Man refused benefits dies of starvation

[2old2beamum]

A 44 year od man with mental health issues, aspergers and OCD deemed capable of work has benefits reduced to £40/week dies and has a BMI of just over 11. I weep with shame.

No it itsn't just words. The GP could have had him admitted to hospital; could have written directly to the job centre; the man's family could have taken him food and helped him open his post; and sought advice from CAB, GP, MP, etc; as could his neighbours. The system isn't working - so people need to make it work and make a fuss on behalf of others if they can't. But whilst it is put right they also have to help others too. Waiting for the next election won't help actual people in the here an now.

kendodd my DM recently came out of Hospital after a three month stint and a number of life saving operations. She needed a wheelchair to even get about. Was on a 24hr feeding tube and incontinent. We as a family. Fought for social services to intervene. She DIDN'T qualify for their help and was simply sent a bunch of leaflets. Cuts across the sector means things like this will happen as there's simply not the resources.

NearThewindymill I agree. We can no longer sit back and think somebody else will make sure things are ok. We all have to watch out for others and help

The key point isn't that he died from a condition that existed before his disability benefit was cut - the key point is that ATOS considered him fit to work - a man with OCD, anxiety and who wanted to live independently from his parents and cope as well as he could with his myriad of challenges. Then, a man who was probably only just holding on with the tips of his fingers, was told he get a job.

That stress of thinking he would have to find work is what caused his eating disorder and anxiety to spiral and led to his death. As said by his family, the coroner and his GP. It's nonsense to say he'd be dead even if he was a millionaire!

His family had sent £250 but it was too late. And obviously long term the poor man knew he'd have to work. Clearly this was beyond him.

I know a man very much like this - anorexic, anxious and depressed and not work for over 20 years. I'm sure ATOS would say he could work too. Ridiculous.

Why blame the family? It's just bizarre, the family were concerned as well

This is the beginning, how many vulnerable groups can you think of that are going to be harmed as the pressure builds and no one is responsible?
The single mother with PND and the baby at risk? The elderly, with their families on a different continent and the onset of dementia?
The suddenly disabled with no idea of how to cope?

I have several patients over the age of 70 who are still caring for their grown up children who have autism/aspergers etc.

These poor people are consumed by fear because they do not know what will happen to their children in the future. I don't blame them.

I can't tell their stories here, but it is really scary.

I have a patient with a life long serious heart condition who has just been told she is fit for work, apparently on the basis that she can walk to the bus stop (which is right outside her house). Her benefits have been cut.

We are sleep walking into a situation where society is being turned against the sick, the disabled and the vulnerable. The ignorant are being manipulated into seeing the less fortunate as scroungers.

We seem to have very short memories.

Are we going to go back to the work houses?

We're blaming the sick and vulnerable for being sick and vulnerable

Windy and pisc, I hope you're serious about making sure none of your neighbours are in similar situations.

But I've no idea how you'd even know.

When I was extremely ill my neighbours had no idea - it's not like they bumped into me in the street much, given I was completely housebound and mostly in bed. They certainly don't know anything about my financial situation. I have no intention of ever discussing that with them, never mind giving access to my medical records. And I don't even have anxiety.

They may think I'm a rich skiver getting a flat-screen goat for free and living the life of riley on the over-generous welfare state the Daily Wail and ilk are so fond of telling us about. Even if they don't use those terms, they may simply assume I'm well looked after, because they believe they live in a country which looks after disabled people. It's what IDS tells them, after all.

frogs yes. We probably are...it's been a prediction of mine for some time.

They won't be called that...they'll be called "Reintegration Centers" or something.

They'll be dressed up as the perfect solution to the housing crisis..."Oh well we've done our duty..we're providing people who are long term unemployed and homeless with a roof and work."

The "work" will be varied...the "inmates" will be shipped to factories or call centres depending on their levels of literacy etc...and once you're in, it will be terribly hard to get out because most of your earnings will be taken in rent and bill money before you even see it. You will be paid via a card...which can then be used in supermarkets (certain ones only) and your access to cash will be limited. If you give your address as one of these places, no landlord will want to touch you.

'they may simply assume I'm well looked after, because they believe they live in a country which looks after disabled people. '

Yes.

Well Parsing Just a few examples:

Once a month I cook a shepherd's pie/chicken casserole/lasagne to feed 80 for a homeless shelter and I serve it too and sit and talk with the homeless.

I donate to my local foodbank.

Our old neighbours (we lived next door for 21 years) are selling their house and buying a flat in the development we have recently bought a house in. They are late 80s and it's us who have looked after them for the last 10 years not their useless son.

We fund music lessons for two children at our children's old primary school, and have provided instruments as well in quantity, for children with talent whose parents can't afford the lessons/instrument hire.

DH about once a month hosts a box at a London football club, in conjunction with the Met, for young people in dire straits.

We both work full-time. Is that enough for you?

Now be a dear and stop being quite as patronising as you were

'Are we going to go back to the work houses?'

And a Dignitas clinic attached to every supermarket.

It's been notorious for ages that the standard of mental health assessments by ATOS is particularly abysmal, which is quite something when you see how awful their physical health assessments are. They tend to be done by nurses who may have no experience in MH at all, and no-one seems to take the elementary step of getting the medical notes or asking for a report from someone who know what they're talking about and knows the patient like, oooh, the psychiatrist treating them. Which is precisely what leads to this sort of scandal.

The fact that we have a government that condones this and indeed has been directly instrumental in putting the system in place is beyond shocking.

NeartheWindmill [
Gawd Bless You Marm, you are the reincarnation of Victorian Philanthropy.
Excellent in its time, but what the social services, the NHS and the National pension scheme were supposed to replace, along with various schemes to support the deserving and undeserving poor.
We will have to clone you both.

