Did I touch a nerve IDS?

Oh, IDS is a charmer eh? This petulant, boastful piece of fantasy in the Guardian yesterday smacks of a spoilt child not quite getting exactly what he wants. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jul/28/proud-welfare-reforms-fair-benefits

Last week, I wrote my own piece for CiF asking why, when a system is failing as badly as Atos WCAs would you take that system and roll it out to millions of the most vulnerable sick and disabled people in the country before making sure that it was fair? 

What's more, why would you constantly increase the rate of unfair assessments from around 25,000 a month initially to over 100,000 now? I hoped that these questions would cause a few awkward, anxious moments over at the DWP - after all, surely it must be someone's job to keep an eye on what the country says about the God-fearing minister.

I noticed a little throw away line in IDS article from yesterday :

"Questions have been raised about whether the dramatic pace of our reforms is too difficult to implement."

As far as I know, that was me asking those questions IDS. You know, and I know, that other contractors have been bought in to increase capacity, to cram even more of these vulnerable claimants through a test you know to be unfair - it has nothing to do with improving quality - only you can do that over at the DWP by changing the processes and descriptors.

You know, and I know, that the system is grinding to a halt with nearly half a million claimants waiting way longer in the "assessment phase" than the 13 week target.

You and I know that Atos have constantly increased the number of HCPs (assessors) they employ and asked them to work overtime and weekends trying to clear the backlogs.

And you and I know you cannot possibly hit your target of re-assessing the remaining million Incapacity Benefit claimants by May 2014.

So yes IDS, I raised those questions, but I don't expect for one second to get an answer.

Thanks for responding to my article though, I must have really touched a nerve eh?

Ex-Atos nurse tells of disgust at Assessments

It's clearly not enough for sick and disabled people to tell of their horrific experiences of an Atos Assessment for Employment and Support Allowance.

It's clearly not enough for journalists to write exposes and TV companies to produce documentaries.

It's clearly not enough for politicians from all sides of the House to debate the failings and iniquities of the Atos test and demand that it be improved.

It's clearly not enough for the BMA and the RCGPs to demand the immediate withdrawal of the test.

It's clearly not enough for it to be found unfit for purpose by every major study into it and for every major charity and DPO to denounce it as cruel and inhumane.

So perhaps it will be enough for you to listen to this nurse, who used to work for Atos, carrying out the assessments, her professional disgust, how demoralised she felt, how disgusted by the targets and criteria she was set, the poor quality of the doctors, the insistence that she reject a % of claims every day regardless of merit.

Will this be enough? Will we listen to this? Will we wake up and stop this assault on  decency and dignity? At some point we will. It's just a matter of time. And how many innocent, vulnerable people suffer until we do.  

Listen here on LBC Radio : http://t.co/BkCFIFKJCv

"Superhumans"?? Again? I thought we went over that?

Look, i can't help it, but the Channel 4 "Superhumans" ad, celebrating a year since the Paralympics got me all ggrrrrrrr.

I would have had a little rant, but @Hossylass just sent me hers from last year and I couldn't have said it better :

Clubbed to death……. By a Paralympian (By @hossylass)

Yep it’s that time of year again, and even worse, it’s that time of four years. Paralympic year.
Now I love the Paralympics. I love Paralympians. They are my kind of people. I am a bit jealous though, you know, just a tiny bit. About the size of Jupiter jealous.
I’m not jealous about their success, far from it. I shall be holding my breath in the swimming, twitching and clicking through the dressage, and probably shitting myself during the weightlifting. Yep, I get that involved.
I shall weep at every win, and weep at the losses, sob at the medal ceremonies and dissolve completely at the National Anthem. It’s going to be a right snot-fest.
So why am I jealous? To be honest I don’t think I am. I am just a bit wistful. I want that opportunity, I want to be in that huge competition, I want to be a part of it, but it’s never going to happen as I have, quite simply, got the wrong disability.
It’s wrong for society, its wrong for the Paralympics and it’s wrong for me. I need a disability I can overcome. I need a disability that challenges me to find new and adaptive ways to overcome it. I need a disability that requires tenacity and guts, but is ultimately a massive inconvenience.
But like the majority of disabled people, I got a disability that isn’t.
It isn’t a Paralympian disability. It’s a crappy hiding-behind-closed-curtains disability. Is a fucking lie-down-in-a-darkened-room disability. It’s not even a disability. It’s a gang of stuff going wrong, refusing to behave, ASBO disability.
ASBO disability is a condition, it’s a syndrome, and it’s a collection of pain and exhaustion. Its fear and random, and OMG-is-that-ASBO-or-something-else rush me to A&E stuff. It’s Heartsink Doctor, its rogered-up-the-arse-by-an-elephant, it’s pathetic.
And it ain’t Paralympian.
ASBO disability for me is EDS, and FMS, and CFS, and sleep psychosis. It means that sometimes ASBO disability behaves and lets me concentrate on the ordinary stuff, like my eczema, or reading a book, but in the main ASBO disability is there, playing up, being naughty, demanding attention, making me cry.
But ASBO disability exists, and it exists for most disabled people. It’s what makes sick people disabled and disabled people sick. ASBO disability can mean you get a sickness benefit and a disability benefit, or neither, or one but not the other.
ASBO disability is currently turning the media into a whirlpool of sharks, 99% gristle and teeth, 1% intelligence. And you can’t educate gristle – God knows I have tried. We all have. We have stared in disbelief at Heartsink Doctor, realising that yet again most of a consultation will be taken up in a tedious explanation of ASBO disability. We have been left speechless in the face of ignorance from friends, family and neighbours. We have given up by the time it gets to Social Services. ASBO disability wins because we just can’t force ourselves to describe it yet again.
And because of this, because we are so exhausted by our ASBO’s, because people can’t understand it instantly, we could easily lose the battle of hearts and minds.
We may not look very disabled, and we may not look very sick. We won’t get into the Paralympics, unless they invent some very new and special events involving vomit, pain and shaking with exhaustion.
And that is why all the people with ASBO disabilities are about to be clubbed to death by the Paralympians. Or more accurately, clubbed to death by the Paralympics.
Paralympics have a classification system. It’s rough; I’ve tried to fit into it and failed. But it can neatly grade a person into a group, each group being of the same level of loss of function, impairment or absence. Use whichever language you chose. But it’s there. A quantifiable scale.
ASBO disability refuses to fit on this scale, but it won’t stop Governments and the media using this scale as the only scale.
“Disabled? No you’re not, because look at all these marvellous people who are REALLY disabled, and look what they can do”.
We’ve got weeks of this. Weeks of being told we are not disabled. Weeks of being told that Paralympians are “inspiring” and “genuinely” disabled.
Weeks of being told that we are not. Or a lifetime. But the next few weeks more so.
I can sense the clubs descending already.
Form a Turtle, man the defences, and turn up the heat on the boiling oil pan – we have a battle ahead. Let’s just hope that our friends in the Paralympics will support us as much as we will be supporting them.

