Okay.

Here’s another example of the utter dysfunction of the benefits system, from its myriad useless angles. I think we can safely say that we’ve reached the point where hardly an aspect of this bureaucracy is fit for purpose (see other articles I’ve posted recently for plenty more on that. The whole thing is out of control. It doesn’t even make sense). I’m pretty sure that I could run a better system myself out of a garage, pissed. I reckon I get two or three calls and/or emails a week about the sort of monumental bureaucratic mess described below at the moment. These situations require endless phone calls (and ages spent on hold), letters, challenges, visits to welfare advisers (if anyone can find them) and appeals to MPs and councillors. It never, ever ends.

These sorts of situations are also almost impossible for one person to deal with. That point needs to be made loud and clear. The calls take hours, as do the letters, application forms and time needed to source support information. Calls go unanswered and letters and certificates go missing, or aren’t acknowledged for ages. There’s no way that people can sort out problems of this magnitude by themselves these days. Finding a welfare rights adviser with the time to help is often just not a starter. Those services have gone, or are so oversubscribed that people no longer bother to try. I know this, because I’ve queued myself at places like the CAB and found all appointments gone by 9am.

So.

I’ve just been talking with a woman I know well. She is 22 years old and has a four-year-old daughter. This young woman has about £20 a week to live on at the moment. Here’s a list of the way things are going for her with benefit claims at the moment. This could be anybody’s story, too. God knows I hear plenty similar.

In the past month or so, this young woman has:

– Had her child tax credit stopped, purportedly because she has another person living with her. She has never heard of this person. In her life. You’ll will know, of course, that many other people are dealing with the same sort of situation and the collapse of this part of the system.

This begs a number of questions, one of which I would like answered as a matter of priority. Shouldn’t the DWP, HMRC, councils and their various useless provider companies be required to provide evidence of all this alleged cohabitation BEFORE accusations are made and benefits are actually withdrawn? What is this system where an accusation is made and money simply stopped? Why is the onus on people who receive such payments to prove that they’re innocent? In the last week or so, my phone really has been buzzing with calls and emails from people who are experiencing these sorts of problems. There’s a guy I’m working with in north west London at the moment who has been accused of sharing his home with some bloke he’s simply never heard of. His council says that the DWP has imparted this information and that it’s his responsibility to prove that the bureaucrats are wrong. If he doesn’t, his housing benefit will be cut. Wtf. Really. Homelessness lies at the end of that path.

I digress. Continue reading →

A little more about mental health conditions and unemployment as described by people who are experiencing those things in our hardbitten day and age:

I was at Oldham jobcentre last week. Outside, I spoke for some time with Peter*, a man in his 40s who struck up a conversation because he was nervous about going into the jobcentre for a meeting he’d been called to.

In the course of our discussion, Peter said he had depression so severe that he was hospitalised earlier this year for it. (It seemed that his jobcentre adviser knew about this depression. When Peter came out of the meeting later on, he showed me a leaflet about counselling sessions with numbers to call. His jobcentre adviser had given him the leaflet). Peter was unkempt on the day we met. He was dressed in sweatpants, a faded top and the soft pull-on shoes that some people wear as slippers. He said that he lived in a council house with his brother and mum. He was articulate, although I found him hard to follow at times, because we jumped between topics. I’ve transcribed the conversation below. I’m writing this to give you an idea of the way that people speak.

I’m also writing this to give you an idea of the DWP’s pettiness and threats. Such a lot of government communication with the unemployed takes this petty, but threatening, tone. We’ve seen that many, many times before, of course, but another look won’t go amiss. Peter showed me the letter that he’d received which called him to that day’s jobcentre meeting. He let me take a photo of it. I’ve posted a copy below. You’ll see this letter says that Peter’s Universal Credit will be docked if he missed his meeting without good reason (whatever that is these days) – he’ll lose £10.40 per day. It was a crappy threat on a crappy piece of paper – contempt written all over the thing. This is the sort of letter that the DWP sends to people with serious mental health conditions:

The threat certainly had its intended effect.

“It’s a good job I come down today, because that’s what would have happened to me, you know,” Peter said. “Sanctions, that’s what happened [to me] last year. Like it’s a long time – 91 days.”

Continue reading →

This ought to tell you something about the criminal waste of time and money that is our disability assessment system:

As readers of this site will know, I’ve been following the benefit assessment experiences of Sean (name changed), a 53-year-old man who has Asperger’s and severe depression and anxiety.

I’ve listed below some of the benefit assessments and reassessments – and associated DWP blunders and screwups, which is in many ways the real list – that Sean and his partner (who has a schizophrenia diagnosis) have experienced in recent times. They’re still in the middle of this non-stop assessment, of course. There literally is never a time when they’re not in the middle of one benefit assessment or another. They’re always filling in forms, waiting to be called to assessment, being called to assessment, going to assessment, waiting for assessment outcomes, appealing assessment outcomes, or being told to fill in a new set of forms.

But here’s the point I really want to make. There really isn’t any sort of service around that might change or improve their circumstances in any way. Quite the reverse. All of this couple’s support has been removed in the last few years. They had a social worker a few years ago, but lost that service because council funding was cut. The two used to attend a community mental health service (that’s where they met), but had to stop going there, because services were cut. They used a local welfare advice centre for some support with filling in application forms, but just received a letter saying that social security support at that service will end, because the housing association that funded part of it is pulling out. They are at the point where there is literally nobody around to help or to accompany them to face-to-face assessments. We get all this waffle from the DWP and government about getting people back to work and blah blah blah. At the same time, all familiar, useful and complex support is removed.

Still, the DWP assesses and assesses and assesses these people. I don’t know why the department expects things to have changed from one assessment to the next. A torrent of mail and paperwork pours through this couple’s door from the DWP and the council and their housing association. Some of the letters and processes don’t even make sense, as you’ll see below.

Continue reading →