Mental health crisis for autistic man as DWP stops his disability benefits
A man had to be referred to a mental health crisis team after the Department for Work and Pensions stopped his disability benefit.
Aaron Calver, 29, is on the autism spectrum and has Asperger’s syndrome, Tourette’s syndrome, ADHD, anxiety and depression. He struggles to cope with everyday tasks and has received disability benefits since he was 15.
But that did not stop the DWP from calling him to an assessment of his right to receive Personal Independence Payment, and then cancelling it.
It seems he was told he was able to work and should be doing so – but it also seems the assessor did not check his ability to manage this.
His mother Hazel said she tried to explain the realities of Aaron’s life, but the assessor would not listen and put her down.
She said the decision had affected Aaron deeply. He was not sleeping properly, had to be referred to the mental health crisis team and the doctor had increased his medication.
She said she felt he was being punished because of the way he was born.
Including the loss of her Carers’ Allowance, the family is now £700 a month worse off.
The DWP has said they can ask for a review of the ruling, and in the meantime they still have Aaron’s Employment and Support Allowance which, at £500/month, leaves them with less than half what they formerly had to support themselves.
Complaints against assessments have skyrocketed from 142 in 2015-16 to 9,320 in the year to February 2019. Anybody unhappy with a review can then appeal – and nearly three-quarters of these (73 per cent) are successful.
For This Writer, the claim that Mr Calver was being punished because of what he is – the way he was born – has deeply sinister overtones.
I have suggested for many years that the DWP has been implementing a Tory-run programme aiming to eliminate people with serious disabilities from society.
They simply find any excuse to cut these people off from the benefit system, forcing them into poverty and despair.
The end result – as we have seen in many cases over the last few years – is that, if their disabilities or failing health due to the forced imposition of poverty don’t kill them, they may end up taking their own lives due to despair.
The attitude seems to be that people, who are unable to work for the pittance the Conservative Party calls a living wage, are “useless eaters”, as described by the Nazi Party in Germany in the 1930s and 40s.
And just as the Nazis believed, it seems the Tories think the UK would be better-off if those people were cut off from society and the support it offers.
The only difference is that the Nazis went to the lengths of killing these people themselves; the Tories do it indirectly by benefit denial.
Now the Tories are seeking re-election for another five-year Parliamentary term, in order to continue causing this suffering and death – and possibly to extend it to other families.
Your family, perhaps.
Are you really willing to risk that? Would you use your vote to support this barbarity?
Source: Greenstead mum hits out at DWP as son’s disability benefits stopped | Gazette
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Aktion T4 at its best
It’s disgusting. The Tories should face trial for Crimes Against Humanity.