of the country due to generally more expensive properties. The North still has to provide the same level of care with less money to do so as assets are not as high. Only 17% can pay in the NWest. ( 50% average across the country )
We need a centralised system to take the pressure off stretched councils.