A press release:

Lords Committee investigating the legislation to look at housing, shops and public spaces-

Next week, on Tuesday 24 November, the House of Lords Committee on the Equality Act 2010 and Disability will explore the issue of accessibility in the built environment.

The Committee will put questions to Government officials and senior figures from the world of housing law and disability support, as part of its wider inquiry into the Equality Act 2010 and how it impacts on disabled people.

The Committee will put questions, in its first session at 3.20pm, to:

·    Bob Ledsome, Deputy Director, Building Regulations and Energy Performance, Department for Communities and Local Government
·    Justin Bates, Vice-Chair, Housing Law Practitioners Association
·    Rachel Smalley, expert in inclusive design and access for disabled people

The session will cover areas such as legislation in relation to ‘common parts’, reasonable adjustments to housing provision, accessibility in new builds, and accessibility in public spaces.

Then at approximately 4.30pm the Committee will put questions to:

·    Martin Phelps, a Trustee and Treasurer of Lewisham Shopmobility Scheme.

The session will cover areas such as the impact of the Equality Act 2010 on disabled people, the role of local authorities in planning projects and handling funding, and issues thrown up by regeneration.

The evidence sessions will start at 3.20pm, on Tuesday 24 November, in Committee Room 4a of the House of Lords.

With many thanks to Benefits And Work.

Will claimants soon be forced to claim personal independence payment online as part of the DWP’s cost cutting measures? A cheap to process online PIP2 ‘How your disability affects you’ form is now being tested by the DWP. At the same time the department has agreed to further major cuts to its running costs.

Cost cutting claims
The DWP is understood to have come to an agreement with the treasury about how much it will reduce its already inadequate operating expenses in the latest round of cuts. While the exact amount is not known the average cuts to other departments are 21% by 2019-20.

One of the ways that the DWP is aiming to reduce costs is by making as much of the claims system as possible digital. Online claims are much quicker and easier to process and mean that costly storage and retrieval of paper forms is avoided.

The PIP digital claim team have announced on a DWP blog that a new online PIP claim form has now gone into ‘private beta’ testing. This means that volunteers are testing the form in the privacy of their own homes using their own equipment rather than going into DWP offices to try it out.

The same but different
In total, the new PIP2 form consists of over 20 screens with 250 possible options for claimants to answer. The online form will also, it seems ask different questions to the paper claim form. According to the PIP digital claim team’s content designer, Joanne:

“We need to know about people’s quality of life – information that’s hard to draw out with closed questions that require a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer. Because of the range and complexity of health conditions, our users want to tell their own story. It’s been a big challenge to design questions in a way that allows users to do this and still give us the information we need to make a decision.”

The type of questions asked can make a real difference to the quality of the evidence provided, as Joanne herself admits:

“Some questions work better for certain conditions, some aren’t eliciting enough information and some risk misinterpretation.”

Business analysts Laura and Tracey make it clear that the questions on the online form are going to be markedly different:

“Our role is also to make sure that the new way that we’re asking questions allows us to make quality decisions about each PIP claim as well as tackle some of the policy challenges we face, such as how we capture the date when the claim is made and why we gather certain data.”

Different form, different outcomes

But if online claimants are asked different questions to paper claimants then there is the real possibility of a two tier service developing, with one group being more likely to get awards because they are asked for more targeted evidence.

In addition, it seems that the type of form you complete might make a difference to whether you have to have a face-to-face assessment.

PIP case manager Joe explains on the digital claim team’s blog that:

“It’s my job to assess whether the user has included enough information in their claim for us to make a decision. This makes the claim easier for the user as we don’t have to ask them for further information. It also helps that we are joined by colleagues from our Healthcare Providers (Atos and Capita) who can take a view on how well they could assess the information received as well as share their experience so we can make further improvements to the questions we ask.”

It sounds, then, as if one of the aims of the digital form may be to cut back on the number of people who are called in for an assessment with a heath professional.

Voluntary or compulsory
Many claimants would welcome the opportunity to claim online rather than using a paper form. This is especially the case as the online form allows you to save your work and return to it at a later date. (Although some DLA claimants will remember the extremely unreliable online DLA claim form which routinely crashed and lost all the supposedly saved information).

But there are some big question marks.

