A while ago, I ran an enormously successful consultation on Welfare Reform asking for those affected to suggest ways the system might work better for them.
http://diaryofabenefitscrounger.blogspot.com/2011/05/welfare-for-people-by-people.html
What is currently wrong? What stops you from working? Is there any kind of work you could do? What support would you need to do it? Is it there at the moment? HOW could you work? Are there other working models that might suit you or your condition better?
If you haven't currently taken part, please do. I will be writing up a paper over the weekend that aims to bring all of your suggestions together and outline a totally new approach to welfare provision for sick and disabled people.
If there's anything you want included, then speak now!
Please share this with anyone you think might want to take part.
If the government is willing to spend millions of pounds getting disable people back to work, then help them do it from there homes,Pain is part of our waking existent, to have to endure it away from your comfort zone is difficult and sometime impossible & degrading, and made to do this on a whim of someone who has never experience constant pain and only thought is saving money at the expense of the Suffering, They are the parasites of this country.
ReplyDeleteHumanity is doomed to fail because of greed, greed breads greed and they are trapped as much as we are, I hope you will accomplish your goal, But I do not think it will bear fruit, The decision has already been made in Government,and this is just another slight of hand trick to pacify the people of this Country.
I have spent the morning on my bed as I will also do in the afternoon as I did in many yesterdays and will in tomorrows if they come. I do seem to spend a lot of time there I know. Not in blissful sleep or in watching TV or computer activity but in enduring waves of nausea and other unpleasant symptoms too many to list. Even I rocked a little when I read your latest blog! Jobs I could do? About a hundred words like this every say three or four days or say a letter once a week? Whatever it is it will have to be done at home…you guessed it…on my bed.
ReplyDeleteIt is very sad that the government haven't heard about a condition called "fatigue". My MS might allow me to work in spite of the incontinence, immobility, weakness, spasticity, spasms, loss of balance, falls, and cognitive effects. But when you have to rest after EVERYTHING you do, how can you work?
ReplyDeleteOne thing I've tried raising as an issue recently is that of legal precedent and case law history for benefits. The only reason for replacing DLA with PIP just as Incapacity Benefit was replaced with ESA is to make it so the case history no longer applies to DWP decision-making. The law represents hard-won rights by claimants wrongly refused benefits; decisions which are undone by benefits being completely scrapped and replaced with new ones.
ReplyDeleteA reform should completely include the effects of case law.
First they came for single mothers,
ReplyDeleteand I didn't speak out because I wasn't a single mother.
Then they came for young people,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a young person.
Then they came for disabled people,
and there was no one left to speak out for me.
I'm fairly sure that Pastor Martin Niemöller wouldn't mind be adapting his famous quote for todays demonisation of sections of society. I wonder who's next?
I have Rheumatoid Arthritis and one of the effects of this is also fatigue, so I quite often have to sleep during the day. I currently work 3 days a week. I couldnt manage full time work, especially with having 2 kids. My blue badge is an essential for me, especially for getting to meetings.
ReplyDelete