Starting as He Means to Continue?

Imagine the uproar if a new (male) Minister for Women's first press article said 'well, we all know that they are all sluts', or if a new (white) Minister for Racial Equality's first article said 'well, we all know that they're all terrorists', but the (non-disabled) Minister for Disabled People fronts an article saying 'well, we all know that disabled people are all frauds and scroungers' and no one bats an eye. 

Yes, with DLA fraud at 0.3% the lowest of any benefit, new DWP Minister of State for Disabled People Mike Penning's first public act was to star in the latest* in the Hate Mail's ongoing demonisation of all disabled people as frauds and scroungers by claiming that DLA is riddled with people put there by Labour in an attempt to defraud the unemployment figures (apparently he's a bit hazy on the fact DLA is an In Work benefit) and that 94% have never had a medical assessment. As Sue Marsh eloquently points out, that might just be because in 94% of cases a DWP decision maker has decided there's really not much point in checking that an amputated limb has grown back, cerebral palsy has vanished overnight, or whatever.

Unfortunately as disabled people we're growing used to this. You wait years for justice and then along come three Ministers Against Disabled People in a row. First we had Miller, Miller the Cripple Killer, then the odious 'they get better' McVey, and now Penning, whose only prior contact with disability from a quick scout of Hansard appears to have been questions about disabled shipping while Undersecretary of State for Transport. If you look at his c.v. in more detail it doesn't get any more promising - squaddie in the Grenadier Guards (and IDS is an ex-Guards officer), fireman, junior minister at Transport, junior minister at Northern Ireland, and now us. We can be charitable and assume that he didn't come by his disablist views independently, but nothing in his background suggests anything likely to have generated an informed or remotely empowering attitude to disability. He was Shadow Minister for Health, but that's more likely to have driven him into the 'they're broken' Medical Model camp, amply reinforced by his coming of age in the relentlessly physical Army and Fire Service. Whatever his own views, it's clear that the institutional disablism of the Department of Work and Pensions (or maybe just IDS's SpAd), have thoroughly nobbled him in his first week in the job.

So once again disability advocates and activists are faced with dragging another Minister kicking and screaming into the 20th Century, and god forbid we manage to get one to understand the Social Model before they are moved on. It is clear the DWP's Unum-trained advocates of the perverted Bio-Psycho-Social-Model (aka 'the scroungers have only got themselves blame if they're too lazy to recover from a spinal cord injury') have already gotten their claws into Penning, but note that both Miller and McVey were promoted for what they did as Minister Against Disabled People, so clearly vilifying us in the media equals a job well done in Cameron's eyes. I'm not sure that even Miller or McVey started their ministerial stint with such an open attack on disabled people as frauds and scroungers, and neither were exactly slouches at that, so keep your eye on Penning, he may be the coming man.

Disablism, the one form of hate that's growing ever more popular, now with extra Ministerial approval....

*I'm not going to link to it, that just drives up their advertising revenue and convinces them that attacking disabled people gets plenty of page hits.

Edited to add: I may have been unreasonably positive about Penning, I've just seen his interview with Disability News Service: Spending on DLA and PIP will be cut next year, says new disability minister and apparently he knows all about disability because he's friends with Simon Weston and knows some disabled ex-rugby players *headdesk*  *headdesk*  *headdesk*

WtB Podcast - 3. #myDLA

DLA: just a form filling exercise? If only it was that easy!

In the early hours of this morning, this is the appalling story with which the Daily Mail were leading. “Disabled benefit? Just fill in a form”.

They report that “Almost 200,000 people were granted a disability benefit last year without ever having a face-to-face assessment. A staggering 94 per cent of new claimants for Disability Living Allowance started receiving their payments after only filling out paperwork.”

The Mail goes on to explain that – shock horror – disabled people had completed DLA forms, and many of them had also provided evidence from their doctor. Yet because they had not had a physical assessment, there is apparently something wrong with this process. Another reason to erode disabled people and suggest that we are a drain on society. You can feel the implication that we are living on handouts because it’s easy, rather than because it’s essential.

