The reality is beginning to dawn...

With my claim for benefits rejected out-of-hand, I investigated appealing, and finally submitted my own appeal, which will be heard long after I've retired and moved to Eastbourne. Or wherever. If I live that long. (18 months to go: where does DWP think I'd find a job even if I were well?)

I thought I had a handle (intellectual, certainly, but I thought emotional as well) on just how cruel our society could be to those at the bottom of the pile. I was (frankly) deluded.

I'm still in a state of shock.

You see, I was a public schoolboy; I'm a Freeman of the City of London; I'm an honorary Colonel; I was in uniform and then for many years a reserve officer (RAF); I'm more closely related by blood to those persons in Buck House than either Cameron or Princess Dy (Gawd bless her). If I hadn't been taken seriously and chronically ill, I could have lived a life of blissful ignorance, praising the heaven-born (IDS, Ozzy, Cameron [that always was a duplicitous family], Mechanica McVey et al.) who keep the plebs (the expression actually used, I can assure you, is "scum-of-the-earth") in their place.

[Except, thank God, I wouldn't. I had already begun to realise the real situation long before I became one of the downtrodden myself. Okay, I hadn't begun to understand the whole horror of it, but at least I was trying.]

 With what I now realise is to be found on the internet, I understand that there isn't likely to be anything I can add. If, by chance, you are reading this, I'll tell you that I'm only writing because I think that (as I grow to understand just this one little corner of injustice that exists in England) I think it's a matter of duty. If nobody ever reads it, so be it.

As time goes on, I'll try to build a coherent Atos/DWP-anschaung. Who can say, maybe I will find something useful to contribute.

God preserve me in this time of trial.

Still to come.

1. I'll be explaining why I think it's important to be running this blog, which not many people will likely read and which will hardly move the world.

2. I be trying to work out how to fight back against this iniquitous and political assault against those on benefits - which feels to me as if it's targeted against me personally.

3. etc


Then again, I may just give up... because at the moment I feel very defeated and horrendously tired.

There may be gaps for a few days now and then, while I hide in my cave.

Advice (to anyone about to be interviewed by ATOS)

1. Make sure that the person who gives you your face to face assessment interview (HCP - health care professional) is qualified in the areas of your disablement. It would be better to know beforehand, but that's probably not possible. However, you are entitled (after you are informed of DWP's decision) to ask for the medical report made after the assessment. The interviewer's name and qualifications will be given there (as I only found out today).

If the person is not appropriately qualified, make sure that this is mentioned in your appeal.

2. I have been told that you are entitled to have your interview recorded. DO THIS. I didn't know and didn't think of it, and now I wish I had such a recording for my appeal.

3. If your claim is disallowed, ask for the medical report. (You will find that you are not clearly told about your right to have this.)

(4. I'm not sure about this, but I believe that if, like me, you're given a wholly unreasonable journey to your assessment centre, you're entitled to insist on a more suitable venue, near or even at your home.)

Simple advice, but I had to discover it from scratch. It may help you to know in advance.

More wisdom to come, maybe.

 
If you don't attend your assessment interview, you lose your entitlement to benefits.

If you're well enough to attend, you are well enough to work, so you have no entitlement to benefits anyway. 

That's the Catch 22 of the new benefits system.

Links to the News.

There are three articles in the Independent today which I wish everybody would read:

1)   http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/new-minister-for-disabled-people-says-controversial-tests-could-be-positive-8376336.html

including: "We want as much medical information as we can get," and, “I am saying, ‘Do not be fearful of this. This could be positive for you’,”  (Esther McVey, Minister for the disabled.)