GTG, OH is bewildered whilst reading today's Times. Apparently there are sixty possible designs of collar for hand-made shirts. However as each shirt costs around £200, I fear he may never know the reality.

awful awful awful

some people will quite simply never be able to work, unless supported, but these people dont want to beg, they dont have the mental resources to push against a system that sees them as an easy target to chuck off benefits. they wont let family help. there is nothing you can do as family if they refuse help - nothing! social services, gp, benefits - you need the persons permission to be their advocate

these people are our most vulnerable

the actions of our govt shame us all

I'm not asking what you've done, Windy.

I'm asking are you sure none of your neighbours are in this situation?

Because if you're not sure, who is?

That's the point. This isn't "Windy prove your charitable credentials and let us measure your virtue" and I've no interest in judging you.

I'm asking this from the other side. Who is making sure there aren't vulnerable people starving in your neighbourhood?

Because there is only so much an individual can do. A private individual can't be expected to know what's going on in all the houses in their street.

That's the thing about charity - it's not universal and not reliable.

That's why, in a rich state like the UK which abides by the Human Rights Act, we have actual bodies whose job it is to make sure everyone is supported. The welfare state is supposed to be the universal support - well-publicised, accessible, serving people according to need not the whim, availability or generosity of the giver.

NeartheWindmill Glad you are helping. This poor man probably had some dignity and pride and what right had his family to open his post.
To me the whole point is if ATOS had done their job properly he would probably still alive. Why should people rely on charity to survive?

BTW I too give to foodbanks

Look, Windy, I too can write a list like yours. I support my family and look after them, I help homeless charities and others. That is utterly irrelevant and not the point.

Many people do not have family who can help. The family may be dead, distant, in jail, undesirable, ill themselves, poor themselves. A vulnerable person with a history of MH issues may have alienated their families totally through periods of illness.

Charities in the area may be far away. I've recently been involved in setting up a local food bank. The banks have been put in the areas with the most deprivation. So if you are deprived in one of the more affluent areas around us, you may not be able to access that help.

I help at a local night shelter. As we are all volunteers, we are only able to take people with no drink or drug issues. So those with those problems cannot access our help.

The welfare state is supposed to help everyone. To rely on you, me, other volunteers has never worked universally and never will.

I grew up in a household supporting an extremely mentally unwell person (my great-aunt). I have many childhood memories of being scooped out of bed and thrown in the car as my mother needed to search the streets when she had run away, and could not leave us alone in the house. She and her mother managed to look after my aunt for twelve years at home after she first became unwell. The effort eventually destroyed my grandmother's health and my mother could not manage full-time work, three small children and two unwell elderly relatives. She looked for state support at that time and I thank God that it was actually available. Families can only stretch so far. I was very scared of my aunt because while she totally adored me, she had no idea of her own strength and would cuddle terrifyingly.

It is brilliant you have looked after your neighbours for ten years. But if you had to stop doing so - you are very unwell yourself, you get posted to Dubai - would you expect if they died when their benefits were removed that you would be blamed? The family-blaming on this thread is utterly, utterly unfair.

But that man did have family who could have helped. Surely that's part of the point.

Perhaps it would be better not to do it; now that would benefit everyone wouldn't it?

As you were.

His family did help.

But they believed the welfare state was doing its job as well. Just as if he'd been in hospital, they would have believed the hospital was providing meals and wouldn't have come in daily to feed him.

So vulnerable people are being screwed twice here.

First, the state stops supporting them.

Second, the façade of a welfare state - much trumpeted by Shiny Dave & friends of all parties - deceives people who might have helped them and prevents or delays that help.

I actually don't think whether his family could help or not is part of the point at all.

Of course it is ideal that families help. But there should not be an assumption that benefits can be removed because families will fill the gap. Families may not exist. They may not be capable. They may not be willing.

Maybe, like my mother after 12 years of it, they may be able to do no more on a regular basis. After looking actively after my unwell great-aunt, my mother's marriage collapsed, her own mother's health collapsed. She could not leave my aunt alone in the house with us children, and her mother was no longer well enough to babysit my great-aunt and us any longer than for my mother's working hours. You can't get babysitters for mentally unwell, overly strong adults. My mother couldn't do it any more. You are saying that she should have.

(and actually, like this family, she was still involved just not every minute of every day. She set up an appropriate care situation, assumed it was working, and visited when she could. Luckily for us it was).

We know that man had family. We know they HAD helped. We do NOT know that they "could have helped" any further or at that time. We have absolutely no idea what pressures they were under. Maybe they had been posted out of town, just lost a baby, had a terminal diagnosis, were working seven part-time jobs just to cover the bills. Maybe they have mental health issues or learning difficulties themselves. We have absolutely no idea.

We are not all super-human. Families are not all perfect. The welfare state should not be assuming we all are and we should not be sitting on the internet casting moral judgement over a family of whom we know almost nothing.

I am; sorry caterpillar but do people really trust state provision; any state; affiliated to anyone? I dont' trust what any state provides and I don't trust them to look after me or my nearest and dearest. Recalls with horror the idiot health visitor I was allocated and didn't need but who did a huge amount of damage to my psyche and was incapable of providing evidence based advice. I would never trust any state dictated individual to do their best by me or mine - ever.

Yes, I think in order to function that we all have to place our trust in the system a lot of the time.

I have not checked the fire extinguishers at my children's school, I have not rung my dentist's university to check he is actually qualified, when I have an injection I assume that the fluid in the bottle is what they say it is, I assume when I have a green light that the other cars have red, etc.