Wtf indeed.
On Wednesday, I spoke at length with Karen Sheader, a Hartlepool women who is a director at the Shoot Your Mouth Off film production company for people with learning difficulties.
Karen has the bone condition osteopetrosis. She’s liable to serious bone fractures. Both her legs are broken at the moment.
She had to take leave from work, because of those fractures, and so applied for Universal Credit earlier this year. This was a shambles in itself – her claim took months to start and she got to the point where she was worried about losing her flat if she went into rent arrears while waiting for Universal Credit. More on that soon.
For now – the extraordinary comment her Universal Credit work coach made at one of Karen’s work-focused interviews.
The work coach said that Karen must make sure that she attended all her hospital appointments to meet Universal Credit claimant commitments – that conditions for benefits included proving that she was doing everything she could to “get better.”
What are these work coaches even talking about?
Are they saying that attendance at medical appointments is an actual condition for claiming benefits – or is it simply that they’re now all so programmed to bang on about getting back to work or into work that they come out with any rot that might serve as a threat? Maybe the DWP really thinks that the only reason anyone ever misses a hospital appointment is because they’ve chosen to avoid healing and avoid work as a lifestyle option. Thinking that about everyone must be hard. These clowns are obsessed.
Karen says she had literally never considered not attending her hospital appointments, because she would very much like to get better and to return to the job and organisation that she has put so much time into. Would have hoped the DWP knew that.
There are days when I wonder where the DWP’s mania for work at all costs will end – if it ends at all, that is. Don’t suppose we can count on that.
We’re obviously well on course for a point where people have their benefit money sanctioned for not only missing a medical appointment, but for missing an hour with the physio, or even a swim class, or maybe even for not shopping at health-food outlets. It’ll be compulsory to participate in any activity that some policy wonk imagines will hasten a return to health and to work.
You’ll be getting Sanctioned for smoking soon, or eating too much fat/sugar. And if work is so great why don’t the rich do it?
Perhaps staying up late on work nights and Sunday will be deemed sanctionable.
Remember, this is from the same people who thought it was perfectly acceptable for State Pensioners to be re-cycled as cheap agricultural labour. Because they were retired they wouldn’t have to be paid the minimum wage. And they would be ‘doing something’ in exchange for their pension. A whole army of pensioners moving slowly over the fields with sticks and walking-frames.
It all goes back to the lack of privacy for claimants, of normal respect and dignity.
Who in normal adult life would expect to be treated like this ?
If you are claiming benefits these days, particularly Universal Credit, the DWP think they own you body and soul, and can be as rude and insolent as they like.
They might as well ask this lady to bring in photocopies of her medical record so that they can snoop on these as well, in case there is something in the doctors’ comments that might be of interest. And these are DWP ‘Work Coaches’, not medically qualified at all.
They are treating benefit claimants like prisoners. And making unemployment a social crime.
Right on there John. This is how they work, by making people guilty they are claiming benefits at all.
Can they legally make access to benefits contingent upon you making a medical decision they agree with? I thought such decisions were ours alone to make, without influence or threat.
Nope, but it won’t stop a work coach trying to claim they can if they think the claimant doesn’t know they can’t.
Been there. Some of the Work Coaches will always try it on if they think they can get away with it. Brownie points for them if they get the claimant to agree to going on courses and the like.
By law, I believe they cannot do this. If they could, they would need to send out a “good cause” form for every missed medical appointment, just like they do for missed benefit appointments.
Yes, in some circumstances, they can. People with mental health problems may be forced to take medication as a condition for receiving benefits.
I think having enough money to exist should be a universal right, not conditional upon anything.
It should be, and the sooner we get a Universal Basic Income, the better.
This ties in very much with what little I said about the specifics of ‘Universal Credit’ today when I raised the importance of the group to which I was addressing addressing ‘Universal Credit’ matters. (The time frame was narrow, and I was raising the matter in terms of my own support requirements when ‘full roll-out’ is officially scheduled for Hereford for March 2018.)
I said that the ‘Claimant Commitment’ is about micro-managing claimants’ lives, making it easier for us to be sanctioned.
As to ‘what might come’ of a ‘working group’ on these matters, the concern was raised, “Whatever we do as a group, it won’t change the Government’s determination to do what they want to do.” To that comment I replied simply that a corporate stance against ‘Universal Credit’ might not do anything to the Government’s resolve, but that ‘speaking out’ would mean a great deal to myself and others obliged to apply for ‘Universal Credit’.
The ‘working group’ will address these matters, including the matters regarding council tax debt that I raised and that those present did not realise was and is such a major problem even before ‘full roll-out’.
Thank you, Kate, for your being there.
DWP totally obsessed with pushing people into work.
Its like some sick cult where they worship the holy God of Employment.
