Housing Benefit - effective reductions

I've received my latest assessment for Housing Benefit. I gave the Council notice in July when I received notice from my landlord of the annual increase - which this year was well above inflation. The increase started in Oct. The Council sent me the assessment on 3 Dec. Are they overworked?

The upshot is that for the third year in a row my rent has increased at more than inflation and my benefit award has stayed the same. This amounts to an effective 10% reduction in Housing Benefit. And that extra comes out of ESA (Income Support as was).

If Housing Benefit does keep pace with rents then the poor will be getting poorer. I'm not too badly off being single, frugal and living in shared accommodation, but for some people this effective reduction in the amount of money they get will be hurting.

ESA and WCA

So. I last mentioned that I was waiting for my WCA results in August (4 Aug 2012). The result came that I have been put into a Work-Related Activity Group. And at the time I had no idea what this meant. It sounded like a scheme to get me back into work. I could have saved myself a lot more misery by reading more about the process, but at the time I was in no fit state to go seeking information - this is part of the problem, yes? And when you get the letter there's really nothing to say what it means.

What it means is:

"Claimants identified for this group will take part in work-focused interviews with a personal adviser, and have access to a range of support to help them prepare for suitable work." 

A guide to Employment and Support Allowance – The Work Capability Assessment. ESA214. June 2011

Anyway I decided to appeal without the full information. But once I found out I decided to see it through for  several reasons. I felt I needed more support from the government, and I did not want to be subjected to the horrors of the WCA again. I haven't written about my experience of the WCA yet, but it was traumatic. But I also just wanted to appeal to say FUCK YOU to the system that was saying fuck you, to me. I wanted time and resources to be tied up. I wanted to contribute to the wave of appeals, to boost the statistics that the WCA does not work.

A couple of weeks later I was summoned for my work-focussed interview. Each letter one gets from the DWP is combined with a subtlety stated threat that if one does not comply one's benefits will be cut off.

So I attended the interview where I alternated between extreme hostility verging on paranoid about how this might affect my appeal, and breaking down in tears. And it took some time for the information to sink in that I was not expected to look for work, but that if I did decide to do so they're support me in some way. It took a long time to get an answer to what "support" means. It seems to me that it's aimed at people who're never worked (whereas I was a professional for many years before becoming ill) or who were living really sheltered lives. Which I suppose I am, though I'm reluctant to see myself this way.

After this as I say I decided to continue my appeal. I must say a big THANK YOU to the Citizen's Advice Bureau who coached me through the stages of the appeal and gave me an over-view of the process. I can recommend CAB to anyone thinking of appealing a WCA judgement.

To support my appeal I had to approach medical professionals and ask for their help. My GP was very helpful and supportive and wrote a note which emphasised the points that I had asked him to more or less. Part of the CAB strategy is to go through the transcript of the WCA and identify places where one got less points than one should have, and ask Drs etc to reinforce the need for more points. I also approached the past pyschotherapist I had seen and asked for her help which was also generously and compassionately given. (And she said that she thinks I have Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder which I'm not sure we had discussed before). Then I wrote, with the help of a friend, a long critique of the WCA pointing out inaccuracies, omissions, and numerous spelling and grammatical errors! I bundled it all up and sent it off.

And I won! I WON! I got moved to the Support group:

Support Group: If the effects of a claimant's health condition or disability are so severe that it would be unreasonable to expect them to prepare for work, they will join the Support Group. These claimants will receive the higher rate of Employment and Support Allowance and do not have to take part in any work-related activity as a condition of receiving benefit (although they can volunteer to do so). ESA214

And the good news is that I get about £20 extra a week. Now I'm still not sure how long this will last, or whether they will force me to undergo the WCA again soon, but I did point out that in the three years between my initial assessment for Incapacity Benefit and Employment Support Allowance my condition had not changed, and that the balance of the medical advice was that my condition was unlikely to change much, and that work if anything would make it worse. So hopefully they'll leave me alone.

That said I'm looking into ways of escaping from the system. I am looking at full-time study. This would be extremely challenging both physically and mentally but it might be doable with the right help. I'm more than capable of getting a PhD but my illnesses at various stages have made me back away from following through on my potential. My interests have changed since I last considered the possibility and I would need to do an MA or similar in my chosen subject before enrolling for a PhD. I'm using this year as a run up and a chance to explore funding opportunities for a one year MA or MPhil. It's what I love doing anyway and would take about 5 years. Not a bad five year plan! After that who knows?

