To be confused by benefits cuts to the disabled and ill?

[AllyHayHay]

As luck would have it, I have not been in this position, but I do know of one disabled lady who has struggled. She was incredibly fortunate to already own her own home prior to her accident.

I am not what you'd call politically astute, but I have been reading about the proposed spring benefits cuts and wonder why people always discuss this ONLY affecting the sick and disabled.
I am also aware that there are many, many rough areas with families who have never worked, people who are struggling with addiction, prison sentences (their kids, spouse, etc) and these people never seem to be included in the Guardian articles and opinion pieces online.

Why would a system wish to make the life of a disabled person worse, yet ignore the growing issues of illiteracy, generational poverty and other issues which are going on in most urban areas just out of sight of the comfortably off?
Why not address the reasons that great swathes of people are living on benefits across the UK who are NOT disabled? I imagine this would drag up questions of why those issues persist - and no one in government wants to address that.

Since benefits claimants who are not in work of on the pension are a minority, are these cuts more of a populist tendency?

😂 thank you! ❤️ Apologies for making Indeed think you've moved house 😂

It is so they can say it is all excuses.

Yay 💐
How wonderful !
Ive been following your conversation and this is just amazing
👏👏👏 to @ChilliLips for all the wonderful encouragement and positive vibes too

ps I am in no way suggesting either of you is a yeti 🤣🤣🤣

Good luck from me too

This has made me smile. Good luck @iwentjasonwaterfalls .

So, Disability Confident employers have a guaranteed interview process for anyone with a disability who meets the minimum eligibility. Definitely worth keeping an eye on these organisations. @iwentjasonwaterfalls i would make it clear in your application that you have a disability and would like to be considered under this scheme if applicable, if I were you!

https://open.spotify.com/show/6NyPQfcSR9nj0DPDr2ixrK?si=8EO1nY5kQx-PvQjhZSlG1A

I can recommend this podcast, for anyone looking to improve their health and wellbeing.

The NHS is very much a better than usual place to work if you are disabled, but just because an employer pays lip service to disability rights that does not mean they live by that. Only a very few employers genuinely invest in their staff and employ disabled people. Pretending jobs are not much, much harder to find if you have a chronic health condition and/or a disability is disingenuous at best and ignorant at worst.

I remember someone on another forum googling one of my conditions. They had the nerve to tell me it should only affect my confidence. I really wish it did. Dread to think where they got their information from

(My eyes shake which causes vision worse than normal as we as other things)

The thing is, as the Mum of a 22yr old young man who is autistic….i don’t want him written off and relegated to live a life on benefits. I want him to work and he’s now at a point where work is becoming a possibility or even some college.

He is absolutely the person these reforms could help …if they are done well enough. My son might not ever be able to work full time, he might need support but work is a possibility.

he gets PIP and he also gets UC plus the disability element of this. He does not get it as he would spend it all on computer gaming and takeaways. It goes on my account and I pay for a carer/PA from it. He gets an allowance to do what he likes with.

Th PA is the biggest expense at £36 an hour so is only here 4hrs a week. That takes up the rest of his money.

The Conservatives got rid of the sheltered workshops where people like my son could gain work experience . I’d give up some of the disability element of UC if it went to providing work experience a dedicated workshop for people like my son. He wouldn’t need the PA to help him get out if he was helped to attend something like this.

@WilmaFlintstone1 the first Remploy factories to be closed, 29 of them, were when Labour were in government. The rest followed, over 50, from about 2012 under the Conservatives. There was a view that it was better to help people with disabilities into mainstream work. We’ve seen how that worked out.

Many years ago, I worked for them, in payroll. Lots of the men in our factory would not have been employed in the mainstream. Some started there, developed skills and moved on. There is still a sheltered workshop in Watford which is the sort of place your son might go to if you had one nearby. https://watfordworkshop.co.uk

It must be so frustrating for you both if there are no opportunities for him to get some work experience.

I wont answer that because I will get picked apart.
But I am in the LWRCA group in UC and get PIP at the lower rate on both awards and have a blue badge.

So I dont feel I need to justify myself, as the assesors who had aall the evidence felt I was entitled to all that.

But its not just physical injuries that would make someone unable to make a journey to work.

I’ll give an example from my own family.

