So, who is going to employ all these disabled people the government wants to wean of welfare

[Jimisnotmyname]

Really wondering. Not saying it is necessarily a bad thing to encourage those who can work, to work but as a carer for 2 disabled family members, I am hugely struggling to find another job as nobody is willing to give me any flexibility (which I need as a carer) and there are always candidates who do not need the same accomodations I do. I would imagine that many of those currently not in work because of disability or a health condition, will often need a similar level of flexibility. I just wonder who on the the government think will offer jobs galore on these circumstances??

You’re the one looking at your own experience.

The Civil Service has their 60% mandated HOWEVER you can absolutely have an individual agreement for less, or even a full time WFH contract as a reasonable adjustment. I know multiple colleagues who work less office days for this reason & 1 colleague with autism who is now full time from home as an adjustment.

"Wishy Washy set of symptoms?"

Jesus wept - I'll describe my "Wishy Washy" symptoms for you shall I? I'll start at the bottom.....

Feet swell up when I'm tired, in more pain than usual, or, just when they feel like it.

Pain either side of my Achilles Tendons - can't bear weight, pain is so excruciating on steps that I've taken to going downstairs on my bum.

I have pain either side of my shins which feels like someone is using a cheese grater up and down my tendons.

Left knee - tendon pain that feels like a knife stabbing if I bend it - but locks out if I don't move frequently.

Right thigh - sometimes left as well, feels like I've had 2 or 3 punches to the muscle. Agony when I wake up - sometimes takes me 20 minutes to get to a sitting position in the morning.

Left hip - pure bone ache - feels like an abscessed tooth but in my hip.

Lower back pain - standing for more than a few minutes leaves me in awful pain - goes quite quickly when I rest.

Left and right mid back - Dermatome pain - apparently feels like shingles (never had them). When it's bad, I can't have anything on my top half and have to lay in bed naked to the waist.

Chest - Costochondritis (that's inflammation of the cartilage that joins the upper ribs to the breastbone). First episode, I thought I was having a heart attack.

Neck/Shoulders - Top of my spine feels like I'm being stabbed with needles. Shoulders stiff and Left side swells up.

Bladder - when I need to go - I NEED to go. That's fun in the morning when my thigh hurts and I can't get out of bed. Pads help but I've been known to cough or sneeze and piss the entire bed, through the great big granny pad I'm embarrassingly forced to wear, because I can't move fast enough.

Bowels - IBS symptoms - that's fun too when I'm slow on my feet.

Brain Fog - Best I can describe this is word blindness - My son will ask if I want a cuppa and my answer will be "yes please love, can I have the one that isn't coffee" - because I can't remember the word for tea. I forgot the word for armchair earlier and called it "the thing you sit on that isn't a sofa".

Fatigue - Ever had newborn twins, with colic, that don't sleep and no one helps you? That's what Chronic Fatigue is like. It's not "a bit over tired". And guess what? It doesn't get better with sleep - I could sleep for 12 hours (I wish) and I'd be just as fatigued when I woke up.

Insomnia - Both pain based and well, just because my brain decides I don't have enough problems - this one is especially fun when I'm in pain - even with the sleepy meds. Happens every change of season, usually lasts about 6 weeks straight.

Vertigo and Tinnitus - OK, I've had these two since way before I started getting any Fibro symptoms - but Fibro makes them a hell of a lot worse. Upside of this is at least I know I'm not dying because I can hear my heartbeat in my left ear constantly.

I was a fit and healthy 40 something year old - now I'm fifty something, have to use a walking stick, can only go out with my mobility scooter and a trip to Tesco for a few bits can put me in bed for hours, if not days. For the last 48 hours I've been on a cycle of sleep for an hour, wake for two hours and I've only been out of bed to make a cuppa and pee. Everything hurts and all I want is a hot bath with Radox powder and Epsom Salts. Except I don't have enough energy to get out of my pj's and into the bath, soak, maybe wash, if I can reach around myself, and then get out, get dry and put clean jammies on. And it makes me cry, I can't do something as simple as that.

Spend a day with the kind of ongoing pain that I have - without any decent pain meds (because Opioids don't work for Fibro - and I would't want to take them long term anyway). Anti-depressants or anti-seizure meds are the only drugs advised for Fibro (apart from Ibuprofen) and neither of them work for me.

Now tell me about my fucking nice wishy washy set of symptoms, that can't be proved

No, that's not comparable. All disabilities are not the same. Good for your friend, but please stop perpetuating the disgusting myth that disabled people are only disabled because they're lazy or unmotivated.

"...scrape by on JSA"

OK. so Universal Credit started in 2013 and has been in place for all new claimants since the beginning of 2019.

What this means is that anybody who has lost their job or otherwise qualified for related benefits since 2019 has been on UC and not JSA.

For context, there are around 7.4 million people claiming some sort of UC (this includes both unemployed and working people) and there are around 90k people still on JSA.

Again, reasonable adjustments to cater as much as possible. Questions in advance for interview, interview held via video (which is most common now than in person anyway), flexibility for those interviews (we have never refused a candidate who couldn’t make an interview due to illness, we offer to rearrange).

You can mention WFH in your interview and can express that your interest in the job is dependent on it for XYZ reasons.

I so hear you. My physically disabled daughter hasn’t been invited for any interviews (must have applied for 50 jobs now) it’s so disheartening. She is at least doing some volunteering, I really feel for her (and your son)
i really feel like throwing something at the TV when i hear the Labour Party blathering on, hope something turns up for your son, just keep plugging away xx

You see she is ‘just’ disabled.
She isn’t ill.

Most kf the people who struggle to work are people who are ill. Cancer patients, auto immune disease etc etc all of those illnesses that rib you from your energy agd means that cooking, cleaning, getting dressed, working aren’t possible.

