Jayne Linney: The Disabled Woman Who Took On ATOS And Won
The story of a blog, a battle, and a well deserved victory. A lesson and a bit of inspiration for online campaigners everywhere. As someone who shares her belief in the power of online campaigning, I send Jayne Linney very sincere good wishes.
A housebound disabled woman has scored a victory over welfare assessor Atos – using the power of the internet to force it to change its practices.
Anyone wanting to claim Employment Support Allowance (ESA) must have a disability assessment carried out by Atos, a private firm, on behalf of the Department for Work and Pensions.
Jayne Linney, 50, wanted her assessments with the firm to be recorded after what she called “basic errors” were made by Atos staff in previous meetings, which could have affected her entitlement to benefits. Other disability claimants have also complained their payments were cut after Atos assessors misreported their answers to show they were capable of work.
After repeatedly being told all Atos’ tape recorders were broken, Miss Linney, from Leicester, set up a petition on campaign website Change.org. The former community development worker also wrote a blog documenting her “saga” with Atos, and used Facebook and Twitter to gather support.
After she amassed 1,000 signatures on her petition, Atos finally backed down and agreed to record her assessment. Ms Linney, who suffers from fibromyalgia and Sjögren’s syndrome, began to claim ESA after she was forced to leave her job in January 2010.
“I’m amazed at the response,” she said. “It’s the comments [on the blog] that keep you going. To know that people agree with me, it’s amazing. Because I’m housebound an online campaign was the only option for me. “
Atos has apologised on its website for not providing the equipment to record the meetings quickly enough.
A spokesman said: “Atos Healthcare are happy for work capability assessments to be recorded where requested… However, under the terms of our contract with the department, we cannot postpone an assessment on the basis of audio-recording.”
Same Difference 
Well done to Jane, let us hope those people who want a recording of their interview, can now get one. Sometimes we can celebrate success, and this is one of those times.
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Reblogged this on markcatlin3695's Blog.
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well done, because without recordings they twist there statements or even worse if you go alone to a meeting and ask questions about there qualifications a answer of i am qualified is all you get, they maybe qualified but whether there qualified for the role there assessing is a different ballgame, ie a physiotherapist carrying out a mh assessment for bi-polar. I have a petition started to have any hcp professional employed by any of these companies qualifications to be publicly available as to get the answer about qualifications for atos/dwp is extremely hard, this is found at https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/126229. we need as many signatures as possible especially after ch4 dispatches documentary about Capita
many thanks justin
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