Claimant Refused PIP By Tribunal- For Spending Too Much Time On Facebook

Same Difference

With many thanks to Benefits And Work.

A shocked welfare rights worker, posting on Rightsnet, has revealed how his client had their personal independence payment (PIP) appeal refused because of the amount of time the claimant allegedly spent on Facebook.

Accused of lying
The claimant had appealed to a first-tier tribunal about the decision on their PIP claim and attended an oral hearing with a representative.

Whilst considering their mental health, the claimant was asked by the panel whether they ever used Facebook. The claimant replied that they did so ‘now and again’.

After all the evidence had been taken, the claimant and their representative returned to the waiting room while the tribunal made their deliberations.

However, when they were called back before the panel to hear the decision, the claimant was accused of lying to the tribunal. The medical panel member had the claimant’s Facebook page open on their…

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Law students had to help a man in debilitating pain fight being declared “fit to work”

Disabled claimants are increasingly vulnerable, with justice more difficult to access, and the need to be reassessed after being declared “fit to work”,

The first Paul Crane knew of having his benefits cut off was when his landlord called up to ask where the rent was.

It was the start of a harrowing time. After ten years of receiving support for debilitating pains – caused when gamma knife radiosurgery to repair a haemorrhage on his brain stem caused radiation damage to surrounding tissue – he had suddenly been declared “fit to work”.

Paul’s life has never been the same since the operation, which repaired the haemorrhage but left parts of his brain and spinal cord permanently damaged. Every day he is haunted by stimuli – light, noise, crowded places – anything that sets off his “excitable nerves” will leave him in agony with migraines, cause numbness and dizziness, or leave part of his face sagging. Even sneezing or tiredness can cause a traumatic flare up.

He says: “Tiredness causes pain and pain causes tiredness. I don’t socialise much, I’ve let people down too many times. I go fishing, which is my only relaxation but even that sometimes is too much”.

Over a decade of suffering and being prescribed a cornucopia of drugs – none of which have fully worked – Paul has learnt to live with the pain. But a new regime at the Department for Work and Pensions, which he says was “like the difference between black and white”, has been hard on him. This was when the Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) replaced the Incapacity Benefit, and new work capability assessments (WCA) were brought in to test whether or not claimants were “fit to work”.

“It was as if they were trying to fail me,” he says, “like the system was designed to make me fail. I realised how lucky I had been before. The ESA people looked at me as if to say, ‘Oh God another scumbag’”.

When the news that he had been refused ESA hit him, Paul says he found himself in “a very dark pit”, confused and afraid of what would happen next.

“How could they come to this conclusion? I answered as truthfully as I could and they failed me. I’d just spent two weeks either in bed or on the sofa.”

It’s a painfully common story. Disability rights campaign groups such as the WOWPetition and Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) have been pressing the DWP to take notice of the plight of people like Paul, and are fighting for a comprehensive impact assessment of how changes to the benefits system and wider government spending cuts affect people with disabilities.

In August, after months of pressure, the DWP released the official figures for mortalities following “fit to work” verdicts between December 2011 and February 2014, revealing that 2,380 died in that period.

And even more damning, the Avon & Bristol Law Centre (ABLC) revealed that, of a hundred WCA appeal cases taken on by volunteer law students, 95 had been successful.

read more here: http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/welfare/2015/09/law-students-had-help-man-debilitating-pain-fight-being-declared-fit-work

It has caused through fear and stress a terrible degeneration in my physical and emotional state

This written statement was made to a disability benefit tribunal (ESA).

The author then posted it on the facebook page ‘The People vs the Government, DWP and Atos. I am posting it here because it sums up the experience of many of the people who I have accompanied through the ESA assessment and Tribunal processes, and states that experience far better than I could myself. It can take people months, if ever,  to recover from the deterioration in their health caused by the stress and anxiety of this assessment process. The worry that a reassessment  letter could come through the door at any time leads some to never be in a position to heal or attain stability. These are people in fragile health, unable to work or to satisfy the stringent conditions of the Jobcentre, terrified of losing all their income and becoming destitute and homeless whilst too ill to deal with any of this.  If the government’s aim is to assist people back into work, this is a mighty strange way to go about it.

*********

“I have to say that this process which started in april 2012 at my first visit to the atos office in (…………), has been the most painful humiliating and brutal treatment of another human being I can imagine.This is terrorism by the state on people who already have massive hurdles in life to deal with. It is worse treatment than meted out to criminals. It is cruel relentless and vicious bullying of people who have no choice by the state….

It has taken me personally to the darkest place I have ever been, especially in view that I had made some progress with both my physical and mental health problems. I believe that the only reason I have survived it is due to the 5 years of intense therapy which I sold my house to pay for. Nearly all others have not had that help, and I personally know three people who have killed themselves directly as a result of this process.

