Threatened when we complained the “work skills” course was useless: more stories from the jobcentre

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Update 19 November:

Talked to the DWP and asked for responses to these questions:

– How charging for these courses works
– The fees that providers charge for these courses
– What sort of quality control the DWP have in place for these courses
– Whether or not attendance on these courses compulsory for people who are claiming JSA and if the DWP instructs jobcentres to sanction people who refuse to attend a course (certainly people are sanctioned for not attending)
– What sort of reporting the DWP does on course attendance, quality, cost and outcomes.

That was on Monday. So far – nothing. Even reminders have been ignored. So – will ring again.

You can see from the comments people have left on this article how ridiculous these courses really are. You also know that someone is making plenty of money out of them.

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Original post:

One I’ve been thinking about for a while:

Another phenomenon worth touching on when we’re talking about pointless jobsearch activity is the so-called “work skills” courses that JSA claimants are sent on by jobcentres. These are the courses that are provided, if that’s the word, by the likes of Reed, A4e and other of the usual suspects. People must attend these courses if the jobcentre says so. It’ll be news to nobody that people are told they’ll be sanctioned if they say No, and are indeed sanctioned if they say No. You can see that in the transcripts below. (I’m wondering if these courses ARE actually mandatory – or if people can say No and are just told they can’t, as they are told with everything else).

These courses have intrigued me for a while, because from the start, people have told me that so many of the courses are utterly meaningless. One man at the Kilburn jobcentre told me earlier this year that while he was sorting out a support worker job and waiting for CRB checks to come through, he was sent on a course where he was taught to tear up paper for teamwork purposes. “They sent me on this stupid course at Wembley. It was just a two week thing – a waste of time. They teach you how to stick a piece of paper back together as a teamwork thing. They said I’d get certificates for it. I said “there’s no way I’m putting that on my CV. You’re having a laugh.”

I started thinking about this again recently, because I’ve noticed that the JSA claimants I’m speaking with each week at jobcentres are getting angrier and angrier at the absurdity of these courses. It occurs to me that the anger is escalating. People are already furious at being forced to work 30 hours a week for free on community work placements and about the torturous daily sign on process. One guy at the North Kensington jobcentre (you can read more about this below) reported that his course provider took real exception when people on the course got together and said that the whole exercise was pointless. He said that the course provider pretty much got to the “Let’s Take This Outside,” point when people complained. “We got threats from the providers…I had no choice. I had to go on the course, or get no money.” Continue reading →

Work focused interviews for people in ESA support group?

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Crosspost from Disabled People Against Cuts – please share and send responses to DPAC at @Dis_PPL_Protest and mail@dpac.uk.net:

From DPAC:

“We are getting information that people in the ESA Support Group are being required by JobCentre Plus offices to attend work focused interviews, under threat of benefits being withdrawn if you don’t go.

According to the DWP webpage, if you are in the Support Group “you don’t have to go to interviews, but you can ask to talk to a personal adviser,“ which should mean that they cannot require you to attend.

We are going to look closely at this and do whatever we can to get this stopped, but in order to do that we first need to gather information about how widespread this is, which areas it is happening in and how long it has been going on.

So we are asking for people to come forward if you are in the ESA Support Group and have been contacted by your Jobcentre to attend an interview, we would really like to hear from you, please email us at mail@dpac.uk.net and we will get back to you

We will never disclose your name or personal information without your permission, but we may ask you if we can use your case to campaign against this. If you say no to this we will not use the information in any way, and your information will still help us to understand what is happening.”

DPAC has a template letter you can use if you receive a letter from the jobcentre about one of these interviews. You can find the template here.

Continue reading →

Police, daily #JSA sign on and workfare. “It’s like being tagged.”

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Back to North Kensington jobcentre yesterday – where that jobcentre’s sensitive leadership called the police as the unemployed workers’ group I was with handed out information leaflets to JSA claimants who must deal with sanctions and workfare. The coppers didn’t seem to care much about the leafleting when they arrived – although they did ask if the group could ring the local police station with advance warning of its next leafleting activity. Which was amusing. Highly. I can’t see advance phone calls to the police and copper-convenient leafleting sessions being organised in a hurry myself. Liaising with the police – particularly before an event – isn’t anyone’s bag and I don’t think there’s any requirement to do it. Jobcentres are just getting very touchy about anyone who might let people on JSA know that there are groups of claimants fighting workfare and sanctions. And that they can join in.