For instance, will claimants be limited to how many characters they can enter into each box, meaning that they will be prevented from giving sufficiently detailed evidence?

And how easy will it be to send in additional evidence and be sure it is available to the case manager at the same time as they are looking at the digital form?

But perhaps the most important question of all is, will claimants be given a choice?

Because the digital system will save considerable amounts of money the DWP are going to be keen to get as many claimants as possible to use it. And it may lead to confusion if there are two different sets of questions being answered by different claimants. According to assisted digital lead Siju,:

“We need to make sure the service meets the needs of people who aren’t able to complete a digital claim without help.

“Now we’re asking real users to test the service, we’ve made sure support is there if they need it – and we’ve already had our first user complete a test claim using this support.”

But people who can’t make a digital claim without help might well prefer to use a paper form instead. Will they be given that option or will it only be in special, carefully defined circumstances, that claimants will be able to opt out of digital claims? Might claimants without access to computers even be expected to make their claim in a Jobcentre?

Tougher “fit for work” tests to assess eligibility for disability benefit may have taken a serious toll on mental health in England, according to a study that linked the tests to 590 extra suicides and hundreds of thousands of additional antidepressant prescriptions.

In what is believed to be the first research of its kind to examine the mental health impact of the work capability assessment (WCA) in England, experts said there could be “serious consequences” of the policy to move people off benefits, which they said had been introduced without any evidence of its potential impact.

Published online in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, the analysis follows research published last week which found that debt, austerity and unemployment were significant factors in the rising number of British men who have killed themselves since the tests were introduced in 2008.

Disability rights campaigners and mental health charities have long called for an overhaul of the assessment scheme, following anecdotal evidence of adverse effects on mental health.

One million recipients of disability benefit had their eligibility reassessed under the WCA tests in England between 2010 and 2013, according to researchers from the University of Liverpool.
‘Fitness to work’ assessments are brutal, says daughter of man who killed himself
Read more

The researchers calculated that these assessments were linked to an additional 590 suicides, 279,000 extra cases of self-reported mental health problems and the prescribing of an additional 725,000 antidepressants between 2010-13.

This is equivalent to a 5% rise in total suicides, 11% increase of self-referred mental health problems, and 0.5% more antidepressant prescriptions.

The researchers believe they have ruled out the impact of deprivation, economic trends and long-term trends in mental health, but the methodology can only identify correlations between WCA and the increase in mental health problems. It cannot say definitively that WCA is the cause.

Benjamin Barr, from the public health department at Liverpool University, who is the report’s principle author, said: “The pattern of increase in mental health problems closely matches the increase in assessment of the work capability assessment.”
More deprived areas such as Liverpool showed the greatest increase in mental health problems
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The study found that more deprived areas such as Liverpool showed the greatest increase in mental health problems. Photograph: Gary Calton for the Observer

He said they looked at other potential explanations, including unemployment, wages, levels of deprivation and cuts to services, and were able to discount them. The rise in mental health problems happened after the increase in numbers of people being assessed. “We’re left with the conclusion that this is quite a likely explanation,” Barr said.

He said that areas of England where the highest proportions of people – about 6% to 7% – went through the reassessment process, such as Knowsley, Liverpool and Blackpool, experienced a much larger increase in suicides, mental ill health and antidepressant prescriptions.

He compared the potential damage caused by the WCA programme with large-scale programmes in the NHS such as breast screening, which was subject to rigorous assessment to avoid potential for harm, and warned: “This policy may have had serious adverse consequences for mental health in England, which could outweigh any benefits that arise from moving people off disability benefit.

“This benefit assessment programme, which you are introducing to a very large number of people, should have the same level of rigour applied [as that of cancer screening in the NHS] to see whether we want it or not. You have to be sure you are not causing harm.”

The paper states: “Although the explicit aim of welfare reform in the UK is to reduce ‘dependency’ it is likely that targeting the people living in the most vulnerable conditions with policies that are harmful to health will further marginalise already excluded groups, reducing rather than increasing their independence.”

Doctors, mental health and disability rights groups, coroners and bereaved families of those who have taken their own lives have expressed concern following anecdotal evidence that the tests are adversely affecting the mental health of claimants, but this is the first study to look in detail at the issue.

