On February 19, protesters will gather nationally outside Atos centres to peacefully protest the inhumane treatment of people receiving employment support allowance, and its predecessors incapacity benefit and the severe disablement allowance. I for one have accompanied people through utterly bizarre Atos assessments. Stephen here was awarded zero points on his first assessment in a report that failed to mention his schizophrenia diagnoses. On appeal, he was placed in the Support Group – the group people are placed in when they have the highest needs. So he went from being considered fit for work to being considered someone with the most substantial support needs. As I wrote at the time: “That was quite a turnaround. A lot of us who worked with Stephen at that time wondered exactly what criteria Atos was using.” A colleague noted at the time that Atos’ criteria was “whatever we can get away with.”
The February protests will be spearheded by disabled activists who have had to bear the brunt of the cuts made by the government of millionaires.
A key demand of these protesters is that the government no longer uses ATOS to preform these assessments.
Campaigners come from a wide diverse section of society ranging from disabled people who are directly effected by the changes in the administration of benefits to concerned citizens worried about the treatment of the most vulnerable in society.
Protesters are also calling for an apology from Iain Duncan Smith and Thierry Breton, Chairman and CEO of ATOS to the six families of benefit claimants who took their lives following decisions made by ATOS:
Tim Salter, a 53 year old blind man suffering with agoraphobia.
Lee Robinson, 39, of Crawley, Sussex, who was the first person in whose suicide could be attributed to the government’s changes.
Shaun Pilkington, 58, who was sent a letter saying he was to lose his Employment and Support Allowance, which he got after a long-term illness.
Edward Jacques, 47, of Sneinton, Nottingham, who took a fatal overdose after his benefit payments were stopped. Richard Sanderson, 44, of Southfields, south-west London, stabbed himself in the heart.
Jacqueline Harris, a 53-year-old former nurse from Bristol, was found dead at her home, likely having taken an overdose of medications after she was pronounced fit for work in November 2012.
These families should get a lot more than an apology if you ask me.
Campaigners are worried this list is set to grow and grow unless urgent action is taken to reverse the perverse treatment and demonisation of benefit claimants.
See the national demonstration website for full details.
—————————————————————————-
Full blogging will resume next week. Have a lot of interview recordings I’m working through etc.
getting rid of ATOS is not enough the WCAs must end and be taken back within the remains of the NHS. Private corporations no matter which of them should not gain from disabled people’s misery.
Re ‘getting rid of Atos’, delivery of WCA is not the only thing they have been into for UK government.
In November 2011 it was announced that the DWP had awarded the contract for delivering Universal Credit to accountancy company Accenture. (Accenture was formerly known as Arthur Andersen Consulting up until about the year 2000 when its name became embroiled in the Enron scandal.) Reporting on the awarding of the eight year £500m Universal Credit contract to Accenture, Information Age noted: “The principal subcontractor will be Atos, which Accenture chose for ‘its strong track record of successfully delivering IT services for the Department of Work and Pension [DWP], and with a particular focus on delivering secure online citizen self-service applications,’ it said in a statement.”
Now, ‘think tank’ Reform, in tandem with Accenture, is talking up the prospect of digital jobcentres to deliver the ‘in work services’ of Universal Credit. For Universal Credit’s ‘in work services’, read ‘in work sanctions’. So perhaps we are going from the Atos ‘Logic integrated medical assessments’ [Lima] program says ‘no’ to disability benefits entitlements, to the computer says ‘sanction’?
Or have Atos pulled out of the Universal Credit subcontracting thing?
Dude Swheatie of Kwug
see Crapita aren’t any better either
http://welfarenewsservice.com/labour-mp-urges-improvements-unacceptable-capita-disability-benefit-assessments/
I agree with Linda – although getting rid of Atos is the right thing to do, I think it also essential to get rid of WCAs as they currently stand – they are the key to the problem. It is true of course that in many WCAs Atos could use paragraphs 29 and 35 to deem someone at risk unless they were found unfit for work, but it is strange I think to see so many campaigns focusing only on Atos, when the problem is much wider than that.
Me again. I’m sorry, but I have to say this: the link you provide at the end of your blog post shows precisely why nothing will change. I’m blaming UK Rebellion, not you Kate. Think, please UK Rebellion!… on your logo image it says ‘Because Conservatives don’t give Atos’. Very droll, and very true. But don’t you realise that Labour don’t give one flying f— about stopping the injustice being dealt out to the ill and disabled? If you do, why the Labour logo at the bottom of the page? And why just the constant harping on about Tories this, Tories that. Got anything to say about Labour? If everyone keeps supporting Labour they’ll think they’re getting a change next time, but they’re not. Their policies are largely Tory policies, certainly when it comes to welfare. And UK (so-called) Rebellion are supporting the status quo by promoting Labour. I would go so far to say that you are supporting the attack on welfare by not attacking Labour and making it seem just a Tory thing.
And just look at the UK Rebellion webpage… Atos, Atos, Atos, non-stop Atos references – what about getting rid of the WCA system as it currently is, one of the main reasons people who are ill and disabled are put through misery by an assessment system that is absurd. That will not change by getting rid of Atos.
Are UK Rebellion stuck in some time warp of the 1970s – when Labour was in fact different to the Tories?
For what it’s worth, I agree. Labour is total shit.
Thanks for this, Kate. While I agree with Linda and Dave about not involving private sector companies in ‘Work Capability Assessments’ at all, I’d say that as the matter has attracted comments from Linda and Dave, you might have got no responses if your post had ‘said it all’.
And echoing the case of Stephen with schizophrenia, when I was previously Disability Spokesperson for a political party that is not one of ‘the big three’, I had privy to the story of someone with severe learning disabilities whose scoring went from 0 to 48 points via tribunal — and of course, Support Group.
Investment banker-cum-‘welfare reformer’ David Freud told the Telegraph in February 2008 regarding incentives for businesses to ‘sort out the mess’ of rising numbers on Incapacity Benefit: “We can pay masses – I worked out that it is economically rational to spend up to £62,000 on getting the average person on Incapacity Benefit into work.” Of course, that kind of talk based on ignorance ignores the under-reported reality that while businesses have been treating disabled and non-disabled jobseekers as cash cows for decades now and the bullying of jobseekers has increased, burnout through lack of support for vulnerable people has been on the rise in ‘the pursuit of inequality’.
Now, privately-run ‘Work Capability Assessments’ plus sanctions that massage the unemployment statistics amount to a ‘final solution’ that has nothing to do with “the help that you need, when you need it.” I know, because I was in the decades that I was a diligent disabled jobseeker, lifelong learner and working-life volunteer on unemployment benefit/JSA I only acquired a total of 17 months waged work before applying for ESA and winning my tribunal into the Support Group. Since then, the nightmare of serial reassessment has replaced the eating-till-I-was-sick anxieties of being interviewed for a job that I got but found myself unsuited to and lacking support in.
How about a ‘mandatory reassessment’ of Lord Freud’s suitability as welfare reform minister? Surely, that kind of thing should have been triggered later in 2008 by the UK’s banking collapse that was triggered by the kind of ‘investment banker’ ignorance and recklessness that led Lord Freud to state that Incapacity Benefit claims were adjudicated by the claimant’s own GP?
Now, as Secretary of the non-party-political Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group (and still a member of the political party for which I was once Disability spokesperson, it’s great working with others who are ‘in the firing line’ and with supporters such as Kate Belgrave!
Great you guys in your way of thinking seems you trod the path before me