It has achieved exactly the opposite of the govt stated policy. It has caused through fear and stress a terrible degeneration in my physical and emotional state and made it almost impossible for me to function in ways that I was able to prior to this. I would wish that no human being should be subjected to treatment of this nature ever again. it is obscene. It has been 18 months of torture.”

 

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Work capability assessment system at ‘virtual collapse’, says judge

Robert Martin, outgoing head of benefits appeal tribunal, says DWP was too optimistic about conducting fit-to-work tests

The outgoing head of the tribunal which hears appeals relating to social security benefits has said that the work capability assessment (WCA) has undergone “virtual collapse” and accused the Department for Work and Pensions of being overly optimistic about the pace at which fit-for-work tests were being carried out.

Writing in the Judicial Information Bulletin, a confidential journal distributed to tribunal members, Judge Robert Martin, who retired as president of the social entitlement chamber at the end of last month, says that the tribunal was advised by the DWP to expect a surge in its workload. But he says problems with delivery of the government’s welfare shakeup and the removal of legal aid funding for challenging benefits decisions meant there was actually a drop in cases, from more than 50,000 in July 2013 to 8,775 in March this year.

“The virtual collapse of the WCA process is the biggest single factor in the decline of the appeals intake,” he writes.

He says the DWP had advised the tribunal that there would be a “bow wave” of appeals after Atos Healthcare, which administered fit-for-work tests for sick and disabled people, had recovered from its initial problems which led to questions about the quality of its work. “The advice from DWP was unduly sanguine,” he observes.

In March, the government announced that the £500m contract with Atos, blighted by accusations that the tests were crude and inhumane, was going to end early.

Referring to the removal of funding under the legal aid scheme for advice and assistance on welfare rights matters, Martin writes: “This loss of funding, compounded by continuing cutbacks in local authority spending on advice services, has severely reduced the help and support available to claimants to pursue their legal rights in challenging benefit decisions.”

In the article, which appeared in the April edition of the Judicial Information Bulletin but was only published online last week, on a forum for welfare rights workers, Martin also has less than flattering words about other parts of the government’s welfare changes.

From the Guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jun/11/work-capability-assessment-collapse-benefits

People stripped of benefits could be charged for challenging decision

Critics argue that proposal in leaked document from Department for Work and Pensions would hit poorest people in the country

People who have been stripped of benefits could be charged by the government for trying to appeal against the decision to an independent judge.

Critics said the proposal, contained in an internal Department for Work and Pensions document leaked to the Guardian, would hit some of the poorest people in Britain, who have been left with little or no income.

In the document about the department’s internal finances, officials say the “introduction of a charge for people making appeals against [DWP] decisions to social security tribunals” would raise money.

Other ideas include selling off child support debt to “the private sector to collect”, though civil servants remark that the government would be unlikely to raise more than 5-7p in the pound from the £1.4bn currently owed to the DWP. The department currently collects arrears.

Earlier this week figures showed that in the past year nearly 900,000 people have had their benefits stopped, the highest figure for any 12-month period since jobseeker’s allowance was introduced in 1996. In recent months, however, 58% of those who wanted to overturn DWP sanction decisions in independent tribunals have been successful. Before 2010, the success rate of appeals was 20% or less.

Read the rest of this article in the Guardian here: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/feb/20/people-stripped-benefits-charged-decision

Bedroom Tax win over room with lift.

from the Facebook page     The People Vs The Government, DWP and Atos· 

(Posted anonymously on Facebook)

We have from apr 2013 been paying for an extra bedroom to which we challenged. The reason we challenged this is because we have a vertical lift going into that room to which we deemed as an ACCESS room to the upper floor.
We contacted our local council who did a home visit and they stood by their decision that it was a bedroom. I told them i was going to seek legal advice to challenge the decison. I promptly followed my threat and my solicitor was on the case. They compiled a great deal of info and did various contacts on our behalf and eventually lead to a legal battle to which i had a hearing at home with an attorney judge to see the property for himself to make a decison. 

We received news after a 12 month battle that because of OUR situation and the house needs, that the room is in fact an ACCESS room and NOT a bedroom. I have been to the relevent places today to arrange the refund of ALL the Bedroom tax money that we have paid since Apr 2013.

I urge everyone fighting a challenge to not give up and keep the faith, i was on the verge of thinking we were fighting a lost cause but i was proved wrong and there IS (SOME) justice in this world. (SOMETIMES)… Good Luck.

GRASPING UK Government bureaucrats are taking a disabled Port woman to a tribunal in a desperate bid to overturn her landmark ‘bedroom tax’ case win.