The study, which examined 149 local authorities in England, found the greatest increases in mental health problems occurred in areas with higher rates of WCA reassessment, generally in more deprived areas.

Tom Pollard, the policy and campaigns manager at the mental health charity Mind, said: “This worrying study shines a light on the damaging impact the work capability assessments can have on people’s mental health. We’ve long been calling on the government to overhaul their current fit-to-work tests.

“We know that people with mental health problems often find these assessments hugely stressful and, since they don’t accurately assess the extent to which a mental health problem can affect someone’s ability to work, many individuals get the wrong outcome. This could mean they are required to look for work before they are ready, or have to go through a lengthy and stressful appeals process to challenge the decision, all of which can impact further on their mental health.

“This research provides further evidence that this process can be seriously harmful, yet thousands of unwell individuals still have to endure it every week.”

Anita Bellows, of campaign group Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC), said: “It comes as no surprise for DPAC and confirms anecdotal evidence that we have been receiving on a daily basis of people being placed under intolerable stress, misery and hardship by the work capability assessment.

“With people hounded by the Department for Work and Pensions and subjected to endless reassessments, people consistently tell us that their conditions are worsened by this inhuman regime, especially people with mental health issues, while those with physical impairments also find their conditions worsen due to the intolerable stress.

“We have repeatedly called for the scrapping of the WCA, and the results of this survey make this even more urgent. Too many lives have already been damaged or lost.”

A DWP spokesman said: “This report is wholly misleading, and the authors themselves caution that no conclusions can be drawn about cause and effect.

“In addition, it is concerning that they provide no evidence that the people with mental health problems highlighted in the report even underwent a work capability assessment.”

With many thanks to Benefits And Work.

A shocked employment and support allowance (ESA) claimant collapsed after receiving a letter telling him his benefits were to be sanctioned and died within an hour, Disability News Service has reported.

Previously homeless Alan McArdle had just come out of hospital after a fall and, as a result, was unable to keep an appointment with his welfare to work provider Maximus.

Even though the manager of charity Slough Homeless Our Concern contacted Maximus to explain why he was unable to attend, the process of sanctioning Alan McArdle’s benefits was put into action.

When Alan received the letter warning him that his ESA was under threat of sanction a friend who was with him claims “he went a deathly grey colour and complained about pains, and then he collapsed. Within an hour, he was dead.”

You can read the full story on the Disability News Service website.

A press release:

-How are schools and hospitals affected by the legislation, peers to ask-
Next week, on Tuesday 17 November, the House of Lords Committee on the Equality Act 2010 and Disability will question senior figures from education, health and social care policy in the UK.

Ofsted, the Department for Education, Department of Health and the care regulator CQC are among the organisations to give evidence. The session will cover areas such as disability in schools, the Equality Act as reflected in education policy, discrimination in health and social care, and sanctions for breaching the Act.

In the first session at 3.20pm, on education, the witnesses giving evidence will be Ann Gross, Director responsible for policy on Special Needs, Children in Care, Adoption and children’s mental health, Department for Education; Kate Copley, Deputy Director in the Education Funding Agency’s Academy Operations team, Department for Education; Lesley Cox, Ofsted national lead for Special Educational Needs, Ofsted and Claire Jackson, Legal team member, Independent Parental Special Educational Advice (IPSEA).

Questions that the Committee members are likely to ask these first witnesses include:

·    How confident are you that schools of all types are meeting their obligations under the Equality Act?
·    What about academy chains, what are their obligations?
·    Should the Equality Act prohibit the segregation of disabled children in schools?
·    What sanctions are available to use against schools who are failing their students?

In the second session, on health and social care, at 4.20pm, the witnesses giving evidence will be Flora Goldhill, Director for Children, Families & Communities, Department of Health, Ruth Passman, Head of Equality and Health Inequalities, NHS England and Sally Warren, Deputy Chief Inspector of Adult Social Care, Care Quality Commission.

Questions that the Committee members are likely to ask these witnesses include:

·    How well do health and social care organisations respond to evidence of inequality?
·    Does healthcare and social care commissioning incorporate the Equality Act?
·    What is your relationship with the Equality and Human Rights Commission?

The evidence sessions will start at 3.20pm, on Tuesday 17 November, in Committee Room 4a of the House of Lords.

There have been deep cuts to the numbers of full-time specialist disability employment advisors posted in Jobcentres, new figures show.

