This is how the Tory disability assessments are killing people
This poster, from 2012, accused former Work Capability Assessment contractor Atos of driving people to suicide and death. Increasing amounts of scientific evidence are agreeing with the claim – but the DWP and the government are refusing to act on them. Where’s the justice in that?
In the midst of the furore over PIP assessments, This Writer was deeply saddened to receive the following from the commenter who goes by the pen-name ‘DiabolicalMe’:
Last week – my beautiful friend in her 40s, with severe diabetic complications, died suddenly on Thurs, probably heart attack. Her last email to me a week prior to her death said how she was going seriously loopy with worry, losing her mind, over the outcome of her PIP assessment she’d had a few weeks’ ago.
This is the way with sickness and disability benefit assessments. Everybody working for the Department for Work and Pensions knows that people claiming these benefits rely on them to sustain their way of life, and that the potential loss of benefit means the possibility of poverty, destitution, homelessness, and even death. So they do all they can to make claimants fear the worst. That makes it more likely their own health condition will kill them off, before a penny of benefit money is paid out.
Correlation? Oh yeah, DWP would say no concrete PROOF of causation, therefore they can’t possibly be linked. I’ve been howling with despair at the loss of my friend, as well as the fact she went to her grave worrying about losing her lifeline benefits which paid for her daily carers and cabs to go anywhere as she couldn’t walk or drive.
She’d texted me after the assessment to say it was a gruelling 2 hours’ long. She had so many seriously disabling diabetic complications, why the hell was she ever put through a face to face assessment in her last few weeks of life? And she’d spent the Xmas period filling out her form. What a sad sad last few weeks of life, in addition to all the pain, suffering and incapacity in every area of her life.
Yes indeed – form-filling: The ultimate pointless exercise in a DWP assessment. None of the medical evidence provided on claim forms is taken into account – that’s right, none of it. An independent IT expert examined the system a while ago and found that it was just shunted to one side and was not given any weight in the final assessment. But the form must be filled out in a very specific way, otherwise the DWP will not consider it. This is why a number of groups have been formed to help people through the process, from the very start.
(My GP also spent Xmas filling out a PIP form for her severely autistic daughter who cannot communicate verbally at all. DWP said they’d still need to visit the daughter in person despite her inability to communicate..?? Presumably they don’t believe her severe needs for support – she’s in supported accommodation etc – nor her GP mother!)
Correct. The DWP’s default position is that everybody’s claim is suspicious, even though almost 99 per cent of all claims – far more than the number that are ever approved – are legitimate and deserve to be honoured. Evidence from doctors is discounted, as already mentioned above – and evidence from a doctor who is also a relative would be doubly disbelieved.
One is reminded of the satirical sketch in which a DWP assessor is determined to find a job for a benefit claimant, despite the fact that the only thing the claimant is capable of doing is staring sideways.
Within hours of reading DiabolicalMe’s message, I received the following YouTube clip from Paula Peters, who has been a dedicated, steadfast and much more vocal campaigner for the rights of people with long-term sicknesses and disabilities than This Writer. It is taken from the demonstration that stopped traffic in London last week. Be warned: Some of the language is extremely strong…
But the message hits home still harder:
The question at the heart of her speech is a good one: Exactly what does it take to get the people of the United Kingdom off their fat backsides and out in protest against “grave and systematic violations of the rights of disabled people”, as the United Nations have described it…
Or “disabled genocide”, as The Last Leg more accurately nailed the decisions of the Conservative Government.
Join the Vox Political Facebook page.
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:
Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.
The Livingstone Presumption is now available
in either print or eBook format here:
Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:
The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:
another one giving their life worrying about pip oh dear you can expect the same old reply from the dwp yet more and more die can our public wake up to the fact they are culling the stock through benefits denial it seems posting up the nazi bit isnt working for those who disbelieving that a british government can and will use it to rid itself of the sick disabled and mentaly wake up before you ask yourself weres that disabled person gone oh they died you see there is no disabled or mentaly ill left
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ww800PzlJ6Y
having just looked at a review which i wont go into specifics about as i am involved in assistance it is blatantly obvious that they do not look at what you write on your forms, so the one piece of advice i would give here is keep a copy of what you write and when they send there form back with the why you failed start pulling comparisons and asking them the well i said this on that form that i was asked ot fill in and this is what you have wrote on your assessment pleas explain to me what you mean by this.
an example they can walk without a aid then walk for 20 metres then 15 then they might ask for help
the question asked was you stated they can walk without a aid, can you please explain what a walking stick is, you stated that they can walk for 20 metres then 15 then they might ask for help when in later part sof the document they state they hav e difficulty conversing with strangers, can you please explain in further detail what you mean by this statement.
in a nutshell this shows what these assesments really are, a cash cow for the companies that run them.
I walked into jcp recently and stated that they had recently found anew test for a person who head had fallen of and they had to carry it, they found the joke quite funny even when i gave them a job description that he could double as a security guard and stack shelves at the same time
would i employ these people, no not even to clean my shoes
Yet still the European Court of Human Rights and the United Nations have done NOTHING to stop the deaths or even make assessments slightly fairer. Our PM claims to be Christian and a Vicar’s daughter, in that case May Her Black Heart Rot In Hell!
I often wonder why the following figures are not seen on petitions. I sign everything:
“People with disabilities.
There are over 6.9 million disabled people of working age which represents 19% of the working population.
There are over 10 million disabled people in Britain, of whom 5 million are over state pension age.
There are two million people with sight problems in the UK.”
Society is now adopting a default position of Criplopathy – “all disabled are portrayed as evil, therefore all evil people are disabled”!
It’s a shame that the MSM/Murdoch empire cannot be held criminally liable for the deaths that have been caused due to their propaganda in trying to turn one section of society against another, i.e. scivers, scroungers, cheats etc!
The government particularly under cameron was blatantly anti sick, disabled, incapacitated, or otherwise unemployed, the simple phrase “for hardworking people” may seem to be innocuous but it has certainly hit a nerve because clearly he wasn’t for not hardworking people, and of course no one considers that their job isn’t hardworking, so the divisive issue which was exacerbated by programmes like benefit street have given the populace at large the wrong impression of the reality of not having a job for any reason. This propaganda will take decades to correct and while it is accepted reality the government can carry on not protecting the most vulnerable in the nation.
The “DWP” don’t care what their assigned “Healthcare Professionals” put on the reports either, my “Healthcare Professional” said “I would not return to work”m but DWP overrode his decision and put me in the group that “Could work in the future”, it’s a scam, they know how many will be affected, they don’t care.
It is pure genocide they’re committing and the tories are loving every minute of it!