Should you be forced to work for no pay if you are terminally ill...

[MayaAngelCool]

...mentally ill, or disabled?

here

I am very tired so perhaps I am reading this incorrectly. But this seems to be horrendously cruel!

It's one thing if working is a personal choice for people in these groups. But this almost seems to have an Arbeit Macht Frei philosophy behind it - we will make the most vulnerable in our society work for nothing, because work is GOOD for you!

Vile.

If work cures serious illness, it should be prescribed on the NHS.

We should be paying the wages of all these sick people we are curing through the medicinal power of work.

Oh wait, we already are.

Oh, oh and they don't even get proper wages, just benefits.

I can well believe that doing a job you like for decent pay could be good for your general wellbeing. Where I worked a woman with terminal cancer worked full time to complete a project before she died.

But that was her choice. Spending her last months on earth with her sons would have been just as valid a choice.

I don't mean to be disrespectful to Ivan - but I believe he may be seen by policy makers as the ideal disabled person, the only type they want anyway :( That is how it feels to me anyway

huntycat I have HMS (waves) I'm in the support group for the moment so there is hope you can type and be in there too

Nope. They discounted me, but my dc's are more severe than me, so THEY might get in IYSWIM.

My HMS is less subluxing, more joint pains.

Silly as it's still pain - my hip did me a huge favour last tribunal I had for DLA, just slipped out of it's socket as I was sitting there, apparently I went a couple of nice colours, green, red, white and they ended it early - I was a bit but I think the acompanying thunk may have done it Your body shouldn't have to fail so dramatically for you to be taken seriously though that's why it's known as invisible disability!

My sister has just had her letter informing her of her need to be assessed for her ability to work, this is a woman who is 60 this year, has no kneecaps, has chronic arthritis, uncontrollably high cholesterol, severe asthma and other conditions, she is on an unbelievable amount of medication and she is expected to go and be assessed by go-knows-who to see what work she is capable of , this is all going to cost more than just paying disabled people a decent amount in the first place!

I'm all for weeding out the people claiming falsely for disability but seriously.

Your hip slipped out of its socket?

I hope you are OK.

Malificence - your poor sister :(

A year older and she'd be retired.

I totally agree about making more of an effort to weed out the malingerers, but not at the expense of victimising and scapegoating our sick and disabled.

You can ask them to come and visit you. My sisters partner had to have them visit him a few years ago, after he came out of hospital after having an aneuysm of the brain, and being told by a surgeon he could not work for a year, after which he resumed work, only to have a heart attack and now has two stents in his heart, so it says a lot. He has two coils in his brain, and needs another one fitted this year.

But still they question his ability to work??

The government wants to save money at the expense of the vunerable, ill and poor. Yet i am sure if it was one of them, their attitudes would be different.

It wouldn't be though - they all have family money behind them. In their eyes, if you don't have family money - it's because your family didn't work hard enough, and it's your own fault...

Athiginyourlife yes I'm fine thanks - happens quite a bit actually, not a total dislocation thank god but it's enough to be bloody painful and need relocating (usually by me, sometimes with assistance from DH)

Malificence Your sister may be dreadfully unlucky in that she is a few months too young, but the DWP can and regulalrly do get things wrong. if she should be retiring between 2010 and 2014 she shouldn't be assessed at all. This is more difficult for women to know as the goal poats are being moved for their retirement currently BUT this is from a Disability Alliance fact sheet.

"people who reach State Pension Age during this reassessment period 2010-2014 will not be reassessed to avoid having to change benefits twice in a short period;

There is a pension age calculator here

www.direct.gov.uk/en/Pensionsandretirementplanning/StatePension/DG_4017919

This thread is heartening to read.

ATM we don;t hit workfare criteria but we will next year if I can't find a job I can do. I fully intend to give that a shot but well, not exactly easyatm.

I am a carer; ds1 has ASD and gets HR but very few with his dx are having that renewed and he is due renewal in December. he needs 24/7 watching, as he is aggressive and a risk to his siblings. DS2 has borderline ADD but is pretty much OK: he won;t be winning any awards for academia and organisation but we will get him where he needs to be. ds3 has fairly severe autism, won;t work. DS4 starts his autism assessment next week. I had a breakdown a few months ago and the meds that pretty much keep me alive mean I sleep during the day (as opposed to yearas of not at all with the caring and insomnia) and I may well be referred for ASD assessment myself soon.

DH works, for himself.

If ds1's DLA isn't renewed I am expected top find work as ds3 gets MR care. Assuming by then I can stay awake all day (I have today so far but struggling) I will work and DH will try and manage his work around caring but that's going to be devillishly ahrd and severely limit his potential. We have no idea how we will cope in the holidays, we don;t even have a social worker any more, let alone respite!

I agree if someone on JSA repeatedly refuses work they should be required to do SOMETHING although I suspect most would be far bhetter off in some form of training gaining skills, rather than blocking up potential actual-paid-jobs. I managed a gographical area for a parenting charity before I became a Carerr and although we had high unemployment levels on our books, I can think of only one family where I was unaware of a real reason for that.