Wheelchair-bound Margie Sherrard, 52, became the first person in Inverclyde to beat the unpopular Westminster levy last October, because the charge breached her human rights.

A tribunal ruled that the £14 a week subsidy for having an ‘extra’ bedroom in her specially-adapted Moray Road house was unjust because her husband Roy, 56, sleeps there due to her series of health issues. Those include a complex condition meaning Margie has constant pain and numbness in her legs and relies on the use of a wheelchair to get around.

Her condition is now rapidly deteriorating and spreading to her arms and hands — but she is facing another battle to win her case all over again due to a UK Government appeal. Margie feels she is being persecuted because she fought the controversial tax — and fears the powers that be will not give up.

She told the Tele: “It’s a kick in the teeth all over again — it’s really awful. Who says that if my case goes to court again and is decided in my favour once more that they won’t just appeal it all over again?  I am worried this will be an ongoing thing until they get what they want. Folk were saying ‘I saw you in the Tele and you won your case, that’s brilliant news’, and now here we go once more. I think I’m being singled out — what other reason is there?  I’m stressed enough with my health condition without any added worry.”

Margie and Roy gave up their long-term four-bedroom family home two years ago before the start of the bedroom tax in April 2013, after they were offered a bungalow specifically built for wheelchair users. It was a dream come true for the Sherrards but just months later they were told they would still have to pay the charge — despite downsizing and even though Roy uses the second bedroom.

After winning their case six months ago, the couple were paid back nearly £300 they’d had to fork out for the tax.

read the rest of this article in the Greenock Telegraph here:  http://www.greenocktelegraph.co.uk/news/greenock/articles/2014/04/28/496542-persecuted-disabled-woman-is-chased-for-bedroom-tax/

Case proven? Government stays away from benefit deaths tribunal

Mike Sivier's blog

Seen to be done: The tribunal took place at the Law Courts in Cardiff (pictured), in public – which allowed friends of Vox Political to hear the case.

The Information Commissioner’s Office and the Department for Work and Pensions have highlighted the weakness of their own case for hiding the number of people who have died while claiming sickness and disability benefits – by failing to turn up at a tribunal on the subject.

They had the opportunity to explain why mortality statistics for people claiming Employment and Support Allowance since November 2011 have been suppressed, at a tribunal in the Law Courts, Cardiff, yesterday (April 23).

But, rather than be grilled on the reasons for their decision by a judge, a specialist in this area of law, and a ‘lay’ person (representing the opinions of right-thinking members of the public), they chose to stay away.

The tribunal had been…

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Bedroom tax – a right right to family life as parents and daughter both win appeals

Atos ‘wrongly assessed’ thousands of sick and disabled people as fit for work

The French firm judged 158,300 benefit claimants were capable of holding down a job – only for the Department of Work and Pensions to reverse the decision.

Tens of thousands of sick and disabled people were wrongly assessed as fit for work by the private company Atos. The French firm judged 158,300 benefit claimants were capable of holding down a job – only for the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) to reverse the decision.

The figures from a Freedom of Information request come amid reports the department is set to end the £500million contract with the firm.  According to the request, work capability assessments carried out by Atos between August 2010 and June 2013 said 158,300 people with disabilities or a serious illness as fit for work.

In all these cases the DWP went on to decide they should be classed in the work-related activity group or the support group categories for people not yet ready to return to the jobs market. The figures are on top of the estimated 100,000 claimants who have had their Atos assessment overturned on appeal.

Labour’s shadow Work and Pensions minister Kate Green MP said: “What this shows is there are deep-rooted problems with Atos and the DWP has been aware of these problems for several years. It is high time ministers took action. Disabled people have no confidence in a system that is letting them down so badly.”

Atos has been dogged by criticism since winning the contract to carry out work capability assessments. Charities in August described Atos as “farcical” after it told nearly a half of all people suffering from crippling life-long diseases like Parkinson’s they would get better.

Ministers are now looking to end the multi-million pound contract with Atos after an 80-page financial review by the Department for Work and Pensions questioned the quality of the service.

“The department is working with Her Majesty’s Treasury and Cabinet office colleagues to seek additional providers to offer further capacity in the short-term and for these providers to then take over the whole contract,” the review said.

Richard Kramer of the charity Sense said: “The news that the Department for Work and Pensions is considering other providers for fit to work assessments is only part of the picture. There needs to be a root and branch reform of the system to ensure disabled people are judged fairly on their ability to work.”

A DWP spokeswoman said: “Atos were appointed the sole provider for delivering Work Capability Assessments by the previous government. In July we announced Atos had been instructed to enact a quality improvement plan to remedy the unacceptable reduction in quality identified in the written reports provided to the Department.

read the rest of this article here: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/atos-wrongly-assessed-thousands-sick-3159343#ixzz2tj6oOCCy