In the works if ‘disability’ she has the huge privilege of having energy,

And tbh if I could swap being paralysed from the chest diwn to having an energy limiting disease (that forces me to stay ,ting diwn most if the day), I’d swap in a heart beat. No question asked.

To be fair these are all described symptoms there are no objective tests for any of these

My mum is in a wheelchair or her bed 24/7. Her brain has extensive damage from dementia and she can’t speak. She can’t make eye contact. She can’t make movements by choice. She can’t scratch her nose or wipe her eyes. She doesn’t talk to me. She can’t do anything at all. When I visit her I cling onto her hand desperately hoping whatever is left will recognise I’m there beside her.

Before that she didn’t know what up and down meant, screamed all night long for a year, and eventually tried to push me down two flights of stairs because she thought I was an imposter trying to harm her. She fell downstairs once after turning blue and landed beside me, had a seizure where she was foaming and all sorts.

I still wake up 2-3 times a week in a panic reliving it.

I have to keep going for my sister who needs someone to be like a parent.

My lovely mum is not even past the menopause yet.

Is that disabled enough to deserve benefits?

It's a tiny lift and his wheelchair barely fits in it. Keep in mind that he has a child sized wheelchair and not an adult one.

Has worked the few times he's been in it though so that's something. 😂

I think the rate of people out of work and claiming sickness benefits wouldn't be so high if the workplace, and society in general, wasn't so high pressure. Every job seems to be designed to suck the most out of you for the least pay they can get away with. Unrealistic and ever increasing targets. Constant cost cutting and amalgamation of duties so one person ends up what two people were doing before. All sorts of roles needing you to be multi-tasking and tech savvy. Timed toilet breaks and having to check in and out of work so they know exactly when you turn up. Bullying and unsupportive colleagues.

It is a recipe for burn out and poor mental health, but it also means that it's difficult for people to find low stakes jobs that they can feasibly do while disabled. If the pace of things was slower and it wasn't always about how to make the most profit while screwing over your employees, more people would be able to work.

I'll admit i skimmed this but I also replied to someone who replied to this poster mentioning M.E a few pages back about my "wishy-washy" symptoms, one of which was the intense migraines I get that make me unable to speak and in so much pain that the last time i had one, I decided to die in my own bed rather than go to a&e and have the lights burn my eyes even more. So I feel you. Solidarity in having an illness that people insist on thinking is fake despite medical evidence and Diagnoses. I wish these people would experience one day of it, then they can have an opinion.

Well done to your colleague - she sounds like a phenomenal woman.
But this type of "I know a person who has no legs but walks 10 miles a day," argument is bullshit. You have no idea about the inner workings of someone else's life. So to pit every single disabled person against your ONE experience is absolute rubbish.

My partner has fibro, and it’s definitely very real. The flare ups are horrendous, and are sometimes because he dared to make a cup of tea.

It’s not imaginary, there’s no bullshit motive. It’s real and it’s awful.

I really do have serious doubts as to the validity of this claim. Would you mind sharing the source of this?

However, if the claim "long term health conditions" includes basic things like diabetes (I have diabetes) then I really would take that claim with a pinch of salt.

Yes, many people have diabetes, but we are still able to work in an office every day of the week without any problems.

Because people with disabilities are easy pickings. They're some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in society.

If you don't want people on disability benefits then provide appropriate care before people reach crisis point. There's barely any mental health support because of cuts. There was even talk of sending the DWP into mental health wards.

You're going to have to find your big girl pants and take a deep breath...

To be fair, once you get as bad as my mum, you don’t get benefits anymore. You get a basic allowance to buy you clothes and toiletries. You certainly don’t get any PIP etc. If you’re unlucky enough the state pay for the care home. It’s shit. I’d work every hour of the week scrubbing toilets if it meant my mum would squeeze my hand.

There was once no objective test for MS, and so nobody believed it was real. Never mind the very real symptoms people were describing I guess.

Theres 10 sections for Daily living.

So one person can get 4 points in 2 sections and recieve PIP (8 points)

And another person can get 3 points in every section (30 points) and not qualify?

How is that fair?

That'll cure her then 🤔

There have always been physical evidence for MS and migraine etc.

Thanks for the sage advice! Nobody has ever thought of that. I'm sure her problems will be cured after reading your post.

I don't think they've thought it through. PIP is ostensibly to help with the extra costs caused by a disability, so why would that be linked to having 4 points in two sections than 3 points across a load of sections? Is someone who needs a lot of support with, say, toileting and dressing, necessarily going to have more costs than someone who needs moderate support with toileting, dressing, preparing food, and washing? It doesn't really add up.

I'm sorry to hear your day sounds like that everyday. Doesn't sound like much fun for you at all. I'm sorry you haven't found a treatment that works for your pain and other symptoms.

But as you can see from your own various ailments (I'm not using that word in a derogatory way by the way ) it could be conceived as "wishy washy" symptoms (in other words 'vague' not easy to pinpoint one single factor) and that fact, makes "fibromyalgia" an easy one to abuse by people wishing to not work or claim benefits for nefarious reasons. You yourself must be able to see that ?

I've suffered (and am medicated) for anxiety and previous depression. I can see exactly how 'anxiety' and 'depression' are abused in the same way.

I do have my own thoughts on disgnoses such as fibromyalgia and CFS, yes, I won't be disingenuous. I don't refute the symptoms whatsoever. What I refute is the diagnosis. It's often a palm off for not fully investigating other causes. Sometimes those causes can be mental illness. Sometimes (and I've seen it) it can be improperly investigated polymyalgia rheumatica, arthritis, lupus, (amongst other things )