Upset by way govmt is managing disability benefits change

[Rosie8880]

The narrative government is sharing about disability benefits changes is upsetting. They speak about the ballooning of claims & how this is unsustainable. Isn’t this connected to the collapse of NHS, waiting times and people awaiting for diagnosis, unable to get treatment. The most vulnerable people in society are being impacted and there are other ways to bring in income // reduce spending (Tax wealth, and by wealth mean multi millionaires/ rather than poorest in society). This is not the way. Like to hear about those that are impacted.

Exactly. I'm physically disabled and I'm already struggling to manage.

My whole food for today has been:
Three fish fingers
About ten chips
A small bowl of soup

And that's a good day for food for me.

Again, I'm physically disabled and I need decent nutritious healthy regular meals to help me have sufficient energy. A healthy person would start getting sick trying to manage on what I eat. Instead, I have to fight through my physical condition and weariness from constant hunger to get even the smallest thing done. Even putting a load of laundry on is exhausting for me. I haven't eaten properly in months.

And now I'm supposed to eat even less than that? How??

No, I can't get to the food bank. And no, they don't deliver.

I live in Australia. We have a new hire who is originally from London, who has lived here for 1.5 years.

She said she can't believe how many people claim benefits in the UK, and the extent of MH issues in the country. In contrast, there is very little of it here. And even those who do claim are on the poverty line - it certainly is much more financially beneficial to work in Australia, even in a minimum wage job.

Now obviously the question is why? Is it too easy to claim? Is the reward for work too low in comparison to benefits? Is the cost of living too high that people just give up on life and spiral in to depression and then 'can't' work? Is there a lack of hope in the UK? I suspect it is a combination of all of these factors. Not an easy thing to unravel.

Ultimately I think one of the main goals should be to make companies that make billions in profits, pay their staff more. Wage growth is pathetic compared to the growth in profit among many large companies. Erosion of workers rights and salaries is a big problem.

Benefits should be a safety net not a way of life. The ballooning of people claiming and not working is far worse here than other European countries and it has to stop. I was listening to a woman on the radio yesterday who works but gets PIP so she can employ someone to clean her house and do her garden as working and doing both would be “too much” for her. Frankly working full time and keeping on top of both is hard for most people. If anything I think we should be giving the most disabled more go
improve their quality of life and not continually assessing people who will never be able to work - but claimants like the one I’ve listed, and the amount of young people not doing anything has to change.

Increasing taxes for those working to give to increasing numbers on benefits doesn't encourage people to work.

The rhetoric is not that different to the facism going on in the US atm. That the disabled are shirkers, benefits frauds & work shy. That the disabled are a drain on society. That being disabled is a lifestyle choice. And yet the DWP’s own published reports state the PIP fraud rate is only 0.2%!! But ok let’s keep blaming & scapegoating the disabled to justify facist economic policies.

You’re not a burden. You are valued - this change proposed will be challenged in House of Lords. Big hug X

Bear in mind it is pitch black for 4-5 months of the year… depression/ suicide is high in Nordic countries. We have a darkness inherent in our society - massive alcoholism issues as with all Nordic countries & the threat of Putin, is high. Just a balance ;)

Exactly. Most people who claim PIP are using it to participate and contribute to society by using to enable them to work. To cover some of the extra costs of being disabled. Also, no one is hoarding their PIP off-shore, it is flowing around the economy.

The wording around the ‘severity’ of disability is wrong too. For most people, their ‘level’ of disability depends largely on the accessibility of their surroundings and the appropriateness of support. The language the government are using illustrates their lack of understanding/care.

The 0.2% figure isn't serious estimate of the amount of people that are exaggerating or even completely fabricating their claims. If you were to think sensibly about how this kind of fraud would be proven, it would need a lot of intense surveillance and interrogation which would be hugely demeaning and intrusive for genuine claimants to go through and also hugely expensive for the state to administer.

Nobody, including the DWP have any idea about the number of people that are committing fraud. There are lots of people that are encouraged to describe their worst days and use specific phrasing to ensure they are awarded benefits. This could technically be fraud if it resulted in a claim being exaggerated but the people doing it wouldn't even know that this is what they are doing.

I think the Right wing is dangerous but this Labour government is certainly not that. To pretend they are is ridiculous! This could have been far worse if Reform had got into power. The fact Labour are carrying out these reforms shows how necessary they are and how we can't keep on going as we are, accruing more and more debt to fund our welfare habit.

Where are all the jobs that they are pushing people to get?

In times of austerity the vulnerable are always targeted: disabled people, refuges, jewish people etc.
Wr have a messed up society and it's not because of fraudulent benegit claimants...its due to incompetant governments.

Sorry about typos

Well something needs to be done!

We have an unsustainable amount of claimants and amongst those are people who can work but don't.

I know of two people straight away that play the system claiming depression and a bad back to get benefits and do not have to work. One of these I know very well and although he doesn't live an affluent lifestyle, he is more than happy with what he gets to live. He is absolutely capable of working but knows the right things to say to the GP.

The system needs a change and people need to remember that the benefit system was set up as a helping hand to get back on their feet, not as a lifestyle choice.