Work and Pensions Committee inquiry into Housing "reforms"

If your fingers are not worn to nubs writing letters to MPs, taking part in consultations and generally letting me know how welfare reform is affecting you, then here's another good cause for your keyboard.

The cross party Work and Pensions Committee are holding an enquiry into how all of the housing changes introduced as part of this government's welfare "reforms" are affecting people.

Many of you have written to me with heartbreaking stories or farcical stories. PLEASE consider submitting them to this review. It's an independent, non-partisan committee and if we don't tell people how we're affected by these changes, how will they ever know?

It's so easy to say "Oh, what's the point? Nothing will change, they won't listen" but at some point they WILL listen, things WILL change and we will say that we never gave up. Please take just a few more minutes to send in your views.

http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/work-and-pensions-committee/inquiries/parliament-2010/housing-costs/

A Few Bad Men

Anyone who has listened to the utterances of Lord Freud, Minister for Welfare Reform over the last three years as he blunders through the minefield of welfare will no doubt have a personal anti-favourite to quote.

There was "The poor should take more risks as they have the least to lose"

Later, sick and disabled people were shocked to find ourselves referred to as "Stock" like so many cattle.

There was the time he referred to sickness benefits as "An incubator for lifelong idleness"

And more recently of course, he really outdid himself with the suggestion that food banks were only on the rise because people would always grasp at the chance of free food

I could go on, but you get the idea.

Here is a man who really does not like poor people. He doubts their motives, believes they are motivated only by greed and laziness, and bases every policy announcement on the belief that all will cheat if given the chance. In the belief that we are all "feckless" and "idle", he provides a constant barrage of measures that hurt, judge and restrict. Every pronouncement suggests that people are inherently bad, inherently dishonest.

Lately, I've been musing on what this says about Lord Freud himself. This is a man remember, who when faced with losing three significant votes in the House of Lords over welfare reform, tried to hold the votes again when most of the Labour peers had gone home to reverse the decisions. Shabby and dishonest to say the least.

I'm no psychologist, but I've heard it said that we judge the world on our own place in it. We dislike in others, what we see in ourselves. Only a cruel, greedy, callous man could surely see so much cruelty and greed in others?

And here is the problem. A problem shared by Iain Duncan-Smith, and even David Cameron himself. You cannot design a compassionate system if you have no compassion for those dependent upon it. You cannot achieve justice and equity if you believe in a fundamentally unfair and unequal society. You cannot empathise with the lives of others if you believe that people are inherently greedy and selfish.

Every time that Lord Fraud opens his mouth, it seems we learn a little more about him, but not so much about society in general.



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WCA - Call for Evidence

So, with Harrington gone, the Fourth "Independent" review of Work Capability Assessments is being compiled. The new reviewer, Dr Paul Litchfield is asking for evidence and despite patchy results in the past, we must do all we can to let him know just how WCAs fail and are still failing.

I would urge anyone who has been through a WCA to send their thoughts in - it's only by submitting evidence - time and again if necessary - that our views will be heard.

Here are the details https://www.gov.uk/government/news/fourth-independent-review-into-the-work-capability-assessment-call-for-evidence-launched

Please don't let cynicism stop you from taking part.

John Pring's Disability News Roundup

Another week of news from the tireless John Pring

• The equality watchdog has ignored repeated requests from its own disability committee to investigate the combined impact of the government’s cuts to support and services on disabled people, Disability News Service can reveal.
• Serious questions have been raised over why the equality watchdog has decided to scrap the disabled-led committee that makes some of its most important decisions on disability equality, ignoring the advice of an independent reviewer.
• The government has held a huge conference to set out its “non-confrontational” approach to persuading business to employ more disabled people.
• The disabled MP who caused outrage across the disability movement by branding anti-cuts activists and campaigners “extremists” has privately apologised to some of those he insulted.
• The public bodies responsible for a series of serious failures and a six-year delay in securing justice for disabled people abused at a Doncaster day centre, have refused to order an independent review into the scandal.
• The government has decided to scrap its high-level advice body of disabled people, Equality 2025, following an independent review.
• The government has opened up its Access to Work scheme to new groups of young disabled people, just days before it is due to release statistics on how many people used the programme last year.
• Local authorities in London have questioned why the government’s Work Programme is finding jobs for so few disabled people, when council-run schemes are much more successful.