Between 2011 and 2015 the number of Jobcentres employing a full-time advisor to help disabled people navigate the support system and find employment fell by over 60 per cent from 226 to just 90, with reductions in every recorded year.

Charities say the specialist advisors are crucial for people with disabilities who have to navigate the support system and that their reduction will undermine the Government’s own goal of getting people in to work.

But the Government is intent on reducing the numbers of disability advisors and instead wants disabled people to be dealt with by general non-specialist “work coaches” as part of its Universal Credit programme.

The cut to specialist employment support for people with disabilities comes despite Iain Duncan Smith telling the group they should be working their way out of poverty.

Elliot Dunster, group head of policy, research and public affairs at disability charity Scope, told the Independent the fall in specialist assistance was concerning.

“Disability employment advisors make a huge difference in supporting disabled people into work – providing expert, personalised advice and guidance,” he said.

“We’re very concerned to see this drop in the number of job centres that have fulltime specialist advisors for disabled people. Disabled people are pushing hard to find work, but continue to face huge barriers, ranging from inaccessible workplaces to employer attitudes.

“Disability employment advisors help tackle these barriers. The Government has set out a welcome ambition to halve the disability employment gap. To do this disabled people must have access to specialist, tailored employment support.”

Dan Scorer, head of policy at learning disabilities charity Mencap, warned that the replacement generalist advisors would “simply not have the training” required.

“People with a learning disability find the demands placed upon them difficult while claiming Job Seekers Allowance or Employment and Support Allowance,” he told the Independent.

“Some find them impossible and we are worried that there is not the right support in Jobcentres to help them. Families tell us that a lack of learning disability training and cuts to DEAs is leading to many people with a learning disability being unfairly sanctioned and receiving insufficient support to appeal decisions, or the right support to find employment.

“Even if the reduction in DEAs in some part of the country is due to the rolling out of Universal Credit and part of a strategic move to generic advisors, we are concerned that these advisors will simply not have the training to fully support claimants with a learning disability.

“The problems with the administration of benefits and changes in the benefits system, combined with future cuts to benefits and social care, is causing fear and anxiety among the 1.4 million people with a learning disability and their families in the UK who are scared they could be isolated in their local communities.”

The warning comes after the mental health charity Mind warned that the transition away from specialist help under Universal Credit would make the benefits system more difficult for people with mental health issues.

“We’re pretty sceptical of the ability of those jobcentre advisors to be able to understand the barriers that people with mental health issues face,” Mind’s policy manager Tom Pollard told the Independent earlier this month.

In a speech to the Conservative party conference in Manchester, Iain Duncan Smith told disabled people they should be working their way out of poverty with support from the state.

“We don’t think of people not in work as victims to be sustained on government handouts. No, we want to help them live lives independent of the state,” he said.

“We won’t lift you out of poverty by simply transferring taxpayers’ money to you. With our help, you’ll work your way out of poverty.”

The Government is also pursuing a policy of cutting the level of payments from its disability Access To Work fund, which it plans to spread more thinly.

Other cuts include a sharp reduction in payments to ill people claiming Employment and Support Allowance who have been classified as possible being able to work in the future – the so-called “Work Related Activity Group”.

A Coalition of 60 disability charities warned last month that these cuts would make it more difficult for disabled people to find work.The Government has also scrapped the Independent Living Fund and given the responsibility for providing similar support to cash-strapped councils.

The latest figures on Jobcentre advisors were released by ministers in response to a Parliamentary question by Labour’s Emily Thornberry.

A spokesman for the Department for Work and Pension said the fall in advisor numbers was consistent with Government policy.

“With the introduction of Universal Credit disabled people looking for work now have access to Work Coaches who are trained to provide tailored support specific to their individual needs. As we continue to make our mainstream services more accessible to disabled jobseekers it is expected that the number of Disability Employment Advisors will continue to decline,” he said.

“The Government is committed to halving the disabled employment gap and the most recent disabled employment figures show that 226,000 more disabled people found work over the past year.”

Mike Sivier of Vox Political reports:

Coroner Tom Osbourne blamed the death of Stephen Carré on a decision by the Department for Work and Pensions that the bipolar Employment and Support Allowance claimant, who was clinically depressed, was fit for work following a work capability assessment.