It’s just not sustainable. unfortunately, there’s too many playing the system which is going to affect those who the system should be helping and are legitimate claimants

My son has been out of college since last year.
He's been on UC since. Applying for all sorts of jobs. Shop work. Building yard etc

Hes done loads of courses through UC.
Got his forklift driving certificate theough them

Hes still not even had a single interview!

So what chance have I got?

https://www.youtube.com/live/rkUZCRNQTLU?si=blBiS8rklKEQD6q9

I highly recommend this video breaking down the changes fully. News outlets have not gone into detail about the changes and have gone for fear mongering.

@PuytA bit off thread but has your son registered with job agencies as with a fork lift licence there should be work out there for him.

80% of Pip claimants do not work.

So no most are not using it to participate and contribute to society by enabling them to work.

I suspect of the 20% who do work few will work full time so I'd imagine the amount of PAYE tax paid by PIP claimants is very low given the personal allowance before which you don't pay any income tax.

It's all the jobs that currently we are having to fill with migrants - carers, healthcare assistants etc. Thousands of people from overseas are managing to come and find work in the UK so how can people born here not manage to

regarding jobs people are not opening up vacancies because of the increase in employers NI and Min wage increase (however I am fully on board with this one!) I manage our outside contracts at work and so far 3 companies have uplifted costs by 15% to cover this and then actually make a profit. I personally think everyone’s tax should have gone up slightly as at least then we wouldn’t have jobs not opening up. My company is holding off opening up new vacancies and basically only recruit if someone leaves now

PIP exists to 'help with extra living costs'. My (adult, 32 y/o) son gets both elements at the highest rates. He has a congenital life threatening and life limiting condition. Basically, half his brain is bone and he can have 100s of seizures a day. As it goes we (parents) don't claim the carers element because we both (now) earn fractionally too much. However, when my son was younger, we were permanently well below the poverty line because we simply couldn't work due to 24/7 care responsibilities with no practical input from any other services. I mean none. Zero help.

Imagine that, your whole adult life blighted by a cumulative total of years spent in intensive care units and, when at home, on alternating wake nights. My son now lives independently and spends most of his PIP on his extra living costs, e.g. having someone come round every day to shop and cook, adaptations to his flat, cabs because he can't physically walk (paralysed down one side of his body), etc.

This change in the benefit structure, that's highly unlikely to affect my son, is just one more attack on disabled people and their families. However, PIP was never designed to be an income 'top up'. And what I'm seeing here is lots of people saying that they won't be able to afford to live without this 'top up'. They're not talking about 'extra living costs'. So the real problem would seem to be that the basic benefits aren't enough.

e. Isn’t this connected to the collapse of NHS, waiting times and people awaiting for diagnosis, unable to get treatment.

the people I know of are milking the system - claiming decades of arthritis whilst being a cash in hand cleaner etc.

it’s so hard to know what benefits people are getting including housing benefit

And you think taking the money off of disabled people who rely on it will work?

Of course there is such a thing as over diagnosis.

That doesn’t mean the government is acting ethically. I don’t think they are.

I think there's a mixture.

Mental health is much better understood now, and so more diagnoses. That's good.

For example my dd has a diagnosis of anxiety. Often when she's talking about it, I think "oh yes, I feel/felt like that too".
But when I was little I don't think anxiety was a diagnosis at all - dm used to call me "highly-strung".

But the flip side of the diagnosis, and it being understood, is that I can see with my dd, whereas I had to get on and developed strategies to cope, she says "it's my anxiety" and expects a buffer either in not having to do it, or being given more support.

There are times when that support is fantastic and I wish I had had it.
But there are times when I think that if she had to get on, then she'd have developed ways to cope and she would then be able to do more.
When she does push through, she often gains a sense of achievement which is really good for her mentally, and then she is able to do more. But it's often too easy to just say she can't, and then she can start spiralling downwards.

So the diagnosis has in some ways made her less capable and more disabled by having it, because she can hide behind it when she doesn't like the idea of doing something.

But ideally there would be mental health support to help people get through things and learn strategies - and that isn't in place. Dd had emergency counselling with CAHMS once (took 6 months to get it from being told it was urgent and top priority) and went back on the waiting list a year later as non-urgent and didn't get seen in the next 4 years before she dropped off the radar at 18yo. That's how bad the situation is.

There are people that truly need the support - yes, even for things like anxiety when getting out of the house is to hard for them to manage.
But the issue with mental health is it is almost impossible to distinguish between them and the person who decides that's the easier option to working. Someone might look fine when they come out of the house to go to the cinema, but not be fine if they're coming out to work and that is not they being "silly" it is a fact of their life.

In all honesty, there have been times with dd where I didn't know if she was really having a crisis or whether she just didn't want to do something (there were times I knew - both ways!). And if I, as her parent who knew her well, couldn't tell - then what hope is there for someone who has to make a decision on seeing them for perhaps an hour a week.

But the sad thing is that with people trying it on, it's ultimately the people who genuinely struggle who will probably be the biggest group to lose out, because the former group will put their energies into finding a different way of being supported.