Daily Mirror: "The sympathy is greater for badgers than for disabled welfare claimants"

[Bob]

How Atos comes under pressure to declare disabled people as fit for work
A leaked report shows 97% of people undergoing its assessment are 'expected' to recover within two years.
David Gillon.
theguardian.com
Monday 9 December 2013.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/09/atos-disabled-people-assessment-fit-work-report



Iain Duncan Smith confronts claims DWP staff given targets to stop benefits
Whistleblower says staff warned they would be disciplined unless they increased number of claimants coming off register
Patrick Wintour
The Guardian
Monday 9 December 2013
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/dec/09/iain-duncan-smith-dwp-stop-benefits-whistleblower



Iain Duncan Smith questioned by MPs about universal credit and DWP statistics: Politics live blog.
Andrew Sparrow.
theguardian.com
Monday 9 December 2013.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics...and-dwps-use-of-statistics-politics-live-blog

 

[Bob]

I've started a new thread, for all the recent articles that I've posted:
http://forums.phoenixrising.me/inde...rs-iain-duncan-smiths-welfare-policies.26940/

 

[Firestormm]

Guardian Comment 9 December 2013
How Atos comes under pressure to declare disabled people as fit for work
A leaked report shows 97% of people undergoing its assessment are 'expected' to recover within two years

Atos and the DWP admit to the existence of "statistical norms" and that these are used to manage the performance of individual healthcare professionals carrying out the assessments. Campaigners have long claimed that these norms function as de facto targets, but were surprised by the detail of the data logged and matched against acceptable ranges.

Whether the Atos data represents targets, as the CWR report suggests, or norms, as Atos insists, the numbers themselves are deeply problematic. An assessor is expected to see about 40 people per week, 65% of whom, the data shows, are expected to fail the assessment. The remainder will be split between the ESA support group (14.5%) and the work-related activities group (20.5%). Those who pass, in either group, are then further divided across five sub-groups, which specify whether an applicant should be expected to recover in six-24 months or "longer term" (in practice three years). Only 2.6% of WCAs are expected to result in a "longer-term" prognosis, which effectively means an assessor can allocate the prognosis to just one person a week; allocating a single extra person across a month hovers on breaching the allowed 20% variation. All other applicants, no matter their disability, are labelled as expected to have recovered within two years or less.

Similar problems exist for points awarded during the assessment. The "descriptors", if matched, are worth six, nine or 15 points, and many disabled people will match multiple descriptors. It takes 15 points to qualify for the ESA, yet the report suggests national averages of 2.1 points for physical issues and 3.6 points for mental issues. The only way to maintain such low averages is by scoring several people at zero points for each one who passes. Are cases of people who score zero points when they clearly should pass simply evidence that the assessor saw too many seriously ill and disabled people that week? There is already an outcry over the state of the work capability assessment, with roughly one in six of all assessments successfully appealed against, at a cost to the Tribunals Service, and the taxpayer, of more than £75m per year. If that failure rate is not caused by poor quality work at the healthcare professional level but is a consequence of the Atos management system, which in turn is driven by the contractual requirements placed on it by DWP, then shouldn't that outcry be louder still?

 

[MeSci]

Guardian Comment 9 December 2013
How Atos comes under pressure to declare disabled people as fit for work

...Those who pass, in either group, are then further divided across five sub-groups, which specify whether an applicant should be expected to recover in six-24 months or "longer term" (in practice three years).

Do you think they would lend me their crystal ball...?