Indefinate mandatory workfare for the ill and disabled from Monday.

[Darkesteyes]

On Monday 3rd December (which is also international day of the disabled person) ill and disabled people become officially eligible for mandatory workfare.
If unable to do it they could face having to live on £28.15 a week. Inhumane.

www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/nov/30/sick-disabled-work-benefits-programme

Yes, very inhumane, on the face of it. Some think questions will be raised in Parliament. We will see.

Sickening!

The phrase "for community benefit" is oblique; since February the DWP has stopped answering freedom of information requests about where people are being sent to work ? even when instructed to do so by the information commissioner ? because it fears the MWA scheme will collapse under the weight of public protest if details are released.

Says it all really

I am in the process of applying for benefit as have been fired due to spending between 4 and 7 days per week in bed with severe migraine.
This really frightens me. If I could work, I'd have kept the well paid job I had that I loved and had worked towards for years.
How can I work when I can't even look after myself most of the time or my child?

Hate Hate Hate the Tories.

This article was on the same page as a report about Madonna's conical bras being sold for £48000.

.....on the same page as it was reported that some people will be expected to live on £28.15 a week.

Despicable.

Things like this put the fear into me big time. I have bipolar and may be about to leave my (much loved) job due to this. My eldest son has aspergers and is so depressed he hasn't gone outside for 9 months. We simply would not be able to meet their conditions. Makes suicide look like a viable option tbh.

yes darkesteyes. Victoria Derbyshire (Radio 5-Live) did an item on the
compulsory unpaid work for disabled. (Monday 3rd)

It seem a vindictive Coalition idea. Perhaps some of the Liberals may object.

This makes me so angry and sad, I honestly can't believe the depths to which this government has sunk.

I actually wonder if they can get away with this or whether it could be challenged under EU laws/regulations. It seems like a human rights issue to me.

This is what the Tories do. Roll on the next election.............

www.dwp.gov.uk/docs/the-work-programme.pdf

The figures in their document are shocking.

Oh this is where this thread got to. Sorry, this is the one I was really looking for to post this (I posted on the ShoeZone workfare thread):

So, topically, today I received a letter from the DWP setting out the new sanctions regime for disabled people on ESA.

"From 3rd December 2012, the law is changing and you could lose more money, for a longer period of time if you do not:
? attend and take part in work-focused interviews
? carry out work-related activities that your advisor asks you to do, without a good reason"

Sanctions are cuts of up to £28.15 per week (from payment of less than £100), up to four weeks. However, sanctions start after you agree to comply with their demands. During the period you are contesting the demand - for example because it's unsafe for you - ESA is stopped completely.

The sanctioned person can appeal, but this is taking upwards of a year for ESA awards, so it's hard to see sanctions appeals being faster.

The House of Lords criticised the DWP for giving so much power to individual JobCentre clerks, who have no competence to judge what is medically safe and absolute discretion to sanction.

There is simply no meaningful protection for disabled people.

The sanction is a cut of £28.15, rather than reduction to £28.15. Although since ESA is £56.25 for under 25s for the first 13 weeks, that could come to the same thing.

Don't get too excited by an election: workfare and conditionality for the disabled is a Labour plan. It's been in the pipeline since ~2006 with the Freud Report, and was obliquely supported by Nick Clegg in the Lib party conference before the Liberals where in govt (I was listening carefully).

This sort of thing makes me feel physically sick. God help any politician that knocks my door next May.

One of the huge holes in workfare is legal liability for workfarers' health and safety - they don't seem to be covered by employment legislation because they are not employees.

So are JobCentre staff legally liable? No one seems to know.

This is going to be an much larger issue with people known to be unfit to work. Employers do specific risk assessments on staff with health issues because they would be legally liable.

So I'm planning letters to the local JobCentre and the workfare-user asking where I go for the risk assessment prior to working...

Bloody hell Parsing im sorry to hear this. Its fucking disgusting. So if you cant do something because its unsafe they then STOP YOUR MONEY COMPLETELY. How the fuck can this be legal. Its inhumane and what will happen is you will get people who ARE too ill try and struggle to do it and it will cause workplace accidents. Which the Government AND the Dwp will have caused.

Anyone notice that there are 342 (and counting) posts on today's thread about the Will and Kate pregnancy and only 18 on here, since Friday? And only 3 posts on the thread about the new primary school curriculum being full of errors. It seems to me that there's a link to be made here in how much this bunch of pyschopaths we call a government has been able to get away with. Voices in the wilderness...

Heathen i was thinking EXACTLY the same thing.
I think people have been fed the celebrity culture/reality show diet for so long that they cant (or in the case of people like my Daily Mail reading parents) dont want to see the bigger picture.
Another example of this is the way the victims were blamed when the truth about Savile came out.

Parsing - the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 (section 3) does cover non employees.

thanks for posting this, its absolutely disgusting

disgusting.

This government makes very little attempt to hide its hatred of the disabled and sick. They are not embarrassed by ATOS ordering the terminally ill to start looking for jobs. Not embarrassed when someone dies shortly after being thrown of disability benefits by ATOS. Not embarrassed by the fact the work programme has been shown to be worse than useless - fewer people on the programme got work than those left to their own devices.

They don't actually give a stuff about whether this persecution of the sick is inhumane and worse than useless. As long as they get a few friendly headlines in the Mail about how everyone on disability benefit is a skiver, they are happy.

Repellent. Let's hope the JobCentre clerks are human beings and don't enforce it - or will they be forced to make their customers beggars by targets?

As the parent of a child with a disability I am not opposed, in principle, to the notion that people with disabilities should be supported to work where possible provided this is accompanied by proper support, a full understanding of the impact of their disabilities on their capacity to work and, most importantly, education of the public and of employers so that they understand the part they play and the accommodations they have to make to integrate people with disabilities into workplaces effectively. And I do not think that the kind of intemperate, irrational opposition such as that displayed by, for example, edam above is at all helpful in coming to an understanding of what is wrong with the current approach and what is needed to make it actually work for those who might be able to participate in the workplace, with the right support.
it seems to me that in placing decisions in the hands of job centre employees - who will not, with the best will in the world, have the capacity to understand complex disabilities and conditions - and in not educating employers and the public about their obligations to help people integrate, the government is dooming this to failure which will have dire consequences for those falling foul of the system.