And anyway, the many people on JSA who I talk to want this unemployed workers’ group to keep turning up and challenging jobcentre management. I’ve written before about the concerns that people who attend the North Kensington jobcentre have raised about jobcentre advisers who bully the people they’re supposed to support, and about the pointless, oppressive daily sign-on regime that many claimants there are now subject to. “It’s like you’re tagged,” one woman who must sign on daily told the group yesterday. “You can’t go out of London for a day. You can’t even really go out of your area. You got to be around every day to come in here and sign on.”

This woman had another problem, too – and it’s one that will ultimately affect you, whether you’re in work or not. The jobcentre centre had just given her a letter which told her to attend a G4S meeting this week about starting a Community Work Placement. Continue reading →

24, careworker on zero hours and facing eviction from Focus E15

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Update Monday 10 November: Quick update: the eviction was averted. Doughty Street lawyer Jamie Burton came down and was able to negotiate a repayment plan and a review in two months’ time.

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This afternoon, I spent several hours talking with a 24-year-old woman who is in rent arrears at the Focus E15 hostel and must appear in Bow County Court tomorrow at 2pm to try and stop her eviction from the hostel. If that fails, she’ll be evicted on Tuesday by East Homes. (East Homes is part of the East Thames Housing Group – if you like, give them a shout here @EastThamesGroup to ask them why they think homelessness is an acceptable option for young people who are already struggling, especially with winter approaching). If the eviction goes ahead, this young woman is pretty sure she will be out on the streets. She is probably right. She’s facing eviction from a homelessness hostel, which will make her – err, homeless. This woman suffers from depression. She is young and she is not rich. She’s in arrears and she will be punished. She has nowhere to go if she must leave Focus E15.

“I haven’t got anywhere else, because the only people I know are in the [Focus E15] hostel.” she says. “I want them [East Homes] to give me a month, or maybe two months to show that I can pay some of the money.”

A judge will make a call on that tomorrow. This young woman hasn’t got legal representation yet. She works as a carer on a zero hours contract and couldn’t get away from work on Friday to meet with a lawyer who may have helped. She will rely on a duty solicitor at the Monday hearing and hopes to get from work to court in time to get her story across to one. Such is our charming era.

I looked through this woman’s papers today. The whole situation is a shambles. It seems that as a Focus E15 resident, she once had a support worker who may have worked through some of these problems with her. She says that she went without a support worker for over a year, though, and a new one has only just been appointed. That left her foundering by herself in the usual bureaucratic hell – getting letter after letter about rent, arrears, council tax demands (she’s just sorted out a payment plan for that) and all the while wondering how many hours work and pay she’d get each week from the care agency she works for. She says that from time to time, her depression made it hard to sort her financial problems out. She’s young and she’s had nobody to guide her. A lot of people get into financial trouble when they’re young and discovering how the world works, if “works” is the word for it. Not everyone has wealthy relatives to bail them out. This woman is only 24 now. “I don’t mind admitting that sometimes, I would just think I’d let it [the problems with the money] go.”

A lot of the problems seemed to begin when this woman started work as a carer on that zero hours contract. The new income affected her housing benefit claim. She was responsible for a rent shortfall. Her income varied a lot, though – in a good month, she’d get £700. In a bad one, she’d get less than £100. Managing a housing benefit claim, and benefit claims generally, when you’re on a variable income can be difficult and painful in the administrative sense, and I meet a lot of people who aren’t at all sure what to do about it. This is one of the real problems with our zero hours age. People earn some money one week and very little the next. They don’t know if they can sign on for JSA to cover gaps, or whether they’re entitled to working tax credits, or how their changing income will affect their housing benefit claim. Wage slips need to be sent to councils and average housing benefit claim amounts decided. Big swings in income usually need to be reported to councils as a change in circumstances for housing benefit claims. A great many of the people I talk to have absolutely no idea who to ask for help with any of these things, or even that help might be available. Mix all that in with youth, inexperience, depression and you can see how people get into a mess. Continue reading →

30 hours a week at all kinds of jobs on workfare. Your job is next

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I’ve got more to add to this story, which I will do over the weekend – here’s a starter for now:

This is a photo of a timesheet from a London JSA claimant who is on a Community Work Placement at a charity called Embrace UK:

1timesheet

The Community Work Placement scheme is one of this charming government’s we-will-make-you-work-for-nothing “concepts” for people on JSA. Instead of finding people proper paid jobs, the government forces people to work for their tiny benefits for 30 hours a week and for up to 26 weeks in a local charity or organisation. This is workfare, pure and simple.

