Work Capability Assessment – Year 2 call for evidence

The Independent Review of the Work Capability Assessment is calling for evidence. You can see some of what we have written about this assessment here, and I am sure that many of you will have plenty of your own stories.

Specifically, they are looking for "information that is relevant to how the Work Capability Assessment is operating and what further changes, if any, are needed to improve the process".

You can see the full call for evidence information at the DWP website, where you can download the call for evidence (pdf) and the response document (rtf). They say they will provide information in alternative formats, but that these "may take some time to prepare, so please let us know as soon as possible if they are required". Considering this is a call for information about an assessment for disabled people, you might assume that large print, Braille, audio, BSL or Easy Read formats would have been produced automatically, and the fact that they have not been suggests that they are only expecting contributors to be non-disabled professionals working in the sector. Some could even suggest that the two-month duration of the call for evidence being a relatively short time, and alternative formats of information taking "some time to prepare", that they are hoping to avoid the contributions of disabled benefit claimants, but I couldn't possibly comment on that!

It is vital that the Independent Inquiry looking into the Work Capability Assessment hears from disabled benefit claimants who have undergone this assessment, or have fears about the assessment. It is us who will be most affected by the WCA, so we must not let the inquiry only hear from ATOS assessors and DWP staff about the implementation and impact of the WCA, and "what further changes, if any, are needed to improve the process".

Abandoned Claims

Originally posted at This Is My Blog in response to a Daily Mail article. Unfortunately, today, the Telegraph and the BBC got in on the act...

Woke up this morning to see that a certain right-wing rag has surpassed itself in the propaganda it chooses to spout about ESA.

I'm not going to link to it because it will only upset me and every reader.

The headline asserted that 75% of those who claim ESA are found "fit to work".

This was then broken down that 75% of those who claim ESA were either found "fit to work" or abandoned their claims before testing was complete. It proposed that the abandonment of a claim meant that the claimant was clearly "trying it on".

Legitimate reasons why an ESA claim may be started and then abandoned:

• The claimant dies.


• The claimant gets better, be it a miracle or a new treatment or being bumped up the waiting list for surgery or getting private treatment.


• The claimant, having lost their job, is offered support and a place to stay by their parents or their children. They decide to abandon their claim and re-start it once their move is complete.


• The claimant looks at the highly personal questions on the form and says "you know what, I'll never be this desperate for money, prostitution is less demeaning."


• The claimant wins an insurance or compensation payout that enables them to survive without benefits.


• Due to their condition, the claimant is unable to understand the importance of filling in the form or unable to remember that the form needs doing.


• Due to their condition, the claimant is unable to fill out the forms - perhaps they have a brain injury or learning disability and cannot read and/or write, perhaps they have issues with their hands and cannot physically hold a pen, perhaps they have a mental health condition that causes panic attacks every time they approach the form.


• Due to their condition, the claimant is unable to access support to fill in the forms - for instance they are unable to go out, they do not yet have formal Social Services support, and their CAB is overstretched with permanently engaged phone lines (I have personal experience of urgently needing to get to the CAB but having to wait until support is available).


• The claimant completed the form, but due to their condition, they are unable to travel to and from the medical examination centre alone, and they are unable to secure help and/or funding to allow them to attend. Because their level of impairment does not exist until ATOS say it does, this is not a valid excuse for non-attendance. (I had this issue with my DLA a few years ago).


• The claimant is sitting at home with the heating off, desperately waiting to hear back from the DWP about their claim, which the DWP has lost.

If it was any other publication (I hesitate to use the term "newspaper") I would be shocked and appalled by the deliberate lies and misinformation being used to attack disabled people. Unfortunately, I'm getting used to it, and so is everyone else, and all these little drops of poison are being allowed to drip on into the public consciousness unchallenged.

A useful comment was also added to the original post, by a commenter called Nemonie:

There is also the fact that if you are on JSA and become ill or need surgery, break your leg etc. So that you are considered not able to look for work they will tell you to open a claim for ESA until you are better, which may only be a few weeks. You can also apply for ESA if you work and get ill but don't get statutory sick pay or have run out of statutory sick pay. Again in this case you may only need to claim for a short time.

