Huff. Post: Time for a Fresh Approach to Disability Benefits

[Firestormm]

Time for a Fresh Approach to Disability Benefits

25 June 2014

Paul Farmer

Chief Executive of the mental health charity Mind

'It's been a significant week of news about disability benefit, where the prevailing messages have changed profoundly.

There is now widespread acceptance, even inside Government, that the component parts of the Work Capability Assessment (WCA), the Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) and the Work Programme are not working for disabled people, employers, or the taxpayer.

Last Thursday the BBC published excerpts of leaked memos detailing how the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is failing to deliver the disability benefit Employment and Support Allowance (ESA). The article said that ESA is not helping people get jobs and is a 'fiscal risk' for the Government...

Interesting article and with the election on the horizon it might well be worth making more of the issues it raises with those who are desirous of our votes...

In fact, Mind and the Centre for Welfare Reform have recently supported an independent report which suggests the opposite - that back-to-work support provided through the Work Programme and Jobcentre Plus is pushing people with disabilities further from work.

Based on data from over 500 people with a range of disabilities, the report, authored by Work Programme user Catherine Hale, who has ME, found that back to work support had helped just five per cent of respondents move into work.

Furthermore, more than half of respondents (six in 10) said that their health, finances, confidence and sense of purpose had all suffered as a result...

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/pau...73.html?utm_hp_ref=uk-politics&ir=UK+Politics

 

[SilverbladeTE]

Tell me about it
I haven't had any benefits for a year and a half.
I'm one of the many who've fallen between the cracks, who ATOS said was fit for work: zero points

Frankly I'd laugh my ass off if a nickel iron meteor took out the "Square Mile of London", Westminster, the bankers, the stock market etc...except for the likelihood of innocent workers and visitors coping it too.
They aren't worth hating, as always, evil is pathetic, banal, cowardly, lunatic crap

*pulls down trousers, and rains liquid gold on 'em"