This claimant is a 44-year-old man who signed on a couple of years ago, because he was not able to cover his bills with the money he was making in a small business he wanted to build (he was self-employed). His work programme provider is Urban Futures. Urban Futures is a right bunch of charmers with a reputation for bullying. The company has recently come to the attention of Boycott Workfare and Haringey anti-workfare campaigners. Urban Futures appears to be delivering Community Work Placements in some sort of contract formation with the equally repulsive G4S. I tried to get hold of Urban Futures on the phone yesterday to ask about the concerns re: bullying, their involvement in CWP, how many people they were sending out to work for nothing in local charities and how much their contracts were worth. I gave up after being passed around to several people who didn’t seem to know what I was talking about and/or didn’t want to know and/or finally said the only person I could talk to was out of the office. I may try calling again next week, or I may just visit their Wood Green offices and lie on the floor in reception until someone responds to me. It’ll be Option B at this rate.

Anyway – the man whose timesheet you see above must work 30 hours a week from Monday to Thursday at the charity on workfare. On Fridays, he goes into a local Urban Futures office where he has to carry out his weekly jobsearch activities. He must apply for about 18 jobs on Fridays. Here’s one of the sheets he recently filled in for that.

jobsheet

So.

Two points for now.

The first is that this man’s CWP commitments are cutting into the time he has available to find paid work and to develop his business, which is what he wants to do. He said that the hours he spends on the workfare placement and in the Urban Futures office “prevent me from building my own business. I think I would have found another job much quicker [if I wasn’t on CWP].”

The second point is that he is involved in quite an amazing range of tasks at the charity and he should get a proper wage for all of it. I think sometimes people who aren’t yet affected by these things have a vague (and snobbish) idea that workfare means a bit of weeding in public parks (a job which, may I say, is a real job that also should be properly paid). I don’t think everyone quite grasps the reach workfare increasingly has, or how far into the workplace the government intends it to go.

This charity provides a range of advice, outreach and support services for people in the area. I spoke to the charity yesterday and the person there confirmed the range of work that people on CWP were involved in – and added that people were also working in data entry and administration.

“I’m involved in the sexual health [advice] team and the youth development group,” the man on CWP told me [a comment which, incdentally, piqued my interest re: CRB/DBS checks. The charity told me that people on work placements were supervised by DBS-checked staff or volunteers at all times when on outreach with young people as per DBS guidance. The ultimate responsibility and enforcement of this is a topic I’m particularly keen to pursue with Urban Futures. It is my understanding that providers are responsible for complying. I wonder how many pursue this tirelessly. I asked the DWP about this, but haven’t heard back. More on that soon]. “At the moment, I’m doing presentations for black history. I do presentations for new arrivals, homeless groups and things like that. I’m involved in the marketing team… You need good IT skills and good communication skills. [You need to be good at] public speaking and any sort of project type management, really. I’m doing all that for the JSA. It’s a lot. ”

Indeed it is. There’s an awful lot of work being done here – for free. Paid work as a concept is under real threat – and that’s paid work of all kinds. As this man said to me when we spoke – people in so-called white-collar work may not be particularly aware that “their” kind of job is being done now for nothing. “They’ll have doctors and lawyers on workfare soon,” he said. I wonder, you know. I could see Iain Duncan Smith getting off on that.

Bullying at jobcentres

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A few thoughts on bullying at jobcentres:

I get the feeling that there is an adviser at the North Kensington jobcentre who over-enjoys, if I can put it that way, the power that jobcentre advisers have over JSA claimants. We’ve spent a few weeks now talking with JSA claimants outside that jobcentre and a lot of them mention this person. They certainly did last week. Here are three quotes I took. Two of them are from or about people who tried to say No to an instruction from an adviser:

“There’s a woman in there who signs people on. She is bullying people. She is the worst one. She ain’t there today, but she’s really horrible to people and she ain’t doing her job properly. She shouldn’t be working there.”

“There’s a woman in there. She’s a fucking cunt. All the other advisers – I have no problem with them. But she’s saying that she’s going to put me on an IT course, even though I’m signing off soon. Every day there’s an argument with her.”

