Turned down for ESA, got *zero* points

SilverbladeTE

SilverbladeTE

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Somewhere near Glasgow, Scotland
Still not verified it 100%, but mention on Facebook of a woman with cerebral palsy, mental age of a 3 year old, doubly incontinent, she got zero points....

and with government here psuhing to repeal crucial part of civil rights...
only taken stupid asholes 70 years to forget Belsen. :/
 
sianrecovery

sianrecovery

Senior Member
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828
Location
Manchester UK
Sorry you are put through this charade Silver. Don't let the bastards grind you down.

I personally have a visceral loathing of MT, and a pretty good intellectual and political grasp of the deep harm she has done this country. As for the reaction to her death, while I understand some of it may seem distasteful, its about who writes the history, who controls the discourse. I'll take distasteful over hagiography any day.
 
G

golden

Senior Member
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1,831
I finally managed after 15 years or so to be able to fill out the forms.

I only recently became able to succinctly explain symptoms - made all the more difficult by the fluctuating nature of the illness.

I am told that officials are stating to fill out the form as if it was my worst day.

If it was my worst day, I wouldnt be writing, moving and would be expending any little energy on things like breathing.

So that advice never sat well with me. I just couldnt answer the questions because they were the wrong type of questions bei.g asked...

A generic application form is not suitable for any fluctuating illness but especially M.E.

I did get ESA for three months and then they wanted to interview me.

I was too unwell and had no support and so my claim disappeared.

When I became well enough I made good efforts to get help and support from:

a) My NHS practice manager (gate keeper of letters)
b) A disabled Charity
c) A specialised solicitor recommended as very helpful for those with neurological illness - who became very unhelpful and rude when she heard the neurological illness was M.E.

d) two local M.E. charities.

None of them would help me. None.

I am in appalling poverty and stuck in financial limbo.


I know this is my area of weakness as I just can not cope with another person telling me to get charity work, get pregnant, think more positively, or just the hostility
that the illness engenders , the false beliefs people have.

So I have resigned myself to poverty for now and hopefully i will be well soon.

I have never in all the time I have been ill received a Get Well Soon card, no sympathy ( not that i want that but I certainly dont want hostility!) oh and I was told i should get a job in a supermarket of all things too!!!

I hope you make it through the process OK.


Thw fact that M.E. people are having to go to a magistrate says it all. Being mistreated as though we are criminals.

Cant even get a decent M.E. Doctor in the UK - let alone ATOS ignorance.

MCS are not really acknowledged, nearly impossibke to gets a POTS diagnosis, electrical sensitivity is ignored too...
No points shows their scale is utterly unacceprable.


I have had to just not go down that path to preserve my Mental Health and accept poverty. Thing is, when I am well enough to go for an interview.... then they would say 'there is nothing wrong with you'....

Keep laughing no matter what... :)
 
V

Valentijn

Senior Member
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15,786
My honest first reaction to reading this was to laugh.

It's just so absurd that the whole system seems rather surreal sometimes.
 
alex3619

alex3619

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Logan, Queensland, Australia
Esther12 said:
http://tompride.wordpress.com/2013/...f-3-yrs-to-get-a-job-not-satire-please-share/
Click to expand...

Clearly Meena is capable of functioning as an ATOS assessor. She clearly has more sense, wisdom and intelligence than they do. I hope this travesty of ATOS idiocy gets resolved soon. Maybe she should turn up for interviews for government jobs?

This UK ATOS nonsense has gone on too long. Too many are suffering. Meanwhile the banking system and bankers who caused most of this crisis remains as impermeable as ever to transparency and accountability.

I am sorry this happened SilverbladeTE, but its to be expected in this kind of system that unless they have zero choice they will reject everyone. If ATOS were financially penalized for each failure then things would change very fast.
 
SilverbladeTE

SilverbladeTE

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Location
Somewhere near Glasgow, Scotland
Alex
this is the way our governments do things nowadays, they use mercenaries to murder for them
  • using external "cats paws" the government can avoid blame
  • avoid Freedom of Information rquests using "commerical confidentiality" bullshit,
  • it's a way to get super high paying jobs for the "old school tie brigade", ie neptoism, cronyism etc. ATOS boss gets £800,000 a year! That's money going OUT of the Public purse, OUT of the welfare and health systems into scumbags' pockets.
  • Deliberate dehumanizing, once you form systems without personal responsibility and cocnern, well we've seen very often how that goes...

Sigh every damn time int he past this kind of crap has gone on, it has lead to chaos, horrors and *collapse*
they may be smug now, but it will bring their house of cards down in the end and they'll end up like Mussolini, the Bourbons or the Romanovs. It's nuts :/ We're on the "sharp end" at the moment, but you can see how it will go.
Every damn system, every lesson we learned and built up to and after World War2, has been thrown away in mad rush for short term greed.
 
sianrecovery

sianrecovery

Senior Member
Messages
828
Location
Manchester UK
The system is not designed to be fair, it is designed to keep people out - and it does that effectively. There is a large and growing population of people with ME, CFS, environmental issues, and that population will inevitable grow. They do not wish these patients to remain within the system, as they have decided they are too expensive, and are expendable. Its that simple. We're on our own.
 