He joins Michael O’Sullivan and Julia Kelly, both of whose suicides were blamed on the result of work capability assessments by their respective coroners, as the weight of evidence mounts up against the process.

Full details at Vox Political.

The question is, how many more are there?

https://twitter.com/imajsaclaimant/status/659073018308771841/video/1

Taken from here.

In March this year, the Churches published a report showing that nearly 100,000 children had been affected by sanctions in 2014 alone and that people with mental health problems were being sanctioned at a rate of more than 100 per day. As a result of their campaign more than 2,000 people wrote to their MPs asking them to support a review of the system.

The report told stories like that of Martin*, aged 60, who missed an appointment with the job centre because his wife died suddenly. He was sanctioned for six weeks, leaving him with nothing to live on and in a state of confusion as his wife had previously handled most of their joint paperwork. He came to the local church for help and charity Acts435 helped him with his living expenses until he could come to terms with the new shape his life had taken.

I have no words.

With many thanks to Benefits And Work:

The DWP have made a mockery of the death of Michael O’Sullivan and made further claimant deaths more likely by not spending £5 on writing a life-saving memo, even after telling a coroner they would do so. Their failure is a clear indication of the way in which the DWP now believe they can never be held to account for the deaths of claimants.

Michael O’Sullivan
Claimant Michael O’Sullivan committed suicide in September 2013. He had been suffering from anxiety and depression for a number of years.

Following the inquest into his death in January 2014, the coroner issued a Regulation 28 report which is designed to prevent future deaths occurring in similar circumstances.

In the report the coroner stated that:

“I found that the trigger for Mr O ’Sullivan’s suicide was his recent assessment by a DWP doctor as being fit for work .”

The Coroner went on to say that:

“During the course of the inquest , the evidence revealed matters giving rise to concern. In my opinion, there is a risk that future deaths will occur unless action is taken.“

In their response to the coroner, the DWP admitted that the health professional who assessed Mr O’Sullivan had failed to follow clear guidance on dealing with claimants with suicidal ideation.

The very last words in their response were that they would “issue a reminder to staff about the guidance related to suicidal ideation that has been described in this report.”

Benefits and Work made a Freedom of Information request asking for copies of the reminder issued. And details of when and to whom it was sent

A year too late
The DWP’s reply was to direct us to a previous answer they gave last month, in which they stated:

“We regularly review and remind staff of current guidance as well as any changes. A copy of the latest guidance issued to healthcare professionals in February 2015 can be found here

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/work-capability-assessment-handbook-for-healthcare-professionals .”

The link is to the 210 page Work Capability Assessment Handbook issued to health professionals. The latest edition, which includes changes to information about suicidal ideation, was not published until a year after the coroners report.

But this updated Handbook can in no way be seen to meet the coroners’ urgent request that the DWP act to prevent future deaths.

In addition, there had been a previous edition of the same Handbook published in June 2014, five months after the coroner’s report was sent to the DWP. It contained no additional information or reminders about suicidal ideation whatsoever.

Not worth a fiver
The reality is that the DWP could have sent a memo to Atos, asking them to remind all their health professionals about the vital importance of following guidance on suicidal ideation. Atos could then have circulated that to their assessors.

It would have taken a senior DWP manager no more than 10 minutes to send such a memo. Senior DWP staff earn around £50,000 – £60,000 a year.

So, sending the life-saving memo would have cost the DWP no more than about £5.

But they never did it.

And now they are doing their best to cover-up that fact up.

Manslaughter
The DWP’s callousness makes a nonsense of the claim by ministers, and the prime minister himself, that the government takes such deaths very seriously.

It also makes a mockery of the coroner’s inquest procedure and of the anguish of Mr O’Sullivan’s family.

The truth is that the DWP’s utter lack of accountability makes it all too likely that similar tragedies will go on happening until the day someone at the DWP, or one of the companies it employs, faces a charge of manslaughter.

For many claimants, that day cannot come too soon.

Benefits and Work will not accept the DWP’s response to its Freedom of Information request. We believe that the correct answer to our request should have been ‘We cannot provide you with the documents you requested because no such documents exist.’

And we will take this matter to a tribunal if necessary, to get the DWP to admit the truth.

