Full story at Kate Belgrave’s brilliant blog. Extract below:

It is late on recent Thursday morning at one of the north west London jobcentres and I’m sitting in a new JSA claimants’ group meeting, watching the jobcentre adviser in charge of the session totally lose it with one of the new claimants (there are about 12 new claimants and an adviser crammed into a very small and rather dark side room). The jobcentre adviser and the new claimant bloke are having a full-on shrieking-match, which they’ve been working towards since the session started. I’m guessing that the louder parts of it are now reverberating around the jobcentre.

The new claimant guy – let’s call him Mark – obviously can’t take being patronised, or tolerate bullshit in any form, and has decided to come out swinging (metaphorically on this occasion). And fair enough, too. I know for a fact that if I was siging on, there’s absolutely no way in this world I could put up with the high-handed, JSA-claimants-are-on-the-make-and-must-be-kept-in-line presentation that we’re stuck in front of today. If I had just lost my job, this thinly-masked institutional hauteur would be needling me to the brink. It is anyway. The adviser’s address is full of You Lot Better Pull Finger directives such as: “If you have no commitments… we’d expect a lot more effort from you. And to be honest, you should expect a lot more effort from yourself.” The adviser chucks in plenty of poorly-disguised sanctions threats, too (even though nobody’s actually signed on yet): “The less effort we feel that you’re putting in [to find work], the more chance there is of your jobseekers’ allowance being affected,” and “the more vague your information, the more chance that your jobseekers’ allowance may be affected,” etc, etc. This pitch starts to work on your brain like nails down a chalkboard: “Your Jobseekers’ Allowance May Be Affected.” On and on it goes and my word, it grates. Without a doubt, the assumption from the get-go is that people sign on to sponge.

Anyway. The argument. Mark describes the jobcentre adviser as “sanctimonious” (which he is. To be fair, I suspect that anyone who must channel Iain Duncan Smith for a living inevitably struggles to come across as anything else).

Mark prods the adviser right the way through the session. He coughs very loudly when the adviser talks (the adviser can’t be heard over the hacking and hawking), asks if the adviser is part of a government agenda (“you work for an agenda!”) and intones meaningfully about people who toe party lines. “There is no party line!” the adviser says. “Is there not?” Mark asks. “There’s no agenda?”. Mark has chosen an interesting topic here, with its insinuation of government string-pulling, closed doors and DWP targets. It may be that it strikes some sort of nerve. The adviser finally spits the dummy and yells. He accuses Mark of petulance. “You are not only delaying this induction – you are delaying everybody else here!” he shouts at Mark. “Normally, I don’t need to raise my voice in this room, but I’m going to make an exception… If you have nothing of use to say, don’t saying anything at all!”

A very worrying thing happened on Thursday whilst I was attending a PIP medical at the new Manchester Atos Centre. The assessor openly admitted she had access to and had read my clients ESA assessment from 2 years previous. She openly discussed things that were noted in it including fact that some illnesses were not listed then that were on her PIP form that I completed with her.

The problem with this is that we had challenged the decision in 2013 in tribunal and that ESA medical and the DWP decision was overturned in 2014. Now the main problem was that is that there were inconsistencies, omissions and downright untruths in the physiotherapists report of 2013. More importantly was the fact that case law for ESA states that you should be assessed by a doctor or mental health trained nurse if you have mental health problems or musco skeletal, she had both! She was not so the decision was adverse.

The New Statesman carries this, a freelance journalist’s account of her experiences at her local jobcentre. An extract is below:

On each visit to the job centre, there were more members of the security team in the building than claimants. Three uniformed G4S employees manned the door. There were more security guards than in a club or in front of a particularly troublesome pub when there’s a football match on. I was instructed to sit down on a bench and wait, with a member of the G4S security team hovering behind me, as though I required some kind of supervision. I wondered if they’d been told that smiling was not permitted, and if the advisors had been briefed to speak to claimants in comically slow voices. It was as if they’d decided that anyone claiming benefits must be either monumentally stupid or a criminal, or some unfortunate mixture of the two.

