DWP

No, Galen, I wasn't.

☺️

I don't think she is Galen. I think she's referring to another poster.

If they make it mandatory for me to do something on a regular basis then they may as well sign my death warrant. Just thinking about that threat makes me incredibly anxious. Doing it would be impossible.

I'm glad you got better Daphnedill but unfortunately some of use never do. I 'recovered' after my first two breakdowns but really I didn't. The illness simply weakened enough to let me appear normal. It never went away and gradually rebuilt until my third breakdown and is now not going anywhere.

You may have met people who, in your opinion, were capable of work but you're not that person. You don't know their medical history or the effects that work could have on them.

I don't offer an opinion about anyone but myself. I cannot work. It's not an excuse to stay on benefits. I had a job I loved, worked hard to qualify for and was well paid. Now I rely on ESA and PIP and DH has had to give up work to be my carer for which the government pay him the grand sum of £62.10 per week....far less than he earned as an area manager. We have had a massive drop in income. Living on benefits with a mh condition is not a picnic.

Actually, vampirequeen, I haven't got better. I've had chronic sub-threshold depression since I was in my late teens. For most of my life it's been reasonably well-controlled, but it has restricted what I could have done. I'm still not back to where I was seven years ago, but I don't really have a choice, because I live on my own and don't have any close family. I do what I can and make do with that. I know I couldn't work full-time. I was actually helped by Jobcentre staff and the work coach attached to the local mental health unit (sadly no longer because of cuts), who liaised with the Jobcentre for me. I only work eight hours a week on average plus seasonal work and bits and pieces when I can find them, but it's enough to keep me in touch with the world out there and to earn just about enough to survive. I hate not having any work.

@dj

I don't want to pry, but I'm surprised your husband was eligible for ESA. IMO one of the scandals of the system is that it's means-tested, so anybody with over £16k of savings or a working spouse gets nothing. A former colleague of mine was diagnosed with cancer when she was in her early 30s when she had been teaching for just a few months after a short break after having a child. She decided that it would be better if she resigned to concentrate on her treatment, but didn't expect to find that she wasn't eligible for anything, because her husband was working.

He wasn't eligible for ESA. It was DLA and incapacity benefit.
Similar questions were asked. He fell off a ladder, fractured his spine and never worked for the last 15 years of his life. He also had cerebellar ataxia, which is like motor neurone disease.
This was pre ESA. He died in 2012, just after he'd got his pension, but before ESA came in. He only knew he had cancer for six months.
Actually there are two ESAs, income based and contribution based.

I know there are two forms of ESA, just as there are two forms of JSA. I was just a bit confused.

My former work colleague was eligible for neither form, as she didn't have the necessary NI contributions over the previous two years and her husband earned too much for her to be eligible for the means-tested form. She had a life-threatening illness and was eligible for absolutely nothing.

I don't think anybody would ever have expected your husband to work, but that doesn't mean that there are thousands of people in limbo, who could do a limited amount of work, but the system doesn't encourage them.

You mean like this one?

speye.wordpress.com/2016/11/05/get-a-job-disabled-soldier-or-we-will-evict-you/

daphnedill do you have any evidence of your view that many could work but don't.

I, like durhamjen, could give you lots of examples of people who have suffered and even died because of the current system.

The man who wrote the script of I Daniel Blake is a former human rights lawyer. I think he did his research properly.

He said that the implication given to the public is that 25% of those on benefits are cheating the system. The reality is 0.7%. Quite a difference.

I'm sure you could, vampirequeen.

No, I can't give you hard evidence, because it's based on conversations I had with ESA claimants years ago, when the DWP sent me on courses. There's me for a start. I know I can't do a full-time job. I did actually try, but struggled to finish my contract, which is when I decided to become self-employed. I now feel in control of my work and, if the worst comes to the worst, I can turn work down.

Most of the people on the courses I attended spoke of not being able to work not because they couldn't, but because they would lose benefits and it wasn't worth it.

There was somebody on GN (can't remember who) who wrote of losing about £100 a week if she were deemed 'fit for work', because it would be means tested and she had other income. That's a considerable amount of money to lose for perhaps doing a couple of hours work a week. My argument is that people (like me) who can only work in a limited way should not fall off a financial cliff edge.

There are also people with terminal illnesses who want to work for as long as possible. My best friend had cancer, which spread to her spine, so she had to use a wheelchair. She was a teacher and her school was incredibly supportive. It created a job for her working one-to-one with special needs children and allowed her flexible start and finish times, so she avoided the hordes. She worked to the end of the Autumn Term and died during the Christmas holidays. Her attitude was that she was living with cancer and she wanted to carry on doing what she could. She saw no benefit in staying at home and waiting for the grim reaper. I think the DWP, NHS and employers should support people who want to do that.