This process has been six months of debilitating stress:

• Apr 26 - warning that benefits are about to change.
• May 10 - request to complete ESA50 (which replaces IB50)
• Jun 03 - reminder re ESA50
• Jun 18 - notification of WCA
• Jul 09 - WCA (by registered nurse).
• Aug 22 - notice of benefit change to ESA.
• Sep 10 - acknowledgement of appeal 
• Sep 26 - DWP employee rings me to try to "sort out" my appeal over the phone. I take this to be a thinly disguised attempt to screw up my appeal by an unscrupulous employee trying to meet targets.
• Oct 02  - Personal Advisor interview.
• Oct 22 - Appeal decision
• Oct 25 - Notice of change of payments.

Self deceptions

I've noticed with the Olympics that it gets co-opted.

A woman I followed on Twitter wanted to make the point that women were dominating the medal podium one day. She was apoplectic when I pointed out that it was because they only competed against women. If they had taken equality to it's logical conclusion the Olympics would not have a separate category for women it would simply celebrate the best at each sport. And some women would make it. I imagine that South Korean archer Ki Bo Bae would be there - she is awesome. But in athletics men run faster, jump higher, lift and throw heavier weights, the swim faster etc etc. Look at who holds the world records in most sports activities and it will be men. I don't see this as a put down, it's just a fact. And yes it is quite true that the fastest women are faster than the average man, faster than me. But this does not alter the fact. I grew up with women assuring me that thy were not only as good as men, but better in many respects; that they could do anything and probably better than men; that women deserved to be treated as equals or betters in any aspects of life. OK then let's have a level playing field in sport. There's no reason why most sports need to have separate leagues and separate competitions for women. Why should women runners not run against men? Where size is a factor - as in weight-lifting or judo - we already have weight grades to even things up. I'm all for equality.

Another person wanted to compare the medals that Scotland won with the medals that New Zealand won. Except that Scotland didn't win any medals - the United Kingdom certainly won a lot of medals and within Team GB (as it is inaccurately called) there were lots of Scottish Athletes. Would Scotland win so many medals if they were independent? We'll never know until they follow through on the independence movement. New Zealand is a separate nation, and we did not benefit from UK money or facilities. And we did not have a home crowd advantage in the last couple of weeks. Same with Yorkshire claiming to have won more medals than any other county. So what? Yorkshire wouldn't survive for 10 years as an independent country - they're absolutely dependent on wealth generated elsewhere in the UK (including Scotland). One of the main proponents of this Yorkshire lark is Jon Lord Prescott - who is so fat these days he couldn't run 100 metres let alone race it, though I'd want to be arms length away when I said that because not doubt he's still got a mean left hook.

It's all just a weird form of jingoism - dividing into arbitrary groups and then saying "we're better than you are". As if that really means anything that one's neighbours are good athletes. I like seeing Kiwi's doing well, but I don't then claim to be a superior person on the basis of that. It's not me that won the match! Why should I feel good about myself because someone I've never met and never will has played a good match, or run fast?

Medals were won for your country not by your country.

ATOS Victims Group: a webpage which tells the truth about ATOS, who they are, how they operate to force ill and disabled people off benefits and into the job market (at a time of high unemployment); and the government and what their program of welfare is really about.

Unfortunately the government have waged a campaign of press releases which deride and disparage the ill and disabled and have manipulated public opinion. So welfare reform is a popular policy and many of the government's lies have been accepted as true. The truth is that benefit fraud is tiny, and mistakes in payments are high. Tax cheating costs the UK 100x as much as benefit fraud. White collar fraud in banking and finance have cost this country trillions of pounds. 

Still waiting

Still waiting to hear the result of my WCA. Depressed and despondent. Suicidal thoughts.

So now we know...

What we've suspected all along is that ATOS employ artificial targets aimed at shifting people of benefits into the workforce, and this at a time of high unemployment (though the most recently figures showed a decline in the jobless, the figure is still higher than when the ConDem goct came to power).

The Guardian have reported on a secret film made of ATOS training:

Atos assessors told to keep disability benefit approvals low, film suggests

GP applied for job with Atos assessing whether benefit applicants were fit for work, and secretly filmed his training.

"Undercover filming shows Bick being told by his trainer that he will be watched carefully over the number of applicants he found eligible for the highest rate of disability payments."

The article also says:

"Large numbers of people found ineligible for the benefit are appealing against the decision to find them fit for work; about 41% of those refused support go to tribunal and 30% are subsequently granted the benefit. There have been more than 600,000 appeals since the WCA started, costing about £60m a year."       

Of course ATOS continue to deny that they set targets.

The film was shown on Channel 4 8pm Monday 30th July. It can be seen on Channel 4OD online.

Coming Out

The politics of mental healthLast month, four MPs bravely told the world about their own mental health issues in an effort to reduce the stigma. They talk about what happened next - Guardian.

The article mentions this website:  Time to Change. Thousands of people talking about their mental health problems.

Meanwhile 

Million jobless may face six months' unpaid work or have benefits stopped.
Community action programme to tackle long-term unemployment could prove expensive failure, says thinktank - Guardian.