Yesterday, in an email to campaigner Rick B, the Trussell Trust said they knew nothing about IDS’s plan to put job centre advisors in food banks.

Today, Same Difference has discovered very recent written evidence, sent by the Trussell Trust to the Work And Pensions Committee.

Points 22 and 23 of this written evidence were of particular interest to Same Difference. These appear to suggest that the Trussell Trust itself recommended to a committee of MPs that jobcentre advisors should be sent into food banks.

See for yourselves, readers:

22. There are some positive recommendations from foodbanks on how working with JCPs could better help clients. 28 of the 51 foodbanks suggested the single biggest thing Job Centre Plus could do locally would be to station an advisor in foodbanks for a few hours a week.  Themajority would welcome training for foodbank volunteers – and offered training to JCP advisers on how foodbanks operate.

23. Specific suggestions included:

“An advisor in foodbank would be helpful also training for our volunteers.  If it was possible for Job centre to provide computers during session this would help greatly with individuals getting help to do their job search.” Debbie Shelley, Manager, South Sefton

Readers, we have to wonder why Rick B was ‘reassured’ yesterday by email that the Trussell Trust knew nothing about this. Clearly MPs know that the charity knows everything about it.

The Government on Monday refused to investigate the effects of benefit cuts to thousands of people’s mental health.

Department for Work and Pensions minister Priti Patel, who earlier this year sparked outrage for suggesting a reintroduction of Britain’s death penalty, claimed any examination of temporary sanctions’ effects would be “misleading” in isolation and should not be investigated.

“There are many factors affecting an individual’s mental health,” she told MPs on Monday, adding: “To assess the effect of sanctions in isolation of all other factors would be misleading.

“There are a number of checks built into the system to support all claimants including those with mental health concerns.”

Despite being urged to launch a review by the SNP’s Callum McCaig, Patel claimed there was no evidence that sanctions notably affected people with mental health problems – an allegation that runs contrary to independent research.

Sanctions do have an effect on claimants’ mental health, previous research has said

In January, a consortium of churches published their own report which found more than 100 people per day with mental health problems were being subject to sanctions – a higher rate among those with physical ailments.

Some 83 per cent of Work Programme participants with mental health issues surveyed said the scheme’s “support” had only made their mental health problems worse.

The Methodist Church, Church of Scotland, Church in Wales and mental health charity Mind all then piled in to rebuke the Government, the former’s policy advisor commenting: “The fact that this system punishes people for the symptoms of their illness is a clear and worrying sign that it is fundamentally flawed.”

But Patel insisted jobcentre staff were properly trained to deal with welfare recipients’ mental health problems.

“Our staff are trained to support claimants with mental health conditions … claimants are only asked to meet reasonable requirements, taking into account their circumstances, their capability, and their mental health services,” she said today.

“There is no evidence to suggest that mental health claimants are being sanctioned more than anyone else.”

I’ve just signed this petition on Change.org:

Iain Duncan Smith has exploited a single pilot at a part time religious food bank in order to place Job Centre advisors in all food banks. As most people are starving because of these same job centre advisors this simply normalises abuse and starvation as part of the welfare system under IDS. It also makes foodbanks collaborators in the abuse the DWP subject people to through workfare, sanctions and fake medical assessments of disabled people.

Macmillan Cancer Support is highlighting the extra financial burden that many people with cancer face due to extra costs as a result of treatment and/or loss of income. We are also warning that potential changes to the benefits system could leave many without a financial lifeline.

Nationally, more people with cancer than ever (over 85,000) depended on Macmillan to understand and access the benefits and tax credits system, including getting help to fill in complex and often time-consuming forms, as well as tribunal representation from our local benefits advice services.

The growing number of people with cancer turning to us with money worries is a stark reminder of the financial impact of a cancer diagnosis when, on average, their income halves and outgoings rocket. The support that organisations like Macmillan provide are becoming even more urgent and important, but we cannot do it alone.

Every sector has a duty to protect people with cancer from further turmoil. Yet the government, through its Welfare Reform and Work Bill, is proposing to reduce the benefits of people with cancer who are unable to return to work because they’re not well enough by around £30 a week.

