Disability News Service: "Civil servant sparks fresh concerns over ideological basis of jobs strategy" [BPS discussed]

Invisible Woman said:
The sole point of this has to be the humiliation of the claimant.
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I disagree, it's not the sole point, denial of benefits is also a point (if someone is only capable of working 10 minutes a day why aren't they on a sickness benefit? coz sickness benefits tend to pay more).

there are probably many other reasons as well.....but ATM I can't get them into words
 
Wonko said:
I disagree, it's not the sole point, denial of benefits is also a point (if someone is only capable of working 10 minutes a day why aren't they on a sickness benefit? coz sickness benefits tend to pay more).

there are probably many other reasons as well.....but ATM I can't get them into words
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Presumably, they claimant has to attempt to comply to keep the benefit? They have to prove they have applied for the jobs. I seriously can't see anyone employing someone with the limitations. So this poor sod will be applying for jobs for X hours per week that they will never get......

As !ong as they're complying they'll be paid - therefore this is an exercise in humiliation.

Most claimants will be desperate enough to keep going for as long as they can.

Eventually of course, if they can no longer keep applying, sure, then they will lose the benefit. But they will be thoroughly demoralized & dehumanized first.
 
Luther Blissett said:
This sounds like the type of letter that illustrates the point:

fit-for-work-bollocks.jpg


source: https://speyejoe2.wordpress.com/2017/08/25/fit-for-work-oh-do-feck-off/
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In case others didn't realise this initially (no comments on speed of processing or Maths skills please), this could well be the 12 minute article.

Although the person can work a maximum of 20 mins a day, the maximum over the week is an hour. Assuming they only work for 5 days, this equates to 12 mins per working day.

The linked article is amusing and has more info, such as if the person can only stand for 5 mins and sit for 5 mins, how can they manage a 45 min journey? Cost of fares v income etc.

It should be brought up on a comedy show ? Dara O'b/Mock the week. Some of you will have better ideas of where to send it!
 
Might be useful to the MP, tho' not till after the Wed debate as that relates to the PIP problem, not ESA, though this person should be getting PIP if they can only work for 12 mins/day.

It was posted late August during Parliamentary recess, then come party conferences etc , so it might not have been raised.

Also MPs do like a bit of repetition (deviation and hesitation/faffing around). - Brexit anyone?
 
Invisible Woman said:
The sole point of this has to be the humiliation of the claimant.
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I had a similar response from an assessor who interviewed me, when I needed a waiver from Dutch language testing to retain my residency. Home testing is not an option - I got the impression that the testing centers don't make any disability accommodations at all, which is par for the course in the Netherlands :grumpy:

Her first suggestion was that I do some CBT and get cured so I could take the test. When we explained that I'd been to a fatigue clinic and it hadn't helped at all, she came up with the recommendation of giving me a 5 year extension, and taking the test 5 minutes at a time. Completely ignoring the effect that travel would have on me cognitively (which she saw first-hand during the assessment), though she did seem to think the testing centers would have somewhere for me to lie down for 30-60 minutes prior to doing my 5 minutes of testing.

Fortunately the integration agency treated her official report as the bad joke that it was. But I think the assessor's recommendations were primarily a form of not letting (ME) patients "win" somehow as a result of being sick. She couldn't hold a gun to my head and make me do what she felt sure I could do and would be good for me to do, so she translated that mentality into bureaucratic nonsense instead.

My impression was that her attempted imposition of that schedule was really an attempt to deny my disability and enforce some sort of treatment (regular travel). Those were powers she otherwise lacked, as she was not my doctor and forced treatment in any form is presumably not legal, so she was using her bureaucratic powers to work around the limitations which she faced. In retrospect, it's a medically abusive thing for people in such positions to be doing, and they should probably get fired for it.
 
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Invisible Woman said:
Presumably, they claimant has to attempt to comply to keep the benefit? They have to prove they have applied for the jobs. I seriously can't see anyone employing someone with the limitations. So this poor sod will be applying for jobs for X hours per week that they will never get......

As !ong as they're complying they'll be paid - therefore this is an exercise in humiliation.

Most claimants will be desperate enough to keep going for as long as they can.

Eventually of course, if they can no longer keep applying, sure, then they will lose the benefit. But they will be thoroughly demoralized & dehumanized first.
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I suspect this is true if the big brother style job search database that the job centre makes you use for Jobseeker's Allowance was anything to go by.

its not too much of a worry at the moment since the searches it comes up with are pretty pathetic. E.g food marketing job search comes up with cleaners and state registered nurses as suitable jobs to apply for.:banghead:

The bit I don't like is that when you log in and it asks you to give permission for the job centre advisor to access your account so they can monitor your applications. I suspect that this sort of automatic remote monitoring is what they have in mind across the board for universal credit etc. If they can't get the job match database to work, then they probably would penalise you regardless for not applying for a job you aren't trained for or incapable of doing due to the physical nature...putting the onus on the claiment to complain and prove they were wrong after they had withdrawn the benefit.

It seems that this detachment of the human touch for assessing claims is a strategy, presumably because certain politicians think all the problems stem from over compassionate idiots dolling out the hard earned tax payers money.

it seems set up to just churn people through the mangle until they give up and has Maybots fingerprints all over it.
 
Valentijn said:
I had a similar response from an assessor who interviewed me, when I needed a waiver from Dutch language testing to retain my residency. Home testing is not an option - I got the impression that the testing centers don't make any disability accommodations at all, which is par for the course in the Netherlands :grumpy:
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This sounds like a way of 'weeding out' applicants for residency with disabilities. It's probably not politically OK to have a policy of discriminating against disabled people, so they make it impossible for them to meet the residency rules indirectly.
 
arewenearlythereyet said:
I suspect this is true if the big brother style job search database that the job centre makes you use for Jobseeker's Allowance was anything to go by.
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It's like the I, Daniel Blake film, that @Sly Saint kindly recommended somewhere.

The guy is a widower, living alone. He has worked all his life and now has a serious heart problem. His doctors have told him he cannot go back to work yet. The DWP & benefits agency think otherwise.

So he does his best at typing a CV - he'd always got jobs through word of mouth before. Now, he has no money, but he does have time, so he walks around the industrial estates talking to people & handing his CV out.... Not good enough - he has to prove it.....

All this and the man isn't fit to work anyway.....
 
The million disabled people they quote.............this is the problem:
Disabled people have to apply for 60% more jobs than non-disabled people before finding one
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...-bodied-stats-before-employment-a7970701.html

If they (DWP/JobcentrePlus) put more effort into helping these disabled people who are able and want to work, instead of trying to force chronically ill people to do useless 'work-related activity' they might have more success.

I am sure that if, instead of forcing everyone through the ridiculous Work Capacity