Category Archives: Podcast – housing

Fit for work? The DWP sure isn’t.

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Latest podcast episode – in which we look again at a benefits system in terminal shambles.

New DWP head Pat McFadden says he’s going to put jobcentre advisers into GP surgeries to target sick and disabled people for work. Righto, Pat.

That idea in itself is cack, but another important point is that the DWP will screw it up whatever happens, because things already go amazingly wrong. They mix up people’s files, lose their medical evidence, scan it upside down, lose sick notes – the works.

In this episode, we hear from Michelle Cardno who is a benefits lawyer at Fightback for Justice in Bury.

Michelle tells an interesting story about the DWP scanning people’s medical evidence the wrong way up, so that a tribunal judge at appeal only had blank pages to look at.

She also talks about the way that the DWP randomly allocates PIP – ie, awarding PIP to one individual, then taking it away from that exact same person even though their situation hadn’t changed at all.

There’s also a covert recording from a meeting between a social worker and a homeless woman where the social worker reads from the wrong file entirely – it’s another family’s file altogether.

Public sector systems have been decimated by years of cuts. McFadden needs to look at that and make that work before he gets into his other big ideas.

ANOTHER leaked email telling support workers not to help disabled housing and benefits claimants

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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.

Leaked email: Council tells NHS staff to stop writing rehousing support letters for families with disabled children

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My latest podcast episode is about an extraordinary email that a senior health professional leaked to me.

The email says that a Hackney council officer told health and medical staff to stop writing supporting letters for families who need to be moved out of terrible housing – that’s families with disabled children.

The email was circulated in this consultant’s NHS workplace.

This is outrageous. Families want and NEED these supporting letters to give to the council. The letters are medical evidence that a child’s health issues and disabilities are made worse by their awful housing. They prove that the family must be moved. Some of these letters say that disabled children are at risk of death in their homes.

But this email tells NHS staff to stop writing them.

The email is full of other rubbish. It says that families of disabled children can find a place to rent in the private sector in one month – implication being that they don’t need to get on the council housing waiting list or ask for a transfer somewhere better. A month for low income families to find a place to rent in the private sector? That’s just fantasy. We might even call that a lie.

The email also says that the council has a robust system in place “to identify need and allocate housing.”

That’s rubbish. There are families in the podcast who have letters and reports which say that their disabled children are at high risk of death because of the state of their current housing – but they still haven’t been moved.

So. I have a few theories on why a council might want to shut medical staff up on the topic of potential council failures to keep disabled children safe.

#Disability benefits have already been destroyed, Liz friggn Kendall

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As a person who has been campaigning for benefits and decent housing for all for more than 20 years, I have to ask – does Liz Kendall not realise that the job of destroying disability benefits and disabled people has already been TOTALLY done? 14 years of Tories mate.

It is already very, VERY hard to get PIP thanks Liz. How about you try it. And it is also very difficult to get benefits which don’t require you to work when you cannot, or to regularly attend useless jobcentre ‘courses’ on putting a CV together for the 1,00000000th time. Give me strength.

Here’s me ranting about that. Enjoy and please rant yourself.

And in case anyone who knows eff all turns up here to say that disabled people who really need support still get it – do me a favour. People who are most in need are the people whose support is targeted most aggressively, because the government feeling is that those people can’t fight back.

If you want a good example, let’s take a moment to remember the Tories’ slaughtering of the independent living fund not so long ago. That fund paid for 24/7 care support for profoundly disabled people who required that support to live their lives. The government went after them anyway.

So – time to piss off, Liz. You’re playing an old tune which was garbage in the first place.

And if Liz actually wants to hear from a real person, here’s Niki, a mother of a disabled son, talking about the absolute farce that has been trying to get benefits and support for her disabled son. She explains that getting this support is actually now her full time job. She also says that most people she knows give up trying to get benefits and housing help because it’s just impossible.

New podcast: housing, autism and unbelievably bad councils. Oh yes.

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Welcome to my new podcast.

I’m working on the podcast for the next few months, so probably best to head over there for interviews with people with housing and benefit issues.

There will be a proper launch in the New Year 🎊. Am putting up a few episodes here before then.

whovotedforthis.buzzsprout.com 

The podcast is called Who Voted For This, because that is what I think when I muse on the state of housing, benefits, homelessness, disability support and social security in general.

It’s is also what I think when I listen to the asinine politicians who’ve orchestrated the whole wreck and can’t see a support service without wanting to trash it.

These are the first two in a series of episodes which feature interviews with parents of children who have autism. All of these families have housing problems.

They also all have very unhelpful councils. Am much enjoying getting stuck into those clowns, because my word am I over decades of excuses and inaction from councils. Hope you enjoy that part of things as well.