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.

"Unemployment was built into the old system. Absolute destitution, especially of the vulnerable in our society , is built into this one."

This.

Sorry, Gill, just realised you too have noticed that ATOS have largely stopped requesting GP reports.

Read this yesterday. Very upsetting story and utterly shameful. Government and ATOS should be ashamed they have caused someone's death. If they have stopped requesting GP reports then this should be the focus of a campaign for that, at the very least, to restart. Sadly I can't see them scrapping the whole suite of 'benefits reform' any time soon.

Just to add, the woman in a coma told to find work wasn't originally in a coma IYSWIM. She was another person with challenging mental health difficulties - believe it was described as 'severe bipolar' and maybe other conditions too - and hadn't been able to work since she was very young. Since the dealings with ATOS she had had a heart attack and then that had led to her going into a coma. Think doctors had said the stress of the whole thing had been a factor in her decline.

This may have been said but why didn't the GP initiate support from MH services and SS who could have at least identified an advocate who could support in benefits appeal/application

Why are we blaming the GP? Why are we blaming the family?

Yes, there is a big picture of how the whole thing ultimately fell apart which may explain why not every refused benefit claimant has starved to death.

But what changed was an intrusive and unsuitable ATOS inspection followed by a reduction in income to £40 a week. Please, please let's focus there!

I am healthy and mentally competent and I don't know that I could survive that.

When I phoned SS for help dealing with DWP/ATOS, I was told straight off by the person answering the phone that they simply don't do that. She'd clearly had the question before.

I think you're falling into the trap of assuming "there's help out there, you just have to ask".

a close family member is constantly thrown on and off benefits as he is too honest. sometimes he doesnt look for work every day. he tells them this. sometimes he forgets an extra appointment because it isnt written down for him and he has a disability that includes serious short and long term memory problems.
it took us ten years to persuade him to sign on at all
he is incredibly vulnerable but because he comes across as 'normal' for the first five minutes, he cant get any benefits apart from jsa
he is actually incapable of working for an employer for about a thousand reasons. he would have flourished in a more traditional, family run business imo eg if we were farmers or ran a small business.
as it is, he would have been living on the streets and dead a long time ago if it wasn't for family

sorry, there is no point to my rant. i cry when i think what might happen to him one day.

aufaniae

What you said was in my mind too. I didn't want to even write it.

No, the government is not carting people off and killing them. But they are introducing policies which they know will kill vulnerable people. It is happening right now, they have the evidence, and yet they continue. That makes them responsible.

Deaths such as this aren't one offs, it's not that people fell through the cracks of an otherwise robust system. Situations like Mark Wood's are inevitable and part of this new system, which will get worse under Universal Credit.

If you are aware of this and vote Tory at the next election, you are signing a death warrant for many of the most the vulnerable in our society IMO.

This. It's something that each and every one of us needs to put to each Conservative candidate that turns up on the doorstep from now until the election - and that includes European Parliament candidates.

I will raise it when canvassed and not just to Tory candidates either.

EverythingCounts-

Read this yesterday. Very upsetting story and utterly shameful. Government and ATOS should be ashamed they have caused someone's deat

Someone's death? They've caused thousands of deaths.

Not disagreeing, ttosca, but I was just commenting on the story this thread is about, if that's all right with you.

Sauce, good point that we should ask all candidates what they plan to do about this sorry state of affairs.

It's a shocking story. They really need to look at the way people with mental health issues are dealt with.
I remember having that interview with Atos. They were only concerned with physical problems and not mental ones at all.

Stockhausen

'I agree there's more behind his death, his bmi was 14 before his benefits stopped?'

Yes - and you think it is Ok that they stopped his benefits when his BMI was 14?

As said before ATOS caused this poor man to die, him and many others!
They are not capable or caring enough to do the job!! If we were so crap at our jobs we would have been sacked.

Agree with nennypops we must challenge every Tory candidate who has the "courage" to turn up on the doorstep canvassing.

If I was the family I would be asking some very probing questions publicly!

What an awful state of todays times.
It's almost as if, as a country we are going backwards in time and slowly but surely our government will in the end have workhouses and true poverty back for most just like the good badold days

Sauce has it: ask every candidate.