I would also add that I was first officially diagnosed with depression when I was 19 and with diabetes when I was 35. I finished my degree and worked full-time for 35 years with just two short maternity breaks. I couldn't have done that without an incredibly supportive NHS and (usually) employers. Without them, I could have spent my life on benefits, being even poorer than I am now and probably even more depressed.

Unfortunately, much of the support network has now been cut, which is a shame. It sounds to me that the government is now trying to reinstate some of it.

They are not, though. They have given the impression they are by saying that those with long term illnesses will not have to fill in all the forms. Then last week they said that all ESA claimants will have to go to jobcentres. It actually makes it worse than before. They are also going to cut ESA benefits by £30 so it is the same as those on JSA. How is that reinstating the support network?

www.ox.ac.uk/news/2016-10-27-strong-link-between-increased-benefit-sanctions-and-higher-foodbank-use

This is just cruel. Damien Green thinks capping benefits works, but apparently only 5% of the first 80,000 households hit by the first benefits cap got jobs.

www.theguardian.com/society/2016/nov/06/brutal-reality-lower-benefit-cap-hits-home-struggling-families

What is the point of making the poor even poorer?

@dj

Do you have a source about what the long-term ill will actually be expected to do when they go to Jobcentres? And how often? If it's only once every six months or year for a chat about how things are, I don't think it's unreasonable. I know somebody who is totally bedridden with a neurological condition and she has been having home visits for years. The DWP visitor checks that she is getting everything she's entitled to claim and that she's happy with her care package.

If the long-term ill and disabled are being expected to look for work, that's another matter, but I haven't seen any first hand evidence that's the case.

What I mean by the support network is the many charities who work with the NHS to support people deal with their lives and help people find work if they want. Much of this funding has been cut. Some of it comes from the EU social fund, so will probably be cut even more in the future.

I even found the DWP courses quite helpful in a strange kind of way. The content of the courses was totally inappropriate for me, but the course leaders were always very supportive when I asked questions and one acted as a referee when I did find a job. It also gave me an opportunity to meet people I would not otherwise have met. Sometimes they were the only adults I talked to for days.

'Alison Garnham, the chief executive of the Child Poverty Action Group, described the policy as cruel. “As a matter of our basic decency, it’s cruel to deny children what the government knows is the financial support needed for the basic essentials in life, such as food and clothes,” she said.

“The lowering of the benefit cap will tip more families into poverty and plunge already struggling, already poor families into deeper misery.”

The Department for Work and Pensions said it had contacted families that would be affected and believed many claimants would respond by finding work. More than 23,000 of those whose incomes had been cut so far subsequently moved into work, the DWP said.'

Sorry, that's about the benefit cap.

'The green paper, Improving Lives, says ministers “could consider implementing a ‘keep-in-touch’ discussion with work coaches” for people in the support group, which “could provide an opportunity for work coaches to offer appropriate support tailored to the individual’s current circumstances” and “could be explored as a voluntary or mandatory requirement”.

It comes only a month after the new work and pensions secretary, Damian Green, secured widespread praise for announcing an end to repeat assessments for those on ESA with “the most severe, lifetime conditions”.

He said then that the government would “sweep away unnecessary stress and bureaucracy which weigh them down” and that “if someone has a disease which can only get worse, making them turn up for repeated appointments to claim what they need is pointless bureaucratic nonsense”.

Now Green appears to have decided that the same group of people should be forced into repeated contact with a “work coach”, or lose some of their benefits.

Asked about this inconsistency, a Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) spokeswoman did not deny the possibility of mandatory activity for all those in the support group.'

From an article in Disability News Service.

www.disabilitynewsservice.com/

'The government’s brand of armchair pseudo-psychology, propped up by the Nudge Unit, is used to justify increasingly irrational requirements being embedded in policy. The government intend to merge health and employment services, redefining work as a clinical health outcome. According to the government, the “cure” for unemployment due to illness and disability and sickness absence from work, is… work. The new work and health programme, “support” for disabled people, is actually just another workfare programme. We know that workfare tends to decrease the likelihood of people finding work.'

A paragraph from this dissection of the green paper.

kittysjones.wordpress.com/2016/11/06/initial-thoughts-on-the-work-health-and-disability-green-paper/

kittysjones.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/310024_618087491552293_1852914423_n.jpg

And they are being cut even more.

And you can't trust MIND anymore. They're in the government's pocket.

Yes, I read that, vampire. Who can you trust?
Time for a new thread.

No, don't need a new one. Theresa May 3 will do.

Do people on welfare benefits pay income tax, I,m very fortunate in so much that we have never had to fill in a claims form and yet I hear that a cap as now been set at £20000 and that is down from £26000, I pay £68 a week in income tax and this is a result of a life times hard work, so please excuse my ignorance over these matters but we do hear stories of people on £400 a week.