 2)   http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/george-osbornes-autumn-statement-will-mean-a-winter-of-discontent-for-the-disabled-8382099.html

including: In a memorable South Bank Show long ago, Melvyn Bragg asked Ian Dury if being pitied and patronised was the worst thing about being disabled. No, Dury gently rebuked, the worst thing about being disabled is being disabled. But having Esther McVey as minister for the disabled may be a close second. Interviewed in this newspaper yesterday, Ms McVey unleashed a platitude of hyper-Brentian idiocy to offer a reason to be cheerful to those who have had their benefit removed or cut, or live in mortal terror of it happening. “Do not be fearful,” consoled the former children’s TV presenter. “This could be positive for you.”
               Couldn’t it just? Does it get more positive than being told, by some Atos brute on commission to cut the number of claimants, that Parkinson’s, crippling agrophobia, mestastasized cancer, lifelong polio or any number of disabling conditions no longer qualify you as disabled enough.

3)   http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/disabled-man-abandoned-on-the-second-floor-of-building-during-atos-fire-alarm-evacuation-8376322.html

or

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/so-atos-are-happy-to-test-disabled-people-but-not-so-willing-to-evacuate-them-during-a-fire-alarm-8381364.html

A disabled man was trapped in a centre run by Atos, which assesses fitness for work, when the fire alarm went off and staff evacuated the building, leaving him behind in his wheelchair.

Already a nightmare before the interview.

I wrote the following some time before my assessment interview. I was not thinking of a blog at the time, and wrote it purely to try to put my thoughts in order. I wrote more later, but it's disappeared somewhere on the computer - update if  I find it. Bits that actually matter in red:

In the nature of things, it's the extremes which are reported. When it comes to reducing the burden of incapacity benefits, we're hearing from one wing about those passed for work who obviously can't and, from the other, about benefit scroungers who demonstrably can. Most people seeking the protection of benefits fall in the middle of that spectrum.

I'm in the middle myself, and I'm not happy.

I've been subject to mental health problems associated with chronic depression since I was a child in the 1960's. More recently, accident has caused moderate physical problems, including fracture damage to my spine. I worked until I was in my mid-forties when growing difficulties forced me to retire.

I am being assessed for the new Employment and Support allowance, which is perfectly proper and unobjectionable. Unfortunately, it means that I now find that I have come to the attention of the Clockwork Orange tendency of the government's bullyboys. ('Clockwork Orange' is my frustration speaking, but 'bullyboys' may or may not be justified by what follows.)  I refer only to my own immediate experience and not to horror stories that I've read in the news or heard by way of anecdote.

-/-

1. I received a letter recently from DWP with details about forthcoming changes, instructing me to call one of their numbers. (Note: this was my first contact with them.) At my expense. After queuing for 20 minutes, I was told that I had rung the wrong number. Put through to another number, I queued for another 20 minutes. At my expense. The man I then spoke to told me how important it was that I listen to what he was going to tell me. If I did not, he suggested, I would lose my right to any benefit. For 20 minutes (at my expense) he repeated what was already clearly written in the letter: he added nothing - except to repeat more than six times his suggestion that if I did not do exactly what was required of me I would lose my right to any benefit. (Along the lines of: If I do not fill the form in, lose benefit; not in time, lose benefit; not signed, lose benefit; incorrectly completed. lose benefit; incompletely filled, lose benefit; etc. All undoubtedly, and perfectly reasonably, true, but clearly repeated so often and emphatically to intimidate.) He did tell me that, although I had rung the wrong number, it was indeed the number which everyone was told to ring: he couldn't explain why this was the arrangement.

2. I filled in the standard questionnaire which arrived a few days later. It was transparently designed to elicit certain types of information - but, less obviously, to block others.

One example: a question was asked about the effects of taking drugs - illegal or prescribed. Was there a problem due to the abuse of these drugs? [Note to self: the government has been keen to publish figures suggesting that numbers of people are on benefits because of drug abuse; answers to this question may help them to bulk out supporting statistics.] The questionnaire carefully guided me away, however, from mentioning any problem that might be resulting from the correct use of prescription drugs. [Note to self: the government has been accused of sidelining (for example) many cancer treatments.] Here as elsewhere it has been evident that the questionnaire is not only not asking for information which may have a bearing on the questionnee's ability to work but is actively avoiding such questions and is directing questionnees away from giving such information.