My sister has always been ‘nervy’. A bit socially anxious, a bit on edge, quite highly strung and difficult. An avoidant type of personality.

When she was in her 20s she worked, through necessity. I wouldn’t say she enjoyed work as such but it seemed to keep her on an even keel. She then had her oldest (who is now 8) when she was 29 and never went back from mat leave.

Since then her life has just shrank and shrank. She’s gone from somebody who could take the tube to work and socialise (in a limited fashion, but still) to somebody who barely leave the house, doesn’t see any friends, and her anxieties have gone through the roof. She doesn’t let her kids go on slides. She doesn’t like leaving her small village. Her husband phoned a number of months back to say life with her agoraphobia and anxiety induced control was unbearable. She’s declared she won’t be working again for at least another 10 years and while we don’t discuss these things, I would be surprised if she isn’t now pushing for PIP.

Paying her to stay at home to alleviate her anxiety would be the worst possible thing anyone could do for her. I’m not convinced it has the effect it is supposed to, in fact I think on a population level it’s causing far more problems than it’s solving.

Clearly what the gov have found is that there's now a huge and growing number of people able to access these benefits because they've had some halfwit doctor somewhere agree that their MH condition or neurodiversity is so bad they can't work full time/ need assistance in some way. Now I am not saying there is NO ONE with MH/ neuroduversity related issues this bad, but it certainly isn't this number of people we are seeing.
People are confusing normal struggles with significant disability. They are guided in hamming up their struggles to receive this money. The problem isn't their fraud really, it's the fact it isn't sustainable when more andmore people either leave, partially or fully, the workforce and there are fewer people to pick up the bill. I actually don't blame people to be honest, as for most people modern life is anxiety and depression inducing whether they are neurodiverse or not, it's not their fault the system Is so easy to play. I don't think the gov are going to go after people with significant disability or hardship that is beyond their control.

My thoughts entirely

Latest from The Times today here but it’s not confirmed yet and there’s another article about how angry some Cabinet members are. 1m people to have their PIP cut but an increase in lowest rate of UC.

Most of the details seem to have been pretty much leaked now.

But nothing has been confirmed as such, and will not be, until they unveil exactly what these cuts will actually look like. In the meantime, all this conjecture has done, is cause a lot of worry, for some people.

I think for some people with milder symptoms or anxiety a bit of prodding them into work might benefit them but for others with more severe and enduring MH difficulties it could backfire with disastrous consequences. If someone is forced into work the risk is that they won't be able to cope, their mental health worsens, they have a crisis, need to be hospitalised, are not able to look after themselves or their children. Employer is let down and likely discouraged from ever hiring anyone with mental health problems again.

More details out today. Reform is mainly to stem the flow of MH applications, both new and existing. If successful after assessment/reassessment, LCWRA and PIP to be cut and PIP frozen. That’s basically it in a nutshell.

And adjustment to some of the PIP criteria?

It's strange because often on these types of threads you often see people protest that you can't blame the individual for spurious successful claims because it's the system that's allowing them or even encouraging them. The government then looks to reform the system to weed out these claims and they get accused of cruelty. They can't win!

We need to get used to the idea again as a society that life isn't meant to be easy. That most of us will suffer with poor mental and physical health at some point in our lives and this doesn't mean that we are exempt from working when things get tough. We should expect to work most of our lives. We should expect for this to be tough and become increasingly difficult as we age. This is the only way a welfare state is sustainable! We can't all see ourselves as weak and in need of state assistance because we suffer with mild/moderate pain, anxiety etc. Unfortunately these are part of the 'normal' human condition. It would be unbelievably lucky to get to 67 plus and not suffer with any of this and yet the system relies on most of us working and contributing until at least then.

Some of the PIP criteria are odd already. The reading criteria only scores points if you cannot read and understand one sentence in your native language (it doesn’t actually say that on the form but the assessors work to that benchmark of difficulty). If you can apply for PIP with its 50 page form, even with significant difficulty and support, you definitely cannot score there.
There aren’t any criteria about struggles with household cleaning, but that is an area that many disabled people incur extra expense and difficulty in.

@ChilliLipswhere have you seen this

Except that people with a disability have all that with a disability on top. It is the disability that needs support not a’normal human condition’.