Department for Work and Pensions assessments are damaging people’s lives. And they don’t even provide the predicted savings
Department for Work and Pensions assessments are damaging people’s lives. And they don’t even provide the predicted savings
One of the outsourcing giants paid to assess disabled people for their eligibility for benefits appears to have admitted that it is standard practice – approved by the government – to ask claimants with mental health conditions why they failed to take their own lives.
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has denied there is any dishonesty among the healthcare professionals who carry out its benefits assessments, even though Disability News Service (DNS) has now collected 100 cases where such allegations have been made.
Healthcare professionals who carry out face-to-face assessments of benefit claimants have lied, ignored written evidence and dishonestly reported the results of physical examinations, according to a two-month Disability News Service (DNS) investigation.
If you have a diagnosed mental health condition? Have you experienced the Work Capability Assessment? Have your benefits been sanctioned because of this assessment?
My name is Helen and I am a Trainee Clinical Psychologist from Lancaster University. I am conducting research as part of my doctoral thesis about the psychological impact of benefits sanctions following the Work Capability Assessment process and what impact this had, if any, on peoples’ mental health and outlook. I’m involved with […]
By: PA More than half of disability benefit claimants with mental health problems are losing out financially after being moved on to the Government’s new Personal Independence Payment, according to new figures. Campaigners called for an urgent overhaul of the reassessments, which millions of claimants are having to undergo as Disability Living Allowance is […]
Mind faces boycott call after policy and campaigns manager joins DWP
Disabled activists have called for a boycott of the mental health charity Mind, and called on its chief executive to quit, after one of its managers agreed to spend a year working with the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). They say the move by policy and campaigns manager Tom Pollard is just the latest […]
The DWP placed sanctions on a schizophrenic man when he fell into difficulties. It was an aggressive and destructive way to treat someone so vulnerable
By:Frances Ryan ‘Luke [got caught in a] familiar spiral: pushed off sickness benefits and unable to cope with the requirements of the jobcentre, he had his jobseeker’s allowance taken away.’ Photograph: Natalie Jeffers Luke Alexander Loy was not one of George Osborne’s “hard-working people”. The 42-year-old had schizophrenia and was unable to work (or […]
The Government has ‘failed its duty of care’ to people with mental health problems, according to a senior figure in Mind charity.
The comments come after Conservative MP Priti Patel was last week condemned for claiming that there is no evidence to suggest that more people with mental health issues received cuts to their benefits than others.
Over 100 people a day with mental health problems are having their benefits sanctioned, according to Freedom of Information requests by the Methodist Church in Britain.
The data, obtained from the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP), showed that in March 2014 alone – the last month for which data is available – around 4,500 people with mental health problems who receive the sickness and disability benefit Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) because of mental health problems had their benefits sanctioned.