I saw advisors taking personal phone calls at their desks on more than one occasion when people were waiting to see them and the job centre was unusually busy. My advisor cancelled my claim by accident because she “didn’t really use computers”. I also heard a member of staff telling someone who had called the job centre, clearly distressed, that nothing could be done and they should try a food bank.  I was aggressively reprimanded for “wandering around” by an intimidating member of the security team after being told to go through into the next room by an advisor. 

It just doesn’t get much worse than this, readers.

The family of a seven-year-old boy battling leukaemia have been forced to use foodbanks after their benefits were axed.

Tommi Miller’s parents received £700 a month to help look after him until he was given the all-clear last April.

But when the cancer returned in a more virulent form, Ruth, 39 and Kevin, 42, stopped work to care for their son.

They hoped the Department for Work and Pensions would restart the payments. But officials said No.

With no income for six months, the family have relied on foodbanks to eat.

They have struggled to pay gas bills, been threatened with eviction and could only celebrate Christmas after friends raised £1,200.

One of Tommi’s consultants at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge, also gave them £600 in supermarket vouchers so they could survive winter.

Mum-of-four Ruth said: “Everything we have is spent on the kids – me and Kevin are happy to go hungry.

“They should have a heart and realise our priorities are not rent and council tax.

“Every single thought is focused on our child.”

Kevin added: “What they are doing to us is inhuman – this is a young boy who is suffering.”

Tommi was diagnosed with leukaemia at three and had countless courses of chemotherapy.

His parents were able to care for him with the help of a disability living allowance, carers allowance and mobility allowance.

Last April the family were told he was in remission. The benefits were immediately stopped despite the fact he still had severe health problems and needed regular hospital appointments.

Ruth and Kevin’s claim for the payments to continue was rejected and in May they appealed for it to be reconsidered. 

Then, in September, Tommi’s cancer returned, attacking his spinal cord, bone marrow and brainstem. It meant two more years of chemotherapy and a possible marrow transplant.

Barmaid Ruth and maintenance engineer Kevin quit their jobs to care for Tommi.

Because they had received no word from the DWP they submitted a fresh claim for benefits to resume.

After a wait of almost nine months the couple’s first claim was rejected last week because it was sent while Tommi was in remission. And the DWP claim the second application never arrived.

 

The couple’s only income for the last six months has been £50-a-week child tax credit.

Ruth, also a grandmother of three, said at the family’s Cambridge home: “Tommi doesn’t have a winter coat because we can’t afford one so we just wrap him up in blankets.

“We are living on foodbank vouchers and Salvation Army handouts.

“Neighbours have also cooked dinners and brought them around. Without them we would be starving.”

A spokesman for the DWP said a decision on benefits was expected as early as next month.

He added: “We have followed the correct procedures.”

Some very useful information from DPAC. Please share widely.

With many thanks to Benefits And Work.

Readers, just like Sue Marsh, I hope they are doing this to help us, and that they won’t go wrong.

With many thanks to Benefits And Work.

The DWP have announced that 18 new postcode areas will be subject to personal independence payment (PIP) for renewals as well as new claims from 23 February 2015.

The PIP reassessment areas extend to postcodes beginning: AB, BB, BD, DD, DN, EX, HX, KA, KY, LS, PH, PL, PO, PR, S, SO, TS and WF.

If your fixed term DLA award is due to end on or after 13 July 2015 you will receive a PIP claim form rather than a DLA renewal claim form.

Any DLA claimant reporting a change in circumstances which might affect their award will be assessed for PIP rather than DLA from 23 February 2015 in these postcode districts, any existing DLA claimant who turns 16 years old may also be assessed for PIP.

A little old, but gold, I hope you agree!

A case study from today’s Guardian on the effects of the PIP delays.

Penny Tyas, 57, a former accountant from Lymington, Hampshire, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in the summer of 2013 and applied for PIP immediately. She filled in the form for the benefit in June, but did not receive her first payment until January 2014. In the intervening period she had been rejected for the benefit by Atos assessors, and the long delay contributed to a serious decline in her financial situation; she got into debt, was evicted and declared herself bankrupt.