Disability and employment

According to this post from the Employer's forum on Disability, the Work Capability Test will be a "disadvantage for disabled people because of a lack of employer readiness and the recession"

We all know this is true. The ConDem's keep insisting they will protect the most vulnerable but the fact is they don't see the majority of us as vulnerable.
If you can do a little then you can work. Never mind that you don't know when you can do that little bit, or that doing it might mean you have to then rest for the next few hours, or the fact the the little bit you can do may be of no use to an employer.

The article is completely right when they say that employers lack the willingness to employ us. And I don't just mean that in financial terms. They may have to pay out nothing for adjustments but the mere fact that someone has a disability often means that they will be less 'reliable, for want of a better word, than an 'abled' person. Hospital appointments, sickness, reduced hours and many, many other things have to be taken into consideration.

At a time when each job vacancy is being chased by hundreds of people, employers can take their pick. And most of them will choose a worker that doesn't have health problems.

This is the reality that we face every day. And it's a reality the ConDems refuse to acknowledge.

Cross-posted at Rage against the Coalition

Comprehensive Spending Review - Live Blog Impact on Disabled People

Cross posted from BenefitScroungingScum

As the details of the Comprehensive Spending Review are announced over the next few hours I'll try to put those aspects which affect disabled people into this blog as quickly as possible. Watch this space...

• Cuts might seem less traumatic to an already frightened and vulnerable population if the ConDem government made at least a token effort to disguise their glee.  

• Tweeted by @jonesythered "...Reform the welfare system that our country can no longer afford" - Translation: 'We're shutting down the welfare state. Bye bye!' #csr 
• "Public services and welfare system will be put on a sustainable footing" George Osborne. Translation "Cut, cut, cut"
• "Fairness means creating a welfare system that helps the vulnerable, supports people into work and is affordable for the working families who pay for it." George Osborne  
•  Administrative budgets of every main government department will be cut by a third
• 490 000 public sector jobs to go
• Core grants to local authorities will be reduced except for fire, police and education. Why is social care not exempt?
• Grant funding for social care increased by £1bn and a further £1bn to the NHS so that elderly people do not fall between the cracks of two systems. Begs the question does the chancellor know that adult social care applies to 18+ not just the elderly?
• Social Housing. Current tenants will not be changed. For future tenants will be flexible length tenancy and increased rents
• Priority given to protecting Disabled Facilities Grant
• Osbourne "Social housing changes - New tenants will have higher rents at 80% of local rent levels. Exisiting tenants unchanged "csr10 #cuts tweeted by @HovellingHermit
• Extra £2bn for social care by 2014/15
• Social Housing. New Tenants to pay 80% of market rent. No detail as to how that will work with 10% reduction in Housing Benefit, currently paid for by Local Authorities or £400 per week cap affecting places like London most severely
• An extra 150,000 affordable homes over four years? A fraction of what is needed to meet need and demand. #csr10 Tweeted by @patrickjbutler
• "A fair government makes sure that those with the broadest shoulders bear the greatest burden." George Osborne
• "I completely understand the publics anger that the banks that were so poorly regulated over the last decade and wrought such damage to our economy should be contemplating paying such high bonuses. We have set up independant commission on banking." George Osborne
• Our aim will be to extract the maximum sustainable financial revenues [from the banks] George Osborne
• Police spending to fall by 4% each year. As disability hate crime does not have the same legal protection as racial hate crime will this mean even more disabled people fall victim?
• Nor will fraud in the welfare system be tolerated anymore. We estimate £5bn is lost this year each way. We will step up our plans to combat benefit cheats
• A civilised country provides for families, protects the most vulnerable. 
• Guarantee of decent income in retirement has to be paid for. Lord Turner's report on pensions acknowledged more generous pensions must be paid for by increase in state pension age. 
• State pension age for men and women will be 66 starting in 2015
• £5bn Osborne claims is fraudulent in welfare system is disingenous at best. The figure includes official error made by DWP
• Welfare system is there to help people of working age when they lose their job, have a disability or have children. 
• "Last govt promised reform and flunked it. We will deliver" GO
• Universal Credit. Guiding rule, it will always pay to work. Those who get work will be better of than those who don't.
• UC introduced over next 2 parliaments and will go alongside new work programme we are introducing today
• DWP will make savings to help deliver these schemes by digital uses but we will also be seeking additional £200 million savings from rest of welfare bill
• Contributory ESA will be time limited to 1 year for those in employment group
• Rules on Mobility and Care elements of DLA to be aligned for those in residential care
• Tax credits, basic and 30 hour elements to be frozen
• Introducing new cap on benefits. NO family which doesn't work will receive more in benefits than the average family in work. Those in receipt of DLA WILL be excluded from this cap
• Universal benefits for pensioners, free eye tests, free TV licenses, winter fuel allowance will remain exactly as budgeted for by the previous govt
• Temporary increase in cold weather payments becomes permanent increase! This applies to those on benefits such as income support if the temperature falls below 0 degrees for at least 7 consecutive days
• Contribution based #esa limited to a year for those in employment group but what about income based #esa? Means testing by stealth? #csr @BendyGirl
• Benefits savings help protect NHS George Osborne
• So far information about changes to Disability Living Allowance are conspicuous in their absence.
• Re £5bn Osborne claims is lost to fraud in benefits system. Only £1.5bn is fraud. Rest is official error. Blatant misrepresentation of fraud levels being used as an excuse to justify cuts.