“Yes, she said that to a guy who is 60…They had cut him off [sanctioned him] for four weeks, because he wouldn’t go on the computer course. But he’s in his 60s, retiring soon anyway. So he’s off for four weeks and they do that to a lot of people.”

So. This is the terrible power imbalance at jobcentres. On one side of the equation, you have advisers with the power to cut off people’s JSA money then and there. On the other side, you have JSA claimants who must hope that staff don’t abuse that power to stop money and/or aren’t under pressure to sanction. It isn’t much of an equation, particularly if you’re on the claimant side of it.

Some jobcentre advisers are reasonable – they’re trying hard to do an impossible job in an appalling environment. Others are not. As I wrote last week, a lot of the people we meet at the North Kensington jobcentre must sign on daily now – an utterly pointless exercise where people have to travel to the jobcentre every day at a different time, tell the adviser they see that they’re looking for work and then leave again. They also must hope like hell that they see a reasonable adviser each day. Your chances of seeing a vindictive one surely increase when you must go in daily. I think of all this when people tell me that so-called back to work schemes like traineeships are voluntary. I wonder what happens when you try to say “No, I don’t want to/can’t do that” to some advisers and managers at this jobcentre. I think jobcentres should be opened up to spot-checks and scrutiny from campaigners, journalists and MPs, so that we can all go in and find out.

Learning difficulties, signing on for JSA and hoping for a merciful jobcentre adviser

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Right. This one goes out to anyone who still believes that there’s a safety net in place. It’s also for anyone who believes that the jobcentre system is still vaguely functional, or that there are checks and balances in it to keep things fair.

This post is an update on a story I’ve been writing about a man with learning difficulties who is signing on for JSA. He sometimes struggles with his jobsearch, because he isn’t able to use a computer to apply for work. He hasn’t been sanctioned so far, because his jobcentre adviser has been reasonable. The problem is that she’s suddenly no longer his adviser. Now, he’s in a precarious position. It is unlikely that he’s the only one.

Let’s start from the beginning:

Readers of this site will know that I’ve been spending time with Eddie (name changed), a 51-year-old Kiburn man who has mild learning difficulties. He also struggles to read and write with any fluency. He has spent most of his life working in general assistant jobs in commercial kitchens and stores, but was made redundant about four years ago. He’s been signing on for JSA ever since. Eddie is desperate to find another job – but he doesn’t think that is going to happen through the jobcentre. Neither do I. That’s because I’ve seen the whole process in “action.” Every fortnight, Eddie goes to the jobcentre to show his adviser his jobsearch papers. He must prove that he’s searched for 14 jobs every two weeks. The adviser checks his papers, sets a time for his next appointment and then waves him goodbye. The whole exercise takes ten minutes, if that. Nobody ever offers to call employers on Eddie’s behalf, or to put his CV forward, or to organise interviews, or to liaise with anyone who might take him on for work. It is incredible to think that some people are now being forced to engage in this moribund process every day. It is unpleasant to know that Iain Duncan Smith believes he’s onto a winner with this kind of “concept.” It is also unpleasant to know that he may well be onto an electoral winner with this kind of concept, given that the “scroungers” line has well and truly taken hold and there’s no political opposition to the destruction of support for people who are out of work.

Anyway – in my last post, I wrote about the problems Eddie had completing an online jobsearch. His jobcentre advisor had told him to choose and apply for at least three jobs online as part of his fortnightly quota. The problem was that Eddie couldn’t use a computer well enough to start this jobsearch (as you can read here, he wasn’t sure what a browser was). He was unable to type in the complex urls that he’d been given – you can see some of them on the list he was given here:

Christmas jobs list

and he struggled to follow the text on the job application pages. He was very concerned that he’d get sanctioned if he didn’t complete the three online applications. I ended up typing his CV and then submitting the online applications for him. When we went to his signing on appointment, we raised these issues with his jobcentre adviser. The adviser freely admitted that she knew Eddie couldn’t complete the online jobsearch – but said that she was unlikely to sanction him because she knew about his learning and literacy difficulties. Unfortunately, as I said at the time, that isn’t good enough. People in Eddie’s situation can’t rely on a forgiving adviser to protect them from sanctions. We’re in a sanctions-driven environment here. Things can change very suddenly. Advisers come and go, or take leave, or go off sick, or move to new jobs. A reasonable adviser can suddenly move on.