At her lowest point, she and her 14-year-old son were surviving on food bank parcels and she was left with just 22p. She has kept those remaining coins and plans to turn them into jewellery to remind her of that “dire” time. “2013 was not a good year,” she says. She found the process of applying for the benefit exceptionally stressful, which caused a decline in her health. “You have to describe in detail the effect of your incurable, degenerative disease, and you know how much rests on the decision,” she says. She was asked if she could walk 50m. “I have been known to walk 100m, but I can’t walk that distance quickly, safely or as often as necessary,” she says. After the assessment, she was puzzled to discover that she had been judged capable of walking 200m, although no one had asked her to walk at all. She was refused the benefit. “In the UK you are meant to be innocent until proven guilty, but as a benefit claimant, you are presumed to be guilty of benefit fraud until you have proven over and over again that you really are a genuine case”, she says.

“Personal independence payment is not meant to be used to live on but to retain some independence,” she says – helping to pay for taxis, for shopping deliveries, for help at home. Without it, she was ineligible for other related benefits – discount railcards, free road tax, shopmobility services. Although it isn’t meant to be for living expenses, at the time her basic benefits were swallowed repaying debt she had got into when her condition was diagnosed, so the absence of the money was felt acutely.

While she waited her situation worsened. She wasn’t paying rent, got an eviction notice, and faced homelessness until she and her son were rehoused by the council. When she (repeatedly) rang Atos to ask when she was going to be assessed, she was told they couldn’t say.

She is angry that the diagnosis by neurologists of her incurable condition was not considered sufficient evidence for Atos to grant her the payments, until she launched tribunal proceedings. When they were finally granted, her payments were backdated, but she points out that retrospective payments aren’t very helpful if you don’t have anything to live on in the meantime. Her award was meant to continue until September 2016, but in August she was told she must reapply and was forced to go through the bureaucratic process again in order to secure her payments.

Campaigners to save the ILF are requesting that we share this widely, in the hope that it might make Labour keep this promise.

A GRANDAD was passed fit to work a month after a stroke left him unable to hold a pen.

David Waite, 60, suffers from a string of health problems including brain damage and depression.

He was referred to a stroke clinic after taking ill in November, just weeks before he was assessed by Atos.

But he was left shocked when examiners told him his benefits were being axed because he was fit for work.

His family say David suffers tremors and shakes and is having more tests to establish his underlying condition. He also suffers from neck pain and diabetes.

Despite his poor health, he was told his Employment and Support Allowance was being stopped and he’d need to get a job or sign on for Jobseeker’s Allowance.

The decision prompted his wife Norah to write to Prime Minister David Cameron.

Norah, 56, said: “David won’t be signing on – he can’t sign anything.

“We wrote to the Prime Minister as we felt it was so unjust. Someone wrote back saying they’d pass the matter on to the DWP.”

David, a former steel erector, and Norah have two children and nine grandchildren. The couple, who fostered 20 youngsters over a 28-year period, used to run a hardware shop in their home town of Dalry, Ayrshire.

Problems with David’s health first surfaced in early 2013 when he went to A&E for a sore ear and headaches and ended up being kept in for 10 days.

Norah added: “His condition has steadily deteriorated. We’re not sure what’s wrong.

“He can’t even get in or out of the bath by himself. He has developed a bad tremor and his hand does not stop shaking. I have to write his name for him.

“He has difficulty swallowing so he struggles to take his pills – 20 each day.

“The stress of the assessment process has just made things worse. We feel they’re targeting the ill. We’re just exhausted.”

The Department for Work and Pensions said: “If Mr Waite’s health has deteriorated, we would ask him to provide medical evidence and we’ll look at his claim again.”

Atos said: “A person can have significant health issues and still be deemed fit to work as the assessment looks at what you can do rather than what you can’t.”