Macmillan is calling on the government to remove the proposed cut as we believe it will risk pushing the most vulnerable over the edge financially. People can find more at our ‘Put the Fair into Welfare’ campaign site at http://www.macmillan.org.uk/campaigns

Macmillan offers financial and benefits advice to anyone affected by cancer. To speak to a welfare or financial expert, call free on 0808 808 0000 FREE, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm, or visit http://www.macmillan.org.uk/benefits

Dawn Graham

Senior Development Manager for the North East

Iain Duncan Smith is three times more likely to hit mental health sufferers with benefit sanctions than he is to help them into work, a damning report reveals.

An analysis by the charity Mind found almost 20,000 people with mental health issues had their benefits docked last year.

Yet only 6,340 mental health sufferers were helped to find work during the same period.

The figures came as the United Nations Committee on Economic Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) announced it will be investigating the Government’s benefit cuts.

The probe will look at whether the reforms have had a disproportional impact on single parents, children and the disabled and whether the tax credit cuts will leave people without an adequate standard of living.

The Committee will also investigate what steps are being done to cut the number using food banks and whether mental health services are adequate in the light of the cuts.

The research by Mind, obtained by Freedom of Information request, will pile pressure on Mr Duncan Smith to halt his cruel sanctions regime that sees those on benefits lose money if they are a few minutes late signing on or fail to look for work.

According to Mind there 250,000 people with mental health issues who receive the Employment and Support Allowance. Of these 19,259 were sanctioned last year.

Paul Farmer, the chief executive of Mind, said: “It is perverse that people with mental health problems are more likely to have their benefits stopped than they are to be supported into employment.

“We have long been warning the Government that a punitive approach towards people who are out of work because of their health or disability is not only ineffective but is causing a great deal of distress.”

DPAC and the Reclaiming Our Futures Alliance are gathering evidence on the impact of the closure of the Independent Living Fund (ILF) since it was shut permanently on 30 June 2015. This will be used for a report which we aim to bring out ahead of the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement due at the end of November.

The report will publish responses from a latest round of Freedom Of Information requests asking Local Authorities how many reassessments have been carried out and the overall results (percentage pf support packages increased, percentage decreased..etc).

We also want to base our findings on testimonies from individuals and organisations with direct experience of the impact of closure.

Testimonies could be from people who used to receive ILF, people who missed out on ILF when it shut to new applicants, Disabled People’s Organisations, care managers expected to carry out reassessments or Council’s now responsible for meeting the full adult social care needs of Disabled people.

Information it may be useful to include in your testimonies:
– communication about the transfer process
– experience and knowledge of Local Authority staff carrying out assessments
– experiences and outcomes of reassessments

-how the transition process has impacted on you

Please indicate if you want:

– your testimony to be anonymous

– your testimony to be used only for the purposes of the informing the findings of the report or whether you are happy for your experiences to be used as an anonymous illustrative case study

– if you are happy to speak to the media about your experiences. If so please include contact details to reach you on and any communication access needs.

Send testimonies to mail@dpac.uk.net before mid-night 8^th November 2015. Please keep testimonies as brief as possible and ideally no more than 4 pages/

The Government wants to station job centre advisors at food banks to help get hard-pressed families work in a significant extension of the role of charities.

Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, told MPs that a pilot project in Manchester is to be rolled out across the country as it is proving successful.

The Conservative minister told the work and pensions select committee of MPs he had received “good feedback”.

He added: “If this works and other food banks are willing to encompass it, I would want to roll this out across the country.”

Robert Devereux, Permanent Secretary at the DWP, said the pilot scheme was initially focussed on helping people struggling to claim benefits they deserved, but advisors were “spending more time pointing people to vacancies”.

The move appears to embed food banks, run by charities, into the welfare state. Critics will also point out many using food banks are already in work, albeit poorly paid.

Mr Duncan Smith questioned Trussell Trust figures that showed a 398% increase in the number of people using their food banks between 2012-14 in Scotland.

While the figures were “genuinely put together” they were “not absolutely clear”, he told the committee.

Ministers have come under fire for the number of hard-pressed families relying on food parcels.

More than 60 national charities have called on ministers to drop controversial plans to cut £30 a week from the benefits of claimants forced to give up work through illness or serious accident, arguing it will make it harder for them to get a job in the future.

The chancellor George Osborne announced the proposed reduction to employment and support allowance (ESA) in the July budget, saying the cut would provide an incentive for claimants to return to work.