How dare the Mail suggest that we “just” fill out a form! That form and notes comprise 55 pages – 38 of which have to be completed by the claimant. This involves a lot of writing, and having to be able to think straight and focus over a long period of time. It can require a huge effort, particularly if you have disabilities which affect communication, or your physical ability to write or type. Also, as the form focuses on activities which you can no longer manage, or need help to achieve, it is a depressing process – making you realise how disabled you really are. It can be soul destroying.

Perhaps the Mail ought to look at that form in more detail. That tiresome, frustrating, difficult form! Big, isn't it? Detailed, isn't it? Daunting, isn't it?

As well as the form itself, there is the need for supporting evidence. It helps if you include letters from specialist doctors, and for my own application I also provided a diary of a week in my life, and statements from people who knew and lived with me, describing the help they have to give. I know my GP was also approached by the Department of Work and Pensions to confirm the information I provided. I had to not only explain the sort of help I needed, but provide independent evidence.

Fellow claimant Mary told me: “I have usually had to go for an interview but once got a 2 year award on "just" the DLA form. That form included sections to be filled out by all sorts of people involved in my care and treatment - GP, specialist consultant, main carer and so on - plus the instructions on the form required me to submit with it a copy of my (then) current repeat prescription and formal social services care plan. Perhaps that can be described as "just a form" but it’s hardly as if I got my DLA based purely on my own testimony.”

The form and supporting information provided will be detailed, and sometimes the decision makers will have a straightforward task – for example if someone is both deaf and blind. Often the information provided will be enough for the Department of Work and Pensions to make an award straight away. So yes, many people do get awarded DLA on the basis of “just” paperwork. But if somebody has significant impairments, sufficient to tick the boxes for the decision makers, and this is documented by their GP or other medical professionals, surely it would be a waste of time and money to haul them in for interview?

Form filling is exhausting, depressing, frustrating, and repetitive, but we force ourselves to jump through these hoops because we need the support. The money to cover taxi fares for someone who is unable to carry their shopping home on the bus. The money to pay for incontinence pads and other medical supplies. The money to buy a few hours’ time from a cleaner or assistant. We are certainly not doing it for an easy life!

And then there are the cases where people don’t get the award they are entitled to based solely on the paper application, and have to attend in person for a tribunal. In fact, most of the people of whom I know have applied for DLA actually had to appeal before they received the award they deserved. Take Robin - he has regular reviews of his DLA, and after having been found eligible for support twice based on the same information, he was then turned down in June this year. He is waiting to go to tribunal in December, and told me: “The DLA decision maker considered my regular loss of speech production or speech comprehension, and my struggle to safely cross roads because I can't accurately judge distance or speed both non-issues. Well to me they are significant issues, and I regularly have significant difficulties because of communication problems, and I've nearly been run over more times than I can count.” Without the money provided by DLA, he is struggling to cover the additional costs caused by disability.

If you need more evidence of why DLA is so critical to the lives of disabled people, just read “the real difference made by DLA” or head over to twitter and see entries with the hashtag #myDLA to learn why this benefit is life changing.

Surely these stories make the point that, where possible, making a decision on a DLA award based “just” on paperwork is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. And where more evidence is needed, or the claimant appeals the decision, a face-to-face interview will be held.

Well, Daily Mail? What’s so unreasonable about that?

It is hard enough to get a DLA award as it is. Please, don't say we've got it easy.

More Mail Lies

Not contented with their hugely untrue story about Incapacity Benefit last week (see Sue's analysis on her own blog), today the Mail are going after DLA claimants with a story massively deficient in facts.

Half the 3.2million people on disability benefit have never been asked for evidence to back their claims, it emerged last night.

The DLA application form (link at the bottom of this page) is 39 pages long. The DWP ask your GP for info, your "carer" (if you have one) for info and many people add supplemental information from consultants. A hell of a lot of people are called in for a medical carried out by Atos. And, of course, many cases go to a tribunal in which case reams and reams of supporting evidence is required.

In addition, nearly a million people have been on disability living allowance for at least 14 years, a Government analysis of claims for the benefit revealed.

That's incredibly surprising. Surprising because I'd have expected it to be slightly more. Most impairments don't just vanish. Amputated limbs don't grow back. Snapped spinal cords don't heal. My own Osteogenesis Imperfecta has been present since I was conceived and will never go away. In fact as I smash up more bones and joints I'll only become more impaired. I would hazard a guess that the majority of DLA claimants who cease needing DLA do so because they died.