Two churches have launched a blistering attack on the Government for using hunger as a punishment for people claiming unemployment benefit, warning that using benefit sanctions to reprimand claimants who miss meetings or fail to look for jobs amounts to a policy of “deliberate destitution”.

In a joint written submission to MPs, the Methodist and Unitarian churches say the Government is presiding over a benefits system that places a harsher punishment on people who have the misfortune to be unemployed than those found guilty of committing a crime. The maximum penalty possible – removal of living expenses excluding housing benefit for three years – represents a loss of £11,000, while the largest fine imposed by the criminal justice system is £5,000.

In evidence to the work and pensions select committee published this week, they state: “The use of hunger as a penalty is simply unacceptable. It is extraordinary that the state would choose to punish lateness to appointments or sub-optimal job searching in such a way. The criminal justice system, when [it] fines or imprisons, ensures a person’s basic needs are met – there can be no argument, moral or utilitarian, that justifies a policy of deliberate destitution.”
The churches claim sanctions have left some people unable to buy food for more than a week, and have led to shoplifting, isolation and physical and mental health conditions. “The human cost of the sanctions system is extremely high,” the submission says. “One group we spoke with contained people who had received long (six-month plus) sanctions and who had considered taking their own lives.”

Sanctions can also have a devastating impact on claimants’ ability to look for work, as “the horizons of people who have received a sanction dramatically shrink to focus on the immediate problems of finding the next meal”.

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) said yesterday that only a very small percentage of benefit claimants were sanctioned. But churches warn that large numbers of those who are sanctioned go on to face long-term stoppage of their benefits. The churches say original government estimates were that fewer than 1,000 people a year would be sanctioned for a month, yet last year more than 800,000 claimants were sanctioned for a month or longer.

Benefits are often withheld for spurious reasons. In December the food bank charity the Trussell Trust told MPs on the committee it had supported people who had had their benefits docked for failing to attend a course they had actually turned up to. Others said they were sanctioned for attending the funeral of a close friend rather than going to a routine Jobcentre meeting.

MPs have also been shown evidence that young men are more likely to face the punishment than other job seekers. Statistics from the New Policy Institute (NPI) think-tank show that more than one in three claims made by men are sanctioned, but less than one in four of those made by women. Half of claims made by those aged under 25 and referred to the sanctions system result in a sanction being imposed.

Tom MacInnes, of the NPI, said if young people or their friends were sanctioned before they had ever had a job it could prevent them reaching out for support, leaving them unemployed for longer.

“Your essential first experiences with the Jobcentre are likely to be negative … and more adversarial. What you’re going to have is a generation of people who are going through this system and are having a completely different experience than others and [they] might go elsewhere for support and advice.”

Kirsty McHugh, of the Employment Related Services Association, which represents welfare-to-work providers, agreed. “You’re far more likely to get somebody into work if you have got a good relationship with them,” she said. “Once somebody gets to the point of self-belief that they can work, that they want to work, it’s almost job done. You really have to build up the confidence and determination. The threat of a sanction is really going to stop that happening. It can be counterproductive.”

She said employment advisers should be given more discretion to decide when to suspend payments.

“There are some people who are sanctioned again and again, and there doesn’t seem to be a process where they examine what’s going on. Is that person working, and therefore they don’t really care enough? Is there a mental health condition or are they living a chaotic life? If they’re sanctioned repeatedly and it’s not having an effect that needs to be investigated,” she said.

A DWP spokesman said: “These [sanction] decisions aren’t taken lightly, and anyone who disagrees with the decision has the right to appeal… We have a well-established hardship payment fund for people who need it.”

The brilliant Kate Belgrave has the full story. Extract below:

I attended a first JSA signing-on session last week with Tony, who is aged 60. These inaugural signon sessions at this jobcentre are not held as private, one-to-one meetings. People must attend these sessions as part of a group.

This is a big problem in itself, because people don’t always want to reveal their private information in front of ten or 12 strangers. People must fill in their claimant commitment forms as part of this session. They have to write about their histories and work experience, and not everyone wants to ask the questions they have about these things in front of people they don’t know. People might be ex-offenders, or have long gaps in a work history because they have serious drug and alcohol problems. They may have problems with their reading and writing. On this occasion, one person asked me if I could spell out several words for their form.