By the time I'd seen a couple of questions of like nature, I began to feel paranoid about the whole questionnaire. Unfortunately, once paranoia sets in here, the questions do nothing to dispel it: on the contrary, the impression that the form seeks to maximise certain kinds of information gleaned but to minimise any that may support a case for benefits becomes substantial.

3. [The crux.] In an appropriate section of the questionnaire, I stated that travel is problematic. (Inter alia, that I'm unable to travel by bus, that travel by train is problematic, that I cannot stand on a moving train, that I'm limited at best to about two miles of walking.) I also requested that any appointment for an assessment be made in the afternoon or evening, explaining my reasons.

An appointment was made for 9.20 am, in Guildford, a town well over an hour's travel away in another county. Detailed journey instructions were given, including timings (which are arguably very optimistic [Eg: 10 minutes for a walk that would take a fit person 15; four minutes allowed for buying a rail ticket, during rush hour; four minutes allowed for a change of train at Woking station. I can make it by running, apparently.]). Even by this estimate, the journey time in one direction totals to 1 hour and 13 minutes.

The journey out-and-return involves two stages by bus and four by train, as well as 60+ minutes of walking. [Due to the time of the appointment, train travel would also involve travelling during the rush hour, in the direction of the rush, on a service that is well known to be at or over capacity (standing room only being normal by this stage of its journey). It is also the most expensive time of day for this person, on welfare, to travel.]

That an appointment be made is not only wholly reasonable, but of course necessary. That an appointment for a disabled person has to be made so far away, in the most densely populated part of the country, may be inescapable (although it shouldn't be). That it be made in the rush hour for a person who has declared serious problems in travelling is simply cruel.

Unless, of course, they think I'm lying.

-/-

The philosophy behind the current back-to-work drive is to find what each individual can do, rather than cannot.

This sounds, and is, desirable. However, there are some drawbacks.

a) It requires that the questions in the questionnaire be meaningful. (Eg, to what extent can the individual lift realistic weights, rather than only whether (s)he can lift an empty cardboard box or a milk carton.) Too many of them are not.

b) It is negated if, as is widely and repeatedly reported, large numbers are simply passed through (in effect) on the nod - to the extent that 40% of appeals are upheld. Following the questionnaire, each appeal requires the individual to state what (s)he can't do and, by extension, the pressure is on those individuals who do have problems to be negative from the beginning.

c) Must crucially: 

Logically, it assumes that the baseline is 'unable to do anything', so that things that the individual can do are added on to the baseline. But, this is not how the assessments are arranged - the boxes are ticked according to what the individual can't do; ie, the baseline is in practice assumed to be 'able to do anything' and these things are subtracted from the baseline.

Not only does the system therefore require the individual to denigrate himself/herself; it then treats the consequent pleas as ignorable. So it is - from the start - cruel.

The philosophy as propounded is therefore unworkable; and it remains so unless and until at the very least the system invites the individual to self-build rather than to self-denigrate.

-/-

The stress for many people of this process is compounded because it takes place in an atmosphere of threat, the beginnings of which I've already experienced. The real threat, however, clearly meant to be deniable, is summed up by the particular context of 'making work pay'. With falling real pay and growing insecurity that millions of people are undergoing, this would immediately be worrying. But, many of those being returned to work are faced with minimum wage (sometimes lower), zero-hour contracts, short-time working, dead end working, and an environment in which very little effort is really being made to ameliorate these (indeed, employment protection, social cover, H&E legislation and who knows what else being, on the contrary, dismantled). The threat, then, lies in the fact that, realistically, 'making work pay' can only really mean 'making incapacity intolerable'. ['Making work pay' becomes as bereft of meaning as finding out 'what the unemployed can do', not because there's anything wrong with either statement, but because they aren't advanced with honesty.] It is a long way, yet, from the workhouse ethic, but it's beginning to move there. Is that why we're starting to hear of the growing number of suicides contemporaneous with these assessments?

I await my assessment appointment not only with trepidation but with growing distrust. I should have nothing to fear if a genuine effort is going to be made to help me find proper work - but I cannot escape the tiny but growing feeling that I am intended to be afraid.