Cuts to DLA, which is meant to help people who have specific mobility or care needs and cannot do things such as walk or wash and dress themselves, have been criticised by charities and Labour MPs.

However, ministers say figures showing how the benefit ballooned under Labour – and has been paid to people for years with no checks – demonstrate an urgent need for reform.

Since DLA was introduced in 1992, and since Labour came to power in '97 there have been massive medical advances. These mean that premature babies that wouldn't have survived in the past now do, but they're often left with cerebral palsy and other impairments. More people survive horrific accidents and illnesses like cancer, but are left permanently ill or impaired and require help with getting around or personal care. We should take pride in our great health service that the number of disabled people is increasing because people can survive things that were previously fatal.

Of those, 31 per cent – almost a million – have been claiming for 14 years or more, while 46 per cent have been on the benefit for more for ten years.

I've been on DLA since it's inception in 1992. No-one told my genes that the Daily Mail thinks there should be a 14 year limit on being disabled.

The problem is there is no system of review. People can be given the benefit and no one checks if they still need it.'

More than two million people on DLA have been given indefinite awards, which means they have no further contact with officials about whether they still need the benefit.

What part of "a disability is for life, not just for Christmas" do the Mail not understand? Oh, that's right. It's not about facts, it's about whipping up disablist harassment (which the Mail will then report in a faux horrified manner).

I have an indefinite award. My bones will never stop being brittle. My bones will never stop hurting. My smashed up joints will never become unsmashed. My tendons and ligaments will never stop being like overstretched elastic bands which fail to support my joints while Mail journos will continue to have steady tendons and ligaments like sturdy pieces of string. Why waste DWP time and money having officials contact me to see if anything's changed?

Some people do have conditions that might improve, for example mental health problems which may respond to drugs and/or talking therapies. Such people are not given indefinite awards, they're given awards for limited periods e.g. 3 years or 5 years. Indefinite awards only go to those of us who have no chance of ever improving.

The Government now wants all claimants to undergo periodic medical tests to justify the payments. Ministers propose to end the automatic right to DLA, worth up to £70 a week for care and up to £50 a week for travel.

What a brilliant idea! Why not waste more money on bureaucracy? According to this source DLA medicals cost the government either £51.37 or £77.33. The government actually wants to throw away that money every year or three years just for a doctor to look at me and say "her skeleton is still crap"? Less than a hundred pounds to declare someone as having not got any better may not seem like much money, but if they're spending £77.33 annually on the 3.2 million claimants of DLA? That's a cost of £247,456,000.

As for automatic entitlements, there are only 6. One of the entitlements is "terminally ill and not expected to live more than a further 6 months." Once that automatic entitlement has ended you can be sure the Mail will be outraged at dying people not getting benefits.

And it's not up to £50 a week for "travel;" it's either £18.95 or £49.85 for "help with getting around." I'm sure the Mail wouldn't consider getting from bed to toilet as an exotic adventure but if someone needs to use their £49.85 to fund a wheelchair then that might be the extent of the travelling they're doing.

The article finishes off by inaccurately talking about the removal of the mobility component of DLA from people resident in care homes:

A group of 27 organisations for the disabled has warned against plans to axe the mobility part of DLA, which it says will hit 80,000 care home residents unfairly.

Which makes it sound like the mobility component of DLA is being removed, full stop, but that care home residents will be the most severely affected. That is not the case; people like me living in our own homes will get to keep our mobility component (for now, anyway).

Care homes are pretty bleak places, just have a read of this article by Johann Hari about his experiences with his grandmother while she lived in a home. At the time of the announcement in the CSR @beccaviola tweeted that having her Motability vehicle while she was stuck in a care home was the thing that stopped her killing herself.

Jen from Aylesbury has commented at the bottom of the article that:

I am afraid its the scumbags and scroungers that make things bad for everyone

There are almost no scumbags scrounging DLA. Have a look at the DWP's official figures for DLA fraud on page 8 of this document. The fraud rate for DLA is 0.5% and the only benefit with a lower fraud rate is retirement pension. There's only the perception of a massive rate of fraud because of rags like the Mail printing inaccurate articles like today's.