Anyway. The toilets. Someone in the group asked if there was a public toilet in the building. The adviser who was running the session said No. There was a public toilet at the jobcentre once, but apparently needles were found in it from time to time and the jobcentre closed it. So – that was the end of that. It was simply a case of Too Bad. No alternative was offered. There’s actually a public toilet at the library just round the corner (I am getting on years and so am kind of familiar with the location of pretty much every public latrine in the parts of London I frequent), but nothing was said about that.

This is the sort of thing really gets on my wick. It seems small, but it isn’t. There’s a real vengefulness here. In any other setting, an effort would be made to solve the problem and offer people an alternative. But the normal courtesies aren’t extended to people who claim JSA. Quite the reverse. People who claim JSA are expected to put up with discomfort. They can wet themselves for all anybody cares. The fact that nobody had any choice but to attend the session and stay at it was neither here nor there. And there is no choice. People have to attend these signon sessions if they’re going to get unemployment money. If they don’t attend and stay, they can’t get JSA. The sessions are long – this one went on for more than an hour and people had to wait a while for it to start, so it probably lasted an hour-and-a-half all up. Add on another half-hour for the walk or bus ride there and you’re getting past a couple of hours.

I’m listening to the second session of oral evidence of the Benefit Sanctions inquiry as I type. You can listen to it here, if you wish.

I wasn’t planning to post about it but then a point came out of it that I haven’t yet seen covered anywhere else.

Many JobCentre staff have revealed being disciplined/told off/threatened if they didn’t make enough referrals for sanctions. Many have revealed that targets exist.

We know that jobcentre staff are rewarded for meeting targets, but, the main point to come out of the evidence session is this: no one says or does anything if jobcentre staff make too many sanction referrals.

Now, readers, I don’t know what that tells you, but it tells me something very clearly. While there are minimum targets in jobcentres, of which staff are extremely frightened, there is no maximum target.

Readers, it is clear to me today that jobcentre staff can’t sanction ‘too many’ claimants, because there is no such thing as sanctioning ‘too many’ claimants.

Readers, this means that clearly the top jobcentre bosses don’t care how many claimants get sanctioned.

Scary stuff, readers. I’m shivering with fear.

From yesterday’s Guardian:

That’s not the only thing he said, or the only thing that needs to be heard in this.

The link above will take you to last night’s File On 4, on benefit sanctions.

Many thanks to Dan McIntyre for downloading the audio for me. Readers, I do hope you can all access the file. Please take half an hour, listen and share everywhere possible.

With many thanks to Welfare Weekly.

With many thanks to Welfare Weekly.

Citizens Advice Scotland (CAS) has written to the Secretary of State for Scotland and Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith, demanding an immediate halt to the roll-out of Personal Independence Payments (PIP) in Scotland.

PIP is replacing Disability Living Allowance (DLA) for sick and disabled people, but the roll-out is not expected to be completed until at least October 2017.

The Scottish Government will be devising their own variation on PIP, as part of greater devolution of welfare powers in the wake of the fiercely contended independence referendum.

CAS Chief Executive Margaret Lynch warns that Scottish DLA claimants may have to go through two stressful disability benefit assessments in only a short space of time – one for Westminster’s version of PIP and another for the Scottish Government’s variation. Margaret Lynch says this “will be of major detriment to claimants and is unnecessary and possibly very distressing”.

She argues that expecting sick and disabled people to go through two different systems, before finally learning what kind of the support they will receive, will be a “waste of resources to pay for the assessments of tens of thousands of disabled people”.

Margaret Lynch said:

“PIP is the replacement benefit for Disability Living Allowance (DLA) and is an area that will be devolved to the Scottish Government following the Smith Commission recommendations. However it will take to October 2017 to be fully rolled out to all DLA claimants – and that is if there are no further delays to its introduction.