When UC comes in though that's wher things will get scary: two aprents working otherwise on UC or lose income; even if one aprent working (if pay is under £17.5k or tehreabouts). Where are the jobs? there aren;t any: it's basically and end to tax credits by stealth.

Who the Fck voted these Morons in?.....Oh yeah, Fcking Morons!!

Its such a scary policy yet it seems to be being pushed in by a very back-door approach.

I find this government unbelievable. When will it end?

Workfare is like the old YTO schemes in the 80's. A good way to reduce unemployment figures. What is new is the morality component that is propounded.

But I do have a bit of a problem with the anto workfare arguments and how it treats vast swathes of people the same in its arguments. For example arguing against people with terminal cancer not being exempt from this. I have always though it was wrong that people with terminal cancer were treated differently in the past to people with other terminal illnesses. Whatever you are dying of it is devastating to all concerned. And people can have terminal cancer for years and years. Have a colleague who has leukemia - will kill him eventually. He has had it for 2 years and could live another 5-8 years and works.

placemark

It's fucking beyond sick, that's what it is. Complete twunts the lot of them. There will be riots with this lot in, can feel it coming. Get them overthrown! people need to stand up to the twats (I rarely swear on here but in this case it is entirely justified).

Lesley quite agree that terminal should include everyone with that label.

Even if someone has years left that doesn't mean they can work- for example I nursed someone dying from MS: certainly no way he could have worked but he had years of that before he finally passed away. Some people of course will want to work up until their last day; my colleague was like that. And that was fine as our employer was able to give her time off when she was having treatment and let her back sometimes for only a day at a time: but we were public sector in 1995, how many smaller private companies could manage that realistically? Same with carer's really; I have weeks where nothing much happens so aside from the need to be here at 8-9 and 3-4 I could probably manage some work; however this month I would have need 29 days off. It's only the 23rd.

Oh and YTS...

3 frigging times in my younger days I had to train up a YTS placement person who then got given my job because I was due actual wages, and I ended up out of work again.

Used to rankle no end!

This is fucking disgusting.

What makes me really angry is that the Labour party seem quite happy to sit back and watch the carnage unfold. They completely seethe political value in letting the country go to the dogs before being kicking up a stink and calling for a GE.

NO you should not be forced to work if you are terminally ill.

sanctimoany - I always get this when I post something saying this isn't always the case - someone else posts back as if I was arguing this is always the case.

Of course people can be terminally ill for years and unable to work or unable even to look after themselves. But older people in particular can have terminal cancer that is for years more similar to a chronic illness. So colleague in question has leukemia that every 2-3 years will need chemo. In between he is fairly well and able to lead an ordinary life for a 60 year old man not in perfect healthy - so unlikely to be running marathons, but works and has an active family life. He is as capable of work as other colleagues this age who work with chronic ill health.

Cancer is not always the type of illness that people picture when they talk about cancer i.e. acute and extremely difficult to do everyday tasks with. Cancer in reality is a catch all term that covers a wide variety of illnesses with different types of affects on the individual.

There are actually many older people living with chronic cancer for years and years - some of whom you are bound to know - and you would probably never guess they were ill until the later stages possibly many years later. But cancer seems such an emotive term and is viewed differently by many people than other illnesses which have just as big an impact on health.

as a disabled person with a life long disability
I went on a back to work 6 months course as i felt i could go back to work with support i did work before children , anyhoo i worked my arse off in an office for lunch expenses [shock
] i really thought i would get at least an interview for the job i was doing and doing quite well , But i finished my 6 months with a good reference from the only other employee in the office , and that was it but before i left i was to train the next person in
, I have since heard that a further 2 other people have been to this office doing the 6 month placement ! so the job and work is there but they are putting unpaid workers in to do the job then leave , Its slave labour wrapped up as support and training its a load of bollocks how people are exploited

Yes awful, just like the old YOT and YTS schemes, some employers will exploit these schemes.

I was always a bit about the focus on cancer patients. Like others here, I've known people who chose to work through cancer treatment, and were fortunate to be supported by their employers. There are many other life-limiting illnesses that deserve the same degree of support.

The point is, there's a huge difference between choosing to work as much as possible and being made to work. Very few employers understand how to support a very sick colleague - it was questionable business sense, even if the colleague has especially valuable skills. It's absurd to suppose a chronically sick call-centre operator, who's been sent as part of a wave of workfare nobodies, will get anything like support at their post. In consequence, they'll become sicker and even less able to work.

Yet their benefits will be stopped if they can't work as required. That means ALL benefits - lose one and you lose the lot - meaning severely ill people will become penniless and homeless. They won't get free medication and won't be able to get to medical appointments.

Very, very few sufferers choose not to work if they can. That's because it's true that working gives you a sense of having a life, being useful, etc. We only give in when the condition forces us to. Applying a second force - the threat of indigence if not working - won't negate the illness. It will just create a lot of dead people.