-/-

A final thought. I am in my sixty-fourth year. Even if I find work immediately, I am months rather than years from drawing my pension. I have peripherally wondered, therefore, why considerable effort and disbursement are being expended to help/get me back into employment. [I already know that my chances of finding engaging work will not be very good. I cannot imagine that I'll be offered any meaningful training at all.]  I'm not sure whether I'm glad or not to have been given a possible explanation (which I have yet to substantiate), which is this:

Once I present myself for a job, even if I am fired five minutes after I arrive, I will be engaging with the DWP on a new basis. I may find that the level of credit I have accrued in the past towards future pension or benefits is reassessed, and that I will be in a much weakened position when it comes to holding on to what I can presently regard as my earned entitlements. For example, social security payments to me dependent on final salary may be sharply reduced: the effect of working at a low-paid job for a few months now may be to reduce my pension throughout my retirement. 

I don't know if this last is true. The fact that I believe that it might be is an indication of how much my trust in the system is failing.

-/-

If my benefits continue, the subtle, deniable but systematic bullying won't stop. Again, one example: Disbursements are being adjusted to monthly 'to wean the unemployed off fortnightly payments' (the statement being made that monthly wages are becoming the norm). But monthly income for those in work is generally in the thousands of pounds: if you can understand the impact of the change (in terms of worry and indeed fear) on those whose income is only in the hundreds, then you understand how... again, cruel... this is.

That the loan sharks with their thousands of percent APRs have been legalised beggars belief of itself: that that legalisation has so closely coincided with the new scheme of monthly payments (or vice versa) moves us into a completely novel range of subtle cruelty. My mother was a widow; I remember her increasingly desperate struggles with the comparatively gentle Tallyman of fifty years ago. The ‘payday loans’ can only damage the vulnerable and invisible – the young, the unemployed, the poorly employed.... At this point, I am tempted to ask for a place in my nearest workhouse just as soon as it opens.

-/-

Ironically, I owe one very small debt of gratitude to the bullyboys – and, strangely, it is quite genuine; it is this: the sharp acid of lively anger with which they are infecting me goes, momentarily and in a very small way, to pierce the deadening horror of the mental illness which is my real enemy.

However, it is not the insouciance that angers me so much, nor the casual cruelty. And it certainly isn’t the principle that I should be assessed from time to time.

I was a child of the 1950s and 60s when, for a few years, we believed that the confrontational, or adversarial, element which disfigures so much of life in this country was being diminished at least a little. What angers me – to the extent of a fuming, ‘coming out on the streets’ rage – is that I and those in my boat have become the target of so ancient and confrontational an attack: I have no impression that I am seen as a partner in an effort to help both me and our economy.

Of course, it’s not only those at the bottom of the pile who can be targets – look at the glee with which the proposed affluence assessments are being greeted. Just as repellent, really. But the wealthy will not, on the whole, be such defenceless targets, I suspect (even if some of them genuinely believe themselves to be relatively poor). And at least (we may suppose) they will be assessed on slightly more objective criteria.

Letter to the papers.

I sent this letter to the Independent today:

TEXT:

Dear Sir,

Because of life-long and now worsening mental health problems, I renewed a claim for benefits recently. Following an assessment interview by ATOS for DWP, I have just had my claim turned down. It was cited, inter alia, that I could maintain eye contact. Otherwise, much of the report bore little relation - in letter or in spirit - to evidence I had offered.

The interview and the letter informing me of its outcome were so odd that I made enquiries. 

It turned out that the person who interviewed me, whom they called 'Doctor', by whose assessment of my mental state my life will be profoundly affected, is in fact a physiotherapist.

And whatever Thierry Breton, ATOS boss, may claim about consultation with patients' own doctors during assessments ("How can ATOS boss get £1million?"), nobody has been in touch with my GP. An ATOS agent told me that assessment is made 'on the basis of the day'.