• #dla 'reforms' will probably be announced in seperate announcement - maybe when in Social Security Uprating statement announcing next year's levels @TimMullen
• Educational Maintenance Allowance to be replaced by more targeted support

 

The Report

Radio 4's The Report this Thursday Aug 12th was about ATOS, IB, ESA and the Work Capability Assessment (WCA).

Something that caught my attention was this at the 9min 40sec mark:

If we roll back 30-odd years the number of people on incapacity-related benefits was quite small, less than three quarters of a million.

And then started banging on about how it was the recessions that drove people onto IB. The presenter never gave the name of the person who said this but in his preamble prior to it he hinted that the next person to speak would be something to do with the government. Genius. We're in a country being run by people who aren't intelligent enough to understand that we've seen major medical advances in the last 30 years so we will have a lot more people unable to work. People are surviving cancers they wouldn't have done 30 years ago, but are left too ill to work. We've got people surviving accidents that couldn't be survived 30 years ago but the survivors are left too impaired to work.

There are chunks of the show that are aware of the reality of the current harsh climate, like when they interview a few severely ill people who were deemed fit to work by the WCA. There are also a few quotes from ATOS employees repeated from the BBC Scotland investigation. But for the most part the programme supports the assumption held by our government and our tabloids that most people on IB are there because they're non-disabled/healthy but they've never worked and they don't know how to work. There's also a chunk explaining that ESA is widely appealed and a significant number of the appeals are successful, but it doesn't explore that these appeals are expensive to the taxpayer and it'd be cheaper overall if the need for so many appeals was cut by making the WCA more realistic. Incredibly disappointing from Radio 4.

ESA: It Doesn't Add Up

The government now has two different, simultaneous official responses to the medical tests for Employment Support Allowance (ESA), which replaced Incapacity Benefit in 2008 for those who cannot work due to illness or disability. These responses, unsurprisingly, contradict each other.

On the one hand, Chris Grayling wants the rules "tightened" to make it harder to claim benefits. He seems particularly concerned about people who start a claim for ESA and then discontinue it before they reach the top of the queue for their medical test (apparently without considering legitimate reasons why this might happen, such as an improvement in health). That's Official Government Opinion on ESA Medicals Number 1. As usual, the rhetoric is that we must weed out as many 'scroungers' as possible. As usual, important relevant facts are missing - in this case, that the level of benefit received while waiting for a medical assessment is the same low rate that Jobseekers' Allowance claimants receive. I'm not entirely sure the figures add up, either.

