In my latest podcast episode:
Another professional has leaked an outrageous email to me – the second in as many weeks.
In this email, a Hackney council officer tells an education specialist to stop writing support letters for families with disabled children who need to be moved out of terrible housing.
This officer works with autistic and SEND children. Their families need these support letters to tell their councils why they must be rehoused. Some letters say that children are at high risk of death in their current housing.
Pat McFadden – the new fibbing head of the DWP
I also talk about Pat McFadden, newly-minted secretary of state for the DWP.
I’m intrigued by the lies Pat McFadden is telling about people being able to declare themselves longterm sick to claim benefits. This is rot. People cannot declare themselves long term sick to claim benefits. They have to go through a humiliating work capability assessment and then wait for the DWP to decide if they should get benefits. Often, the DWP decides they should not.
I talk with Latoya Wray in this episode. She works 3 minimum wage jobs and claims a bit of universal credit to stay afloat.
When she’s not doing that, she’s living in fear of her 8 year old autistic son falling to his death from their flat in a Hackney highrise council block. She has medical and education reports saying that her son is at high risk of death and that the family urgently needs rehousing.
Unfortunately, as seen in the leaked email, education specialists have been told not to write letters to tell that council to rehouse families with autistic and disabled children who are at high risk of death in their housing.
Pat McFadden needs to take his fingers out of his ears and pull out the one he has in his butt, and listen to Latoya. This is what life is really like when you need to claim benefits and help with housing.
Excellent. You should do this for a living 😆
😁
Dear Kate
I believe this extract from an email I just sent my MP with regard to Gaza has relevance here:
EXTRACT STARTS
n extract from a book review with regard to Gordon Allport’s 1954 publication ‘The Scale of Prejudice’:
“Contemporary researchers like Sidanius and Pratto (1999), and Banaji, Fiske, and Massey (2021), have built on Allport’s work to explore the ways social dominance, institutional power, and unconscious bias reinforce social inequalities.”
Source: https://simplyputpsych.co.uk/psych-101-1/understanding-prejudice-and-discrimination-a-review-of-gordon-allports-the-nature-of-prejudice-1954
Many thanks. Spot on. I will read that tonight.
McFadden’s latest wheeze, Jobcentre Advisers embedded in the NHS to get the sick back to work. It’s not even an original idea, something I seem to remember the Tories talking about years ago.
https://www.bigissue.com/news/employment/dwp-job-coaches-gp-surgeries/
“Mikey Erhardt, policy lead at Disability Rights UK, said: “Putting job advisers into GP surgeries is a huge risk. We know that due to its years of failure and dangerous practices, the majority of disabled people do not trust the DWP. ”
“Putting DWP workers into health settings only further blurs the lines between health and work. You can’t work yourself out of poor health. We know it’s the failure of government to make work safe, accessible and well-paying, which means that hundreds of thousands leave work because they are getting sicker.
“We struggle to understand how working on a CV will help someone unable to work because their physical or mental health is a barrier. If anything, this will just make people less likely to seek help –worried that the toxic interactions they have at the Jobcentre will now carry over to their local GP.”
Exactly! My CV was professionally done by Careers Wales, though it was my own version posted on a job site that got me my job with my employer (been there 3 years now)
Nearly 6 years ago now I was advised to stop cleaning; I have arthritis sciatica degenerative disc disease in my neck and now I’m getting a lot of hip pain, what I think is carpal tunnel in my hands from the litter picker. I’m not sure how a work coach in any setting could fix my literally worn out body
The new scheme to have Jobcentre staff in GP Surgeries to target those claiming Sickness & Disability Benefits is to be called “Connect to Work”. Here are the areas of the country to be affected:
Connect to Work delivery area Lead authority Included authorities (^ indicates lead) Funding (rounded down to nearest £0.1) Number of people set to support (rounded down to nearest 50)
North East North East Mayoral Combined Authority ^North East Mayoral Combined Authority: Newcastle City Council, North Tyneside Council, Northumberland Council, South Tyneside Council, Sunderland City Council, Durham County Council, Gateshead Borough Council £49.7m 13,800
Buckinghamshire Buckinghamshire Council ^Buckinghamshire Council £7.2m 1,650
Oxfordshire Oxford County Council ^Oxford County Council £8.3m 2,000
West Sussex and Brighton West Sussex County Council ^West Sussex County Council, Brighton and Hove City Council £15.6m 3,950
Berkshire Wokingham Borough Council Bracknell Forest Council, Reading Borough Council, Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, Slough Borough Council, West Berkshire Council, ^Wokingham Borough Council £9.5m 2,350
Devon, Plymouth, and Torbay Devon County Council ^Devon County Council, Torbay Council, Plymouth City Council £22.8m 5,950
Cumbria Cumberland Council ^Cumberland Council, Westmorland and Furness Council £11.7m 2,750
South Midlands West Northamptonshire Council Bedford Borough Council, Luton Borough Council, Milton Keynes Council, North Northamptonshire Council, ^West Northamptonshire Council £32m 8,050
York and North Yorkshire York and North Yorkshire Combined Authority ^York and North Yorkshire Combined Authority, City of York Council, North Yorkshire Council £10.4m 2,500
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/job-advisers-to-be-embedded-in-gp-surgeries-as-tens-of-thousands-more-sick-and-disabled-people-offered-help-into-work
I love how they think that people get appointments at GP surgeries. You have to wait about a month at ours.
I’m seeing a scenario where on the average day at our surgery, there are 5 work coaches, 3 exhausted GPs and 50 people out the front who have dropped dead waiting to see a doctor.
Which could of course be McFadden’s aim.
Good point. My GPs are in the process of introducing a system of triaging patients online before giving face-to-face appointments. Sounds to me like McFadden is another IDS type who sees himself as a great social reformer trying to make a name for himself but hasn’t got the brains for it. IDS was the same but had Lord Freud to rely on.