J

Jarod

Senior Member
Messages
784
Location
planet earth
Sorry to hear this brother.

Maybe print out this article for delivery to government employess to partially illustrate the insanity of our situation.

More public awareness might render these bizarre tests and agencies ineffective.

Hang in there! and keep the good attitude. :)
 
G

golden

Senior Member
Messages
1,831
There is quite a lot of good advice on The Consumer Action Group...

http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?385292-As-suspected-Zero-points

I am not sure if you can view threads without being a member.

But there was input from a Benefits worker on another thread there who stated zero points is the norm etc. and appeals have excellent chance of winning.

I wanted to pick out all the tips about the tricks they are using and put them in a bullet point list, for example the assessor is NOT recording the verbal assessment accurately. ...

a copy of the ATOS report maybe helpful etc...
 
A

anna8

Senior Member
Messages
122
Well done waterwaste! A what a relief!
I know from my own experience what a nightmare it is to get anywhere in the unfair system!

Hi silverblade how are you doing? Any news for you?
Best wishes anna
 
B

Bob

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Location
England (south coast)
H

henry the wasp

Messages
4
I failed my medical with 0 points,it was a total farce as my words were twisted and lies were submitted by the assesor.I appealed and was still turned down so now its going to tribunal.I suffer with Depression and Anxiaty for which i am being treated and having 1-1 counciling,i am supplying sick notes each month and have also included a doctors note stating he is treating me for the above.I have just also just been diagnosed with an underactive thyroid gland and have sent in a doctors note explaining this.I find i just dont have the energy now to be running round as they want me to by asking i get all these documents etc.I have spent a few hours today trying to get someone to represent me at my tribunal but i just cant find anyone to do it.I have contacted the C A B and local solicitors who told me the the way to deal with this is through my local MP which i thought was odd but i did so only to be litterally laughed at by the Tory plumb in mouth secretery.Please can someone advise me where to go from here please,i did opt to apear at the hearing but i dont think i will be able to manage this now.
 
B

Bob

Senior Member
Messages
16,455
Location
England (south coast)
henry the wasp said:
I failed my medical with 0 points,it was a total farce as my words were twisted and lies were submitted by the assesor.I appealed and was still turned down so now its going to tribunal.I suffer with Depression and Anxiaty for which i am being treated and having 1-1 counciling,i am supplying sick notes each month and have also included a doctors note stating he is treating me for the above.I have just also just been diagnosed with an underactive thyroid gland and have sent in a doctors note explaining this.I find i just dont have the energy now to be running round as they want me to by asking i get all these documents etc.I have spent a few hours today trying to get someone to represent me at my tribunal but i just cant find anyone to do it.I have contacted the C A B and local solicitors who told me the the way to deal with this is through my local MP which i thought was odd but i did so only to be litterally laughed at by the Tory plumb in mouth secretery.Please can someone advise me where to go from here please,i did opt to apear at the hearing but i dont think i will be able to manage this now.
Click to expand...

Keep on trying to find representation for your tribunal. It's very important, so don't give up.

The CAB used to liaise with solicitors, and provide free help, but the government have changed things recently, and I don't know if/how that would affect free help. CAB is definitely the place to go to get advice. If you haven't got anywhere with them so far, I suggest trying again, and hopefully you'll see someone more helpful. Anyway, you should persevere.

If you are a member of Action for ME, or the ME Association, they provide advice.
They both sell info booklets, and i think they both have helplines for members.

As you suffer from mental health problems, advice might be available through Mind.

The assessors aren't particularly interested in what conditions you suffer from. The focus is on how they affect your life.
So having depression doesn't make any difference to them, unless you explain how it stops you from doing things, how often it stops you, and give actual examples of how it incapacitates you. (You might know this already, but I wasn't sure from your post.)

Also, there is a benefits website, that provides information for claiming all benefits. But it's £20 to subscribe and the info is detailed and complex, so it won't suit everybody's needs or capacity:
http://www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/

There might also be other charities, including local charities that can help. Keep asking around.
 
Esther12

Esther12

Senior Member
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13,774
edit: Bob got in a reply while I was typing, so I repeat much of what he said.

Sorry to hear about this henry. I think that all the cutbacks in legal aid mean that it's now very difficult to get help with appealing decisions which are being increasingly recognised as 'unreliable' (dishonest quackery).

I get the impression that the most important thing to have are supportive letters from doctors (which is rather arbitrary in itself). If I were you, I would focus on trying to get them at the moment. You could contact CAB again, and tell them the MP was no use in order to ask if they know of any other advice centres.

Best of luck with it all.
 
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