The Tories have enthusiastically embraced the welfare restructuring, but Labour started it. The Freud report was commissioned in 2007.

Page 47 is particularly interesting, setting out Labour's goal of 80% employment: "By historical and international standards this is clearly an ambitious aspiration – probably the most ambitious made in the area of employment policy. Only one country in the world, Iceland, has employment substantially above 80%."

It lists the arbitrary targets the govt settled on to achieve their arbitrary 80%.

People on Incapacity Benefit would be reduced by 1 million.

They wouldn't be cured. They wouldn't get additional protections in the workplace. They wouldn't get specially designed jobs. They just wouldn't get Incapacity Benefit any more. And of course they wouldn't become eligible for JobSeekers because they weren't well enough.

And when the banking crash hit mere months later and unemployment started rocketing, ministers said there was no need to adjust their ambitions.

To add to the depression R5 this morning was talking about MH emergency 'care'. The program said:
MH doctors are refusing emergency call-outs because they have not been paid for a year .
GPs just say 'Go to A&E'.
The hospitals cannot cope becasue MH beds have been reduced by a third in the last 10 years and are still closing at the rate of 1000 a year. Patients are being held in Police cells until MH assessors can be found.
The number of patients sectioned is at the highest ever level.

Of course all this was predictable when Care in the Community was introduced.

GPs could do a lot more. OK there will be some MH patients who are not registered with GPs, but most are. GPs are supposed to be commissioning services and, knowing the uge problem, why are they not funnelling more of their budgets in that direction? trying to get a GP interested in th MH problems a family member was experiencing was useless as the person was so ill they couldn't see how ill they were and was refusing treatment. The whole family could see the person was ill. GP said it was up to the patient to decide whether to accept treatment. And sent us home to try to do our unsupported best for them

So it's OK to let someone with MH problems that prevent them seeking help from actually receiving help. That's the message we got loud and clear.

And GPs ought to stop taking the easy option. One of the reasons that the Govt claim the system needs overhauled is that GPs would rather sign someone off sick in an area where unemployment is high or where the person is approaching the end of their working life and unlikely to obtain another job or where the patient threatens the GP . That is just colluding with the Govt to disguise the fact that unemployment in the area is actually high (so the issue is never tackled) and it also means that those who had serious illnesses that prevent them from working are lumped into the overall ESA figures that the Govt wants to reduce.

I've done 3 ESA applications in the last 2 years. All successful. ATOS never contacted the GP in any of these. It was just left to the claimant to 'prove' it was needed. Utterly pointless exercise.

Not disagreeing, ttosca, but I was just commenting on the story this thread is about, if that's all right with you.

Perfectly alright. :) I was just under the mistaken impression that you thought otherwise. My mistake.

I know someone who works for Atos. She is on the front line and does her absolute best to help people out - she thinks the way the company operates is awful, and knows a lot about MH issues due to her own experiences and family.

She is on our side. I just wanted to put that out there - she is bloody lovely and I think there must be others like her working for them who just want to do their best for people in this situation.

It is just under 24/hrs since I posted original post.
Am so pleased so many of you see it from my eyes. Boring for those who "know" me but we are parents of 5 with severe complex health and learning disability (8-33) I am 70 DH 67. With the attitude of this bloody government if we knew we were going to die I would seriously think of taking them with me sod a bloody prison sentence. Thank goodness for caring people.
Please take care of my lovely children.
I know this sounds over emotional but all friends in my situation feel the same

2old .

Parsing my DH had a massive heart attack in 2006. He was in hospital over a week and now has severe angina and COPD.

We did ask his consultant whether she would support us in a DLA application and she said "Im sorry but we dont do that"

This had a knock on effect.....they put DH on a cardiac rehabiliation course which we couldnt afford to complete. He had to stop going because we couldnt afford to keep going because we had to try to put a bit of money aside because our Job Centre had put me on New Deal (workfare) and i had to travel to another town to do this so we couldnt afford for DH to complete this course Nov/Dec 2006 as i was due to start the "course" in Jan 2007.

We did get help from a wonderful carers group in 2008 and DH got DLA. He is now almost 65. so his pension is very nearly due but his late fifties were made more stressful than they should have been

2old from me too xx