Yet a few months ago, a group of nineteen disability- and welfare-related organisations, led by the Citizens' Advice Bureau (CAB), released a report calling for a review of the medical test for ESA. In particular, the report highlighted concerns over a low success rate among ESA claimants - rates which Disability Alliance clearly states here. It also offered evidence of the "limited effectiveness of the assessment", and poor treatment by medical assessors, which they claim especially fails those with more complex medical conditions. Examples of CAB clients who had failed the test included "people in the advanced stages of Parkinson's Disease and Multiple Sclerosis, people with severe mental illness, and [people] awaiting open heart surgery." Lisa and incurable hippie have already posted about cases that demonstrate the problems associated with the target-driven medical assessors who conduct the ESA medicals. This report confirms that these are far from being isolated cases.

In response to the report and the organisations' concerns, the government has now agreed to an urgent review into the Work Capability Test, the medical assessment for ESA. In response to comments from the review group, Grayling appeared to support the review. He said that he understood claimants' concerns and anxieties, and that the tests needed to be "applied sensitively". So that would be Official Government Opinion on ESA Medicals Number 2, then.

The review group will report on the Work Capability Test towards the end of this year. We might expect a responsible government to reduce the negative rhetoric that the group has already complained about, and leave further ESA-related comments until after the publication of their report. Which makes Chris Grayling's comments this week all the more concerning. Even more worrying is the way the government uses similar statistics as those that led to calls for a review. Remember that concern in the CAB report over the low success rate among people claiming ESA? The government thinks it just demonstrates how many people are capable of work.

In fairness to the media, there are some newspapers that have highlighted the ways in which the government has spun these figures to its own advantage. This article also highlights the fact that four in ten appeals by people who have been refused ESA are successful. This may not be a huge percentage, but it certainly suggests that significant numbers of claimants are unfairly becoming victims of the government's cost-cutting approach. No wonder there's so much anxiety around the ESA medical assessments. Anxiety that won't help those who already have long-term illnesses, or mental health problems, or acute life-threatening conditions - or who are already living in fear and poverty as a result of the War on Welfare Claimants.

Our caring Tory government: capable of viewing the same results of ESA testing as both a serious concern for the poor sick people who are being refused help and a triumph for the scroungers who are being rooted out. But mainly the second one.

Don't forget that you can contribute towards the review of the Work Capability Test, as incurable hippie posted recently, if you have any experiences that you think would be useful to the group conducting the review process.


Thanks to members of the BBC Ouch messageboard for sharing some of the links in this post.

Work Capability Assessment Independent Review: Call for Evidence

Found through FWD (Feminists with Disabilities).

Dear all,

As you may know, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions has asked me to undertake an independent review of the Work Capability Assessment (WCA). This is an important part of the Employment and Support Allowance claim process, designed to determine which claimants are capable of undertaking work, or work-related activity. My aim is to review the current workings of the assessment, and make recommendations on the future development and efficacy of the WCA.

As part of this process, I have today (27th July 2010) launched a call for evidence to gather information from a wide variety of stakeholders on the WCA. I strongly invite you to contribute to the call for evidence by submitting any information you may have that is relevant to how the WCA is operating. This includes evaluating how the WCA assesses limited capability for work and limited capability for work-related activity. There are a number of questions throughout the document and I would very much welcome your responses to these.

The call for evidence can be found at: http://www.dwp.gov.uk/consultations/.

This e-mail is being sent to a large number of people and organisations who have already been involved in this work or who have expressed an interest. Please do share this e-mail with, or tell us about, anyone you think will want to be involved in this consultation. I apologise if this means you receive this message more than once, but stakeholder views really are important to the process.

The closing date for the call for evidence is 27 August 2010 – please send your responses to wca.evidence@dwp.gsi.gov.uk
(or hard copies to: WCA Independent Review Team, Floor 6, Section B, Caxton House, Tothill Street, London, SW1H 9NA) by then.

Kind regards,

Prof. Malcolm Harrington CBE