Benefits explosion- where will it end?

[TheBlueKoala]

"PIP benefits explosion: Anxiety and depression handouts have nearly TRIPLED to £4.3bn since Covid - with autism and ADHD bill hitting £2.2bn and 'back pain' £1.6bn"

Something is not right here. When I have written before on here telling about people I know who claim for anxiety although they have rich social lives (funded by 440£ extra per month from PIP) I've had many people telling me that it's not possible etc. It sure is. How many 16 year olds are claiming PIP for anxiety?

Instead of benefits why not pay for therapy- invest massively in the NHS mental health support so that people with anxiety, adhd and autism can see a therapist regularly to help them. This would make a difference for tje individual and the society. Throwing out money won't.

AINBU- I agree with about
AIBU- No, extra money is always useful

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15510221/PIP-benefits-anxiety-depression-austism-ADHD-pain-Covid-Labour.html

Yes they do. Carers allowance is a pittance. 70 pounds a week

I take it you will be personally housing an elderly parent with dementia when the time comes? Not shipping them off to a care home for someone else to do so because family always looks after their own right?
Or taking in a psychotic and drug using brother who really needs to be sectioned.

They must have families then. Because when I was on UC in 2017 I was living on 317 pounds a month.

Financially maybe. People on higher rates of benefits have severe disabilities. I can guarantee you that their life is not better than yours.

Thatcher moved unemployment benefit claimants onto sickness/invalidity benefits where possible in order to get the shocking unemployment figure that she created down. People over 50 were only required to sign on quarterly as there was no expectation that they’d find work. I worked at the DHSS (previous incarnation of DWP) at the time

I care for the people I made a personal commitment to.

I do not care for people I did not make a commitment to.

People have always struggled with mental health. The difference is that now the option is there to be awarded benefits for it. You can’t be surprised when this option is taken up.

I think its about £83/ week will have to check but it still a pittance

And you have child with really high support needs and you cant work because you have to look after them. How are you going to live without a job?

and if you also claim UC, it is taken from that anyway.

No one needs your shitty opinions quite frankly

This all day long. I used to work with vulnerable young people and helped some claim pip. I could see they struggled every day but they didn't realise because to them it was their norm and they were just trying to get on with it. Absolutely people who needed and deserved help but would have done themselves out of it because they were so vulnerable.

Exactly we are not exactly rolling around in luxury are we ?

Oh. Pay your bills in love and affection to your family do you?

Get lost.

All of this.

So how do you tell the difference, how do the genuine claimants not lose out

Far from it. It isn't easy at all.

Why when services have been incredibly limited by decades of austerity policies...health and care. SEN support at schools. A novel virus pandemic. A rise in MH awareness and diagnosis. Raised retirement ages.

Rowntree research says there is no vast increase in claiming rather a desire to attack the sick and disabled as a diversion from ineffective government

This has been ignored by literally every single poster on here.

They keep stating that benefit spending as a % of GDP has not increased while conveniently ignoring the fact that debt service costs have more than tripled.

The UK cannot afford its current welfare spending because the higher it goes, the more you have to cut from somewhere else (because the economy is not growing enough due to a lack of productive investment). Its a zero sum economy now without growth.

Brexit Damage (compounds every year) = £35bn/year in lost tax.
Debt service costs went from £40bn/year to £120bn/year due to size of debt (covid and Ukraine war) and rates going up.

Thats a loss of £115bn/year of tax money that could have gone to welfare and investment in public services.

But now it can't. And the UK needs to wake up to this reality and make tough decisions on welfare spending as the deficit is not sustainable (Its £150bn/year or 5% GDP with economic growth of sub 1.5% thus size of debt grows over time).

In our house it was the awfulness of the school system and the total lack of maternal and child NHS healthcare that did for our son.

The public services have stopped helping and are mostly just threatening or totally absent now, and that is why all the anxiety and depression.

If the schools could stop breaking our kids, that would be a great start.

Our son now has an EHCP and DLA but it didn't need to be like that. The schools broke him.

No one said it was easy. But it is factual that some people receive more in benefits than some working families.

I am fed up of the 'we've got it harder than you so we should get more money than you'

I don't live your life, you don't live my life. We all have our own challenges and many of us need more support than we get.

There is too much need and too little resourcing.

At the moment some people are gettiing more support than others and given that all humans require safety, shelter, food and warmth I am querying the hierarchy of support.

That is not my experience. I am at a stage where I am financially OK and never take that for granted.
The people I was referring to are more financially comfortable than many people I know who work full time.
These are facts, not speculation

It's quite clear that you haven't tried to support someone trying to claim pip for mh difficulties. It is VERY difficult to prove and most claims only succeed at final appeals stage with 3rd party involvement with a specialist service. As someone who's helped multiple (completely genuine and in need) people through this process it's quite hostile, very daunting and actually there's probably a lot of people out there who SHOULD be claiming who don't because they're so intimidated by the process and who don't have anyone to lean on for support.

The idea that you just rock up, claim a bit of anxiety and get an easy hand out is just ridiculous. And it tells those of us working in that sector immediately that you aren't as informed as you think you are. And that's problematic in discussions like these when you're presenting ( incorrect) opinion as fact.

The UK government funds wars. They arm countries They send millions of pounds overseas to other countries

We also have a Royal Family who live in luxury while people like me scrape along the bottom. So forgive me for not joining in on a daily mail benefits bashing thread

If you read the ThinkingEconomists posts then it looks as though the UK is just less able to afford the level of spending even if it’s the same as before due to the huge increase in debt increase.

And apparently we now need to spend more on defence. They are hardly going to cut the NHS. Foreign aid budget already gone. It’s welfare or the NHS that are the big ticket items.