“As we know that the Scottish Government will be developing and introducing its own PIP equivalent, we don’t want to see disabled claimants having to go through changes in their payments, how they are paid, and how much they are paid, twice in a short period of time. I think this will be of major detriment to claimants and is unnecessary and possibly very distressing. In addition it seems a waste of resources to pay for the assessments of tens of thousands of disabled people to transfer them onto a system that they will not be staying on.

“Therefore I’m calling on the DWP to halt the migration of all existing DLA claimants to PIP and I hope this will be backed by the Scotland Office and the Scottish Government.

“CAS has already detailed the massive delays that new claimants are seeing in getting a PIP assessment and then having a decision made. Whilst these delays continue, sick and disabled clients are facing severe hardship, unable to meet the costs of living, and getting into debt.

“The DWP should concentrate on getting the process right for these new claimants and let current DLA claimants stay on their current award until such times as new Scottish system is in place.

“I had very much hoped that issues like these, and the halt to Universal Credit that has also been called for, could be raised and discussed with relevant stakeholders before draft legislation is published but it has been a disappointing process. The very short time scales we have been hampered by has led to a short sightedness of being able to look at all the complex and inter-related issues that need discussed and debated.

“This is not the first time I’ve pointed to process and timescales hampering the need for full and frank discussion and debate. This has to be taken seriously. All parties and stakeholders must have time and forums to bring out issues such as these and look for a way forward. The migration of DLA claimants to PIP is just one example of an area we would like to influence on behalf of the 330,000 clients we deal with every year.

“Whilst I recognise that the Scotland Office has tried to bring people together, it’s clear that we need to have all UK government departments playing their part in the processes that are required following the Smith Commission.”

With many thanks to Welfare Weekly.

The Government’s controversial Work Programme is almost completely useless at helping long-term sickness benefit claimants into work, official figures suggest.

Official data from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), released in response to a Freedom of Information Request (FOI), show that Iain Duncan Smith’s flagship back-to-work programme is dramatically failing long-term sick and disabled people.

DWP figures show that of the 107,150 people referred to the Work Programme from the Work Related Activity Group (WRAG) of Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) between June 2011 to September 2014, with a future employment (or health improvement) prognosis of 12 months or more, only 5,120 achieved a job outcome lasting at least 6 months – equal to just 4.7%.

The WRAG is for ESA claimants who Jobcentre Plus believe may be capable of moving off benefits and into work in the future, with the right support.

Chances of finding work through the scheme is almost as bad for ESA claimants with a back-to-work prognosis of 3-6 months. DWP figures show that of the 112,700 referred to the programme, only 12,850 found a job (11.4%).

The FOI also reveals how the Work Programme is next to useless for Ex Incapacity Benefit (IB) claimants who have been moved to ESA as part of its abolition. Of the 28,980 EX-IB claimants placed within the ESA WRAG group between June 2011 and September 2014 with a prognosis of 12 months or more, only 520 (1.8%) found work lasting a minimum of 6 months.

With many thanks to Benefts And Work.

Maximus, the company taking over work capability assessments (WCA) will be paid more than twice as much as Atos but plans to reduce the proportion of doctors carrying out medicals in favour of cheaper occupational therapists, the Guardian reports.

Atos was paid around £80 million a year for its WCA contract, but Maximus will receive between £590 million and £650 million over three years, depending on performance. 40% of Atos assessors are doctors, 40% are nurses and 20% are physiotherapists. Maximus plans to take on 1,000 extra staff, but reduce the proportion of doctors and take on more occupational therapists instead

According to the Guardian, Maximus believe things will improve from the very start of the contract in March:

“if we can reach out and make people understand the process they are going through … if we can reduce some of the anxiety … if we can schedule more intelligently … if we can speak to people rather than just sending letters. Those are some of the differences … We believe if we do it right, we should be able to do this in a good way.”

However, given that the same staff will be using the same software to assess claimants using the same legal criteria, it is questionable how much difference a better bedside manner is likely to make to make.

See the Guardian for the full story.

A terrible story of DWP madness, seen on Facebook.