Panorama: The Great Disability Scam- Scope Responds
Readers, pasted below is Scope’s response to last night’s Panorama.
I’ll be putting up more similar posts throughout today as more charities respond to the programme. So if you spot any responses, please Tweet or email links to me.
Responding to a Panorama expose on the Work Programme, Richard Hawkes, Chief Executive of disability charity Scope, said:
“The Government’s fitness for work test is utterly broken. Now we see the same toxic approach applied to disabled people in the Work Programme, the Governments flagship approach to moving disabled people off benefits and into work.
“Referring to disabled people as LTBs – lying, thieving bastards, is completely unacceptable, yet sadly demonstrates just how the benefit scrounger rhetoric has influenced attitudes towards disability, even amongst those employed to help them.
“The fact is the Work Programme is failing to deliver for disabled people.
“We know disabled people want to work but face multiple barriers such as a lack of skills and experience, confidence and even negative attitudes from some employers.
“The group of disabled people who are furthest from a job – those claiming Employment and Support Allowance – are receiving the least support and therefore least likely to be referred to the disability specialists.
“Disabled people account for only 1 in 5 of the total number of people who’ve found work through the Work Programme.
“Disabled people need tailored and targeted support to find a job and the Work Programme just doesn’t offer them this.
“We desperately need the Government to re-think its approach if we want to see more disabled people in work in the future.”
Same Difference 
Now who are the scroungers? These companies take our money and have a success rate of ziltch. Why aren’t they being monitored? It’s like tossing disabled people on the scrap heap and getting paid for it. The lying, thieving, bastards.
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shame that scope and others were so quick to sign up for the work programme isn’t it then? maybe next time if you research something properly before wading in, these projects would die off a lot sooner.
i consider scope complicit in this disgraceful scheme – they were part of it, a port for the govt. to shunt unwilling ‘volunteers’ to and be free labour. the notion that scope now see themselves as above it is risible.
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Realist- Scope recently opted out of the Work Programme.
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that’s correct yes (note i did say ‘were part of it’). they had to sign up in order to sign out … that’s my point – it’s a bit rich of scope rounding on the work programme now, when they have relatively ‘recently’ left it. the damage is done and they have contributed to it, hurting the very people they exist for.
blithely thinking of a ‘best case scenario’ instead of a ‘worst’ one when nearly everyone could see that this was always going to end badly from the start.
what the hell were they (and to be fair they aren’t the only charity guilty of this) thinking? it’s time to take the ‘industry’ away from the charity ‘sector’ – you can tell from horrific examples like this just what priorities decisions like this are truly based on.
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