Last year a study found that those who watch Fox News are the most misinformed Americans. It'd be really nice if I could sit here and say that Mail readers like Jen are the most misinformed Brits but, sadly, the idea that benefit fraud is a massive problem has even been fed into the minds of people who really, really, REALLY should know better.

Edit: Rhydian at the Broken of Britain has put together a template message to send to the Press Complaints Commission about today's Mail article.

Edit 2: The folks at fullfact.org have taken apart the stats used in the Mail article

Round-Up Post

There are plenty of must-read articles and blog posts which I haven't had the time or the spoons to cover. All of the following are well worth a look.

• Scope are running a survey about the real costs of being disabled, which you can fill in here.
  
• "On the Shoulders of the Vulnerable", an article from Morning Star with information about ATOS and how ESA medicals are failing disabled people, especially those of us with mental health problems.
  
• A Guardian article, Housing Benefit Cuts: What's the Real Truth?
  
• Laurie Penny in the New Statesman writes Strictly Come Scrounging, Anyone?, about The X Factor vision of society [which] blames the poor for their predicament.
  
• Hopi Sen and Left Futures point out the contradiction in David Cameron criticising those claiming over £20,000 in housing benefits, compared to his own expenses claims for his second home.
  
• Crisis, a national charity for single homeless people, have created a comprehensive, myth-busting press release full of information on how the government are 'peddling myths' to sell the Housing Benefit cuts.
  
• Lenin's Tomb deconstructs a Daily Mail article decrying 75% of Incapacity Benefit claimants as 'fit to work'.
  
• The same article is looked at on This Is My Blog, who looks in depth at 'abandoned claims' and why they might really happen.
  
• Susannah posts a plea for help, describing how the removal of the Mobility Component of DLA from people in residential care will directly affect her brother.
  

The Daily Mail's Deserving Few (Scroungers not welcome)

 Guest post from Rich of Arbitrary Constant

I'd love to know what it's like being someone with the mindset of a Daily Mail reader. It must be fascinating to be outraged by something today that is the exact opposite of the thing you were outraged by yesterday.

The subject of benefits is ripe ground for this: on the one side you have the "benefit scrounging scum" who are displaying frankly extraordinary skill and expertise in amassing small fortunes at the expense of your average hard-working taxpayer. On the other, you have "our brave lads" and "heroes" whose sacrifice and commitment to our way of life the government isn't valuing by scrimping and saving on the measly difference of a few quid a week.

Into this melting pot of prejudice, hypocrisy and knee-jerk reaction enters the "hero officer blinded by gunman Raoul Moat", David Rathband. The DWP has assessed him as being eligible for the lower mobility component of Disability Living Allowance, £18.95 a week, compared to the higher rate of £49.85.

Predictably, the Daily Mail is appaled by this decision, branding it "paltry" and quoting Mr Rathband as follows:

If only they knew how hard it is being blind. I need help just to get to the end of my garage. Each day is a challenge to get about. As a blind person you have to learn a route in your mind, if it's walking to the shops and back, and it's taken me six weeks just to do that. How on earth does that make me mobile? I'm going to appeal the decision. I don't know if I'll win or not but this is a point of principle.

This, of course, from the the paper which gave us:
— George Osborne's remedy for a crippling benefit (bonus points for particularly distasteful use of language)
— The boom towns transformed into benefit blackspots
— 76% of those who say they're sick 'can work': Tests weed out most seeking incapacity benefit
— Osborne begins crackdown on incapacity benefit cheats with plans to treble assessments
— Just one in six incapacity benefit claimants 'is genuine' as tough new test reveals TWO MILLION could be cheating (extra style points for use of capital letter for emphasis)

All in all, this amounts to the usual, ill-informed hypocrisy of the Daily Mail. Only it could glowingly quote a hero talking about the "principle" of the positive difference benefits makes in their day-to-day life, whilst at the same time lambasting every other benefit recipient as a "scrounger".

With all due respect to Mr Rathband and the difficulties he will undoubtedly face for the rest of his life, there are plenty of people in far worse a position than him who are being targeted by the coalition government's wilful confusion of Disability Living Allowance as an "out-of-work benefit" and the Daily Mail's gleeful coverage of people that fit the bill.

Perhaps the Daily Mail should recognise how hard it is being a disabled person by ensuring everybody gets the right level of welfare support they need, rather than just those it happens to think are the most deserving.