I am warned that I am very foolish to put my head above the parapet by writing to you. I'll tell you: I'm struggling with the horror and despair caused by my illness, resisting the relentless impulse to hurt myself (I won't do anything, but that doesn't ameliorate the impulse); nothing that anyone can do to damage me means much next to that. In any case, I'm thinking that I may be too drained of resources to try to appeal - even though I know that IDS, or somebody, will offer that failure to do so as proof that the assessment was correct (as they have done again and again with defeated claimants).

What I report to you here is a very small part of the weirdness and, frankly, occasional nastiness which started the day I was informed that I was to be assessed. I am lucky enough to be a bit more articulate (if not resilient) than some people in my position, so I will say to you for them: you had better be sure that you want to reject us, or at least know us to be the parasitical scroungers that are portrayed, because what's being done to us is contemptible. 

Yours etc.

END.

Whether they'll publish, I don't know - it's certainly not really in the house style!

My reasons for writing are complex, but seemed to me compelling. More over the next few days... 

Added 12 hours later. 

On reflection: The last two paragraphs were... intemperate... and probably ensured that the letter would not be published. Stuff it.

Hostile criticism, but only where it’s earned.

Everybody I’ve spoken to and, for that matter, all the internet stuff I’ve seen, blame ATOS for the horrors that benefit claimants are being put to. Especially, ATOS is getting the stick for the decisions which are often so perverse that subsequently nearly 50% of them are reversed on appeal.

This criticism is largely misdirected.

[In passing: Every ATOS employee I’ve had dealings with has been polite, patient, understanding and thoroughly professional.

[The same has not been entirely true with the DWP: About 1/3 are lovely; about 1/3 start off hostile but can be brought round if I am polite and friendly (which I can understand...), and about 1/3 are abrupt, bullying and thoroughly unpleasant, and there’s no getting through to them.]

It’s not ATOS which makes the decisions, it’s DWP. So why isn’t DWP getting the stick?

The answer’s simple. Mediocre leadership will always pass the buck downwards, or at least away. I don’t know whether ATOS are being deliberately set up to take the flak, but I certainly assume so: all the evidence points that way.

The government are determined to ‘restructure’ the benefits system. (You may feel that they should being doing exactly that, or you may not: that is not the issue here.) They get the civil service (DWP) to do their dirty work for them; the DWP farm out contact with the public - and the flak from the public - to ATOS (and ATOS farms it out to their skivvies in the front line).

The issue becomes so confused that we blame the wrong people. [It’s not for nothing that my DWP contact is based hundreds of miles from where I live...]

You may say that Duncan Smith, Grayling and Osborne stand up for what they’re doing. But have you trying putting a point of view to them? They’re so isolated from the rest of us that they think they’re untouchable... but more of that anon.

That leaves this question: Should the physiotherapist who was appointed to assess my mental health have recused herself because she wasn't suitably qualified? Of course, another question then arises: COULD she have done so, without losing her job?

So... It’s not, or not always, the people in the front line: it’s the system that bears examination – a system which I suspect has been set up very carefully and very deliberately to grind me down (along with a million or so other folks) - and to make sure that we can't kick back.

More about this as the blog proceeds. I hope.

I plan to put the dagger in, but I want to be sure that I hit the right target.

The Physiotherapist.

After I had filled in the questionnaire and attended the assessment interview, the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) wrote me a letter to say that there was nothing functionally wrong with me and that I could go back to work.

They cited inter alia that, during my interview, I was able to maintain eye contact.

The letter was so very odd (and so dismissive of the mental problems that are the basis of my claim) that I asked about the qualifications of the doctor who interviewed me. Not a doctor, it turned out: a physiotherapist.

So, wondering about the basis for the decision that I'm well (the letter accused me of lying, in almost so many words), I assumed that I must have been damned by a report from my own GP. I did her wrong: the DWP had never asked for any information from her.

When I queried the DWP about this, I was told that the assessment - affecting my whole life - is made 'on the basis of the day'.

You who read this know nothing about me (nor about whether I'm swinging the lead and trying to get benefits I don't need). So I'm not asking for your unquestioning acceptance of what I'm claiming. If you follow my blog over the next few weeks, maybe we can see where we go. I promise to try for the whole truth and nothing but the truth.