Which is, of course, exactly what has happened. Last Thursday, Eddie turned up for his fortnightly signon session, only to be told that the adviser we’d seen two weeks ago wasn’t working on Thursdays any more. (I wasn’t able to accompany Eddie to last Thursday’s appointment, so he went alone. He said he didn’t have a good experience. People often report that they are treated with less respect when they go alone to their jobcentre appointments). Eddie was instructed to show his jobsearch papers to another adviser. He reported to me today that the new person was impatient and told him that he’d need another appointment. Eddie was worried that this meant he was going to be sanctioned. Unfortunately, this new adviser wasn’t prepared to reassure him on this point, or to make a new signing on appointment for him. Continue reading →

Pretty sure Iain Duncan Smith has decided these people shouldn’t live #SaveILF

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To the Royal Courts on the Strand today, where Disabled People Against Cuts, Independent Living Fund recipients and their carers turned out in very good numbers to support disabled people who are taking a second court case against this repulsive government’s second decision to close the ILF.

Part way through the day, disabled people went and sat on the Strand and brought the traffic to a standstill. I only hope Lord Freud was out in London in some overpriced government vehicle right at that moment and found himself stuck in a lane somewhere.

The Independent Living Fund is the pot of money that profoundly disabled people use to pay for the extra carer hours they need to live their lives as independent adults. For many people, ILF money tops up council funding for care. Unfortunately, this government dislikes the idea of disabled people living like grownups in their homes and working, studying, socialising and doing their thing like everyone else. In fact – I think we can safely say that this government dislikes the idea of disabled people living at all. God knows Iain Duncan Smith has put an extraordinary effort into getting rid of the ILF. I’ve been writing about the ILF battle for several years now. I expect nothing from IDS and understand that he’s an extremist, but even so, I’ve found the government’s continued and renewed assaults on this group of people difficult to fathom.

The ILF closure makes no sense, unless you understand that IDS is malicious and such an ideologue that he actually wants blood on his hands. The number of people who get ILF funding is small – about 18,000 (the fund was closed to new applicants in 2010, so the number of recipients is not growing). The average cost of the ILF each week is about £345 – which, as Inclusion London says, is considerably less than the average weekly cost of residential care. A lot of ILF recipients will end up in carehomes if they can’t afford high-cost support at home.

And they won’t be able to afford that care at home. Councils certainly can’t pick up the tab for people with high support needs. I’m already talking to people who rely solely on council care and are left dangerously short of support. Cutting the ILF could be deadly. It really is that simple. So – why pursue this group of people with such venom? Could it be that IDS wants to punish them for not going quietly? Is it that he wants to get them simply for existing and needing financial support?

“The reason coalition ministers don’t mind slashing entitlements for disabled people, are quite happy to use them as guinea pigs for new benefits that don’t work, and to chuck them at incompetents such as Atos, is because they couldn’t care less,” Aditya Chakrabortty wrote this week. I think it is partly that. I also think it is part of the general plan to eradicate anyone who needs help from the state (anyone who isn’t a banker, that is). A generous view would be that it’s a combination of the two, but I don’t always feel very generous. I’ve been writing about this evil for too long.

Last year, the court of appeal overturned a government decision to close the ILF and noted the adverse effect the closure would have on ILF recipients. The government came back in March this year and announced again it would close the fund. So, disabled people are taking the government back to court. The case started today and carries on tomorrow. I hope they win. They must win. There is a crucial truth at the centre of this fight. It represents a turning-point for all of us. Saving the ILF is not just about saving a pot of money. It’s about saving the idea that disabled people deserve to live like everybody does. Once you abandon that concept, you abandon the idea that everyone counts and that everyone deserves to live.

Which is one of the reasons why disabled people and their personal assistants turned out in very good numbers on a weekday to give their support to people taking an all-important and potentially life-saving court case. That June 2015 ILF closure deadline is getting nearer.

And listen to these people talk about their lives and the ILF. Dunno about you, but I think that Iain Duncan Smith has decided they shouldn’t live.

We’re NOT all in this together: the story of the closure of the Independent Living Fund from Moore Lavan Films on Vimeo.

Excellent photos from the vigil today here

Join the vigil to save the Independent Living Fund today #SaveILF

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Today from 12.30pm, there is a vigil to support disabled people who are taking the government to court to fight for the Independent Living Fund. Join the vigil at the Royal Courts of Justice on the Strand, WC2A 2LL.