But charities say the near 30% cut in a benefit claimed by hundreds of thousands of sick and disabled people, including those with mental illness, cancer and Parkinson’s disease, will cause widespread hardship.

The Labour party has tabled an amendment to remove the proposed cut entirely during the third reading of the welfare bill in the Commons on Tuesday.

A straw poll survey by the Disability Benefits Consortium indicated that two-thirds of existing ESA claimants believe that the cut would cause their health to suffer, while almost half said it would delay their recovery – and their return to the job market.

Jan Tregelles, chief executive of Mencap, which co-chairs the consortium, said: “The survey shows that by reducing this benefit by £30 a week, disabled people will be pushed further away from employment, contradicting the government’s desire to halve the disability employment gap and get more disabled people into work.”

Disabled and ill claimants assessed as unfit for work by official means tests are placed in one of two ESA categories: the support group, if they are not expected to work; or the work-related activity group (Wrag) if they are deemed able to take tentative steps back to work in the future.

Around 500,000 people are currently in the ESA Wrag group, where they are paid more than the current job seeker’s allowance (JSA) but expected to undergo some work-related interviews or training. Around 1.1 million people are in the support group.

From April 2017, payments to new ESA Wrag claimants, currently £102 a week, will reduce into line with standard JSA rates currently at £73, while support group ESA payments, currently £109 a week, will remain intact.
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The government hopes the cut, which will reduce new Wrag claimants’ annual unemployment benefit incomes from £5,000 to £3,500, will save an estimated £1.4bn over four years.

The government is convinced that the current system offers a perverse incentive for people to stay on benefits. It says that although around 61% in the ESA Wrag group say they want to return to work, relatively few manage to do so.

Charities argue that the vast majority of ESA Wrag claimants want to work, but face huge barriers because of their condition and the stigma they often face from employers.

The shadow employment minister Emily Thornberry said: “The government’s suggestion that the reason people with disabilities are not working is because they’re getting too much money is utterly ridiculous.

“The people who will be affected by this cut are not lying around on mink furs eating truffles – they are suffering from major health conditions, which mean they need extra support to find work.

“It is not the fault of people on ESA that the right jobs and the right support are so often not available to them. Cutting their benefits by £30 a week to give them an ‘incentive’ to work is just wrong.”

A Department of Work and Pensions spokesman said: “We are absolutely committed to supporting disabled people and that’s why we continue to spend around £50bn a year on disabled people and their services.

“Our reforms will ensure the right support and incentives are in place to help disabled people move closer to the labour market and, when they are ready, back into work.

“Those who are already claiming ESA will see no change in the level of benefit they receive. In addition, payments for people in the support group, who have the most severe work-limiting health conditions and disabilities, will be maintained at the current level.”

With thanks to ilegal forum.

Shocking ‘back to work’ results for people claiming all kinds of sickness benefits in Great Britain over a 4 year period show that just 37,770 obtained a ‘job outcome’, whereas in just over a two year period over 81,000 people died whilst claiming sickness benefits between December 2011 and February 2014.

Compare these two tables:

So the total number of people on sickness or disability benefits with ‘job outcomes’ is just 37,770.

The figures include 7,090 claimants who voluntarily agree to attach themselves to the government’s work programme even though there is no requirement upon them to do so.  Other claimant groups extend to 6,980 Jobseeker Allowance claimants who were at some stage in their past on longer term ‘incapacity benefits’, – a group which will include a large number who have simply ended their sickness claim as their condition improves enabling them to seek work.  

The worst results are to be seen in the most vilified of all, those on longer term incapacity benefits who have been subjected to the newer employment & support allowance regime in the ‘work related activity group’.  It was this group which was once reported to be faking their illnesses by as much as 75% in order to stay on the sick after testing a handful of claimants in a pilot exercise in October 2010.  Yet, after 1.3 million people being tested it transpires the vast majority qualify for their benefits.  Shamefully the lowest ‘job outcome’ figures of them all (2,460) are achieved in this group confirming that Duncan – Smith’s promises to get them in to work are little more than newspaper headlines.

The most recent work assessment results show that between May 2010 and December 2014 the total of 37,770 jobs follow a staggering 4.2 million work (4,228,500) tests ordered by IDS.