With people sacrificed on the altar of Work.
Reminds me of my own, now ex, work coach who, after I was diagnosed with asperger’s uttered the line
“So what can we do to Hager you back on the straight and narrow?”
What do you mean “back on the straight and narrow” I’m autistic not a bloody criminal
Get
Not sure where “Hager” came from, ruddy autocorrect
Sorry to hear that. I expect he/she meant that having a job is “on the straight and narrow”, whereas the DWP think of unemployment as if it were a crime. So he/she was saying, “What can we do to get you ready for work or help you find a job?” N.B. Some right-wingers don’t believe Aspergers/autism is real.
And a lot of DWP people, and I once knew a ex-DWP member of staff, live in a bubble of constant DWP propaganda about the good work they are doing, and how much they are helping people. They have departmental news emailed to them at their desk. Good news stories, with smiling pictures of work coaches with newly-employed customers. Group meetings, support groups etc. Its like being in North Korea, and if you don’t at least pretend to go along with it all, you are in trouble with the management.
Where do I sign up? I like making trouble for jobcentres and the DWP
and of course if said medical appt clashes with dwp interogation you get sanctioned for not attending their appt so devil and deep blue there,
Yep – that’s exactly what my friend said when I told her about this story!
A lot of Tory guff & hot air in the News today about Social Mobility, tackling division & ending inequality, endless head-scratching & oh-so-earnest hand-wringing over something that is really very simple; all Poor people need is more money. We could all send our kids to Eton or buy a posh house if we had a spare million quid kicking about! If you want to end poverty & inequality, share the wealth.
Fat chance of that Trev. Their wealth is what divides them from most people, so why should they give it up ?
why should they give it up ? Depends if they want to have a functioning Society or not. Oh, wait, I forgot they don’t believe in the existence of Society, according to Thatcher all those years ago, but then there was Cameron’s so-called ‘Big Society’, which of course is just a Tory euphemism for dismantling the State. We need a National General Strike, or a Revolution, to take back the wealthy. Hardly likely. So next best thing is to push for a Unconditional Universal Basic Income. Check out BIEN (Basic Income Earth Network), there are people fighting to get it on the agenda all over the world.
No one believes the Tories when they say this. We know they don’t mean it. On the other hand, everyone believes Jeremy Corbyn when he says it.
And the DWP staff themselves, sick and tired of being chased by management to meet impossible targets – or find themselves on an ‘improvement plan.’
Once you start this everything mandatory stuff, then this is what you get. Stupid, ridiculous decisions made about people who are so sick they should be in bed. Not arguing with Work Coaches down at the Jobcentre.
Yet the staff have jobs and the claimants do not. I read this and wondered why the member of staff would bother to bring up hospital appointments. I think we should stick together and resist this government’s attempts to turn us against one another, fighting over the scraps left over after the £billions have been stashed away in tax havens. Let’s find the courage to reach out to one another with compassion, so that we need not fear the time when we have to ask for help ourselves.
Well said Alison. People need to realise they might be in this situation as well. Needing to claim benefits, or in desperate need of housing. If there is no social security, no proper safety-net, then what are they going to do ?
But will enough voters believe Jeremy Corbyn when the crunch-time comes on election day ? Look at Universal Credit, JC isn’t saying it should be scrapped, only fixed. Why not come out straight and say just scrap it ?
Exactly. I wish Labour would recognize that Universal Credit is an act of Class War and needs to be scrapped altogether. It can’t be fixed because it is inherently flawed, and is designed to be that way, i.e. punitive, to punish and enslave the poor. Corbyn needs to wake up.
Yeah, this is whats needed, scrap Universal Credit completely. Its no better than JSA. Just more strict, and DWP more able to make people do what they want.
Its cost so much that it will be years and years before any savings, if there ever are any. It has been cobblers from the get go, just another Tory trick.
Let’s put the Tories on Universal Credit. If they miss even 2 minutes of Parliament, they get no pay for 3 years. But they’re expected to turn up anyway, every day, for no pay, otherwise they won’t get any money at the end of 3 years either.
Very wrong that people with these serious medical conditions have to work at all.
What exactly happened to the concept of seriously ill and disabled people not having to work, because they could not reasonably be expected to do so ?
“Well, Dave’s fucked, I’m fucked, the country’s fucked” – George Osborne greets the Brexit result. 2:54 AM – 27 Dec 2016.
George Osborne was a bit late hearing about the result, then?!
Just been reading of a disabled Huddersfield woman who has successfully sued Atos for producing a false report on her condition that resulted inher PIP being wrongly reduced. She has been awarded £5000 compensation by the Court.
ok do not miss medical appt, what about the sanctions for missing a dwp appt if you go to said medical appts?
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