The ILF is a fund that profoundly disabled people use to pay for the extra carer hours and personal assistants that they need to live independent lives. Without that fund, disabled people face lives in carehomes.

This government is intent – to an extent that defies any logic whatsoever – in closing the ILF. At the end of last year, the court of appeal threw out an earlier government attempt to close the fund. Needless to say, the government is trying again. That’s why people are taking the second court case today.

New film on the fight to save the ILF:

In the Mirror today, there is a feature about the new film I’ve made at False Economy with Ros Wynne Jones, Disabled People Against Cuts, Inclusion London and Moore Lavan Films on the fight to save the Independent Living Fund.

You can watch the film here. Please share!

We’re NOT all in this together: the story of the closure of the Independent Living Fund from Moore Lavan Films on Vimeo.

Disabled People Against Cuts says:

“Whatever the outcome of the court case today, the fight to save ILF is far from over and disabled people refuse to allow themselves to be railroaded into care homes or worse to Dignitas just to satisfy the whims of millionaire politicians.”

Inclusion London says:

“Without the ILF and in the context of the crisis in social care, disabled people will be entirely reliant on already over-stretched local authorities to meet their support needs.

The amount that the government has committed to devolve to local authorities to help them meet their new responsibilities is short of the amount spent by the ILF on direct support for disabled people. It also does not take account of all those disabled people who would have been eligible for support from the ILF before it was closed to new applicants in 2010. Since then disabled people have ended up trapped in their homes without basic needs such as washing or feeding being met.”

Does Lord Freud realise disabled people take the government to court this week over funding cuts?

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…Probably not.

This week on Wednesday, disabled people take the government to court AGAIN over the government’s decision to close the Independent Living Fund. The ILF is the fund that profoundly disabled people use to pay for the extra care hours they need to live independent lives.

Quite a few disabled people use ILF money to pay for the personal assistants who support them in work. The government’s plan to shut the ILF fully illustrates the bollocks Lord Freud talks when he comes out with this sort of thing: “I am proud to have played a full part in a government that is fully committed to helping disabled people overcome the many barriers they face in finding employment….” Rubbish. Total shit. Lord Freud and this government are committed to nothing of the kind.

A government committed to disabled people would leave the ILF alone (let’s not forget that last year, the court of appeal threw out an earlier government attempt to close the ILF). Without the ILF, thousands of disabled people with high support needs will be permanently excluded from education and employment and the right to participate in life generally. It is only a few days since Lord Freud said that disabled people were not worth the minimum wage – a statement which totally fits with this government’s general approach to disabled people. Think about this attempt to close the ILF. Think about the destruction of disabled people’s lives by the Atos fit-for-work regime. Think about the abject failure that has been the introduction of the so-called personal independence payment and the untold misery that has caused. These tossers are committed to one thing and one thing only. They want disabled people out of the picture.

On Wednesday, ILF recipients and supporters including Disabled People Against Cuts, Inclusion London, the National Anti Bedroom Tax and Benefit Justice campaign, Winvisible and Taxpayers Against Poverty will gather outside the Royal Courts of Justice at 12.30pm to show solidarity with the disabled claimants taking the case. Tomorrow, DPAC will hold a Freud Must Go protest outside Caxton house from 12.30pm.

Here’s a short film I recently made with Ros Wynne Jones and Moore Lavan films about this government’s assault on the Independent Living Fund. We’ve got a longer film coming out this week which has more ILF recipients talking about the ILF closure and the reasons why they’ll fight the government until they win.

We’re all in it together – aren’t we? from Moore Lavan Films on Vimeo.

Nadia Clarke, who is aged 22 and has cerebral palsy and a hearing impairment says: “in the future, I want to travel the world, study at university, become a working advisor for disability rights and have a relationship and children. Without the ILF, my parents will end up looking after me and may even have to give up their paid work.”

Mark Williams, 49, is a school governor and former social worker. He says: “The ILF means I can be an active school governor. With all the other cuts in benefits, if the ILF closes, I’m worried that I’d only have my basic needs met. David Cameron has no idea. He hasn’t a clue because he doesn’t have to worry about money.

Angela Smith, who also has cerebral palsy, said: “Am I really living in one of the richest countries in the world? Why is my life so undervalued?”

Very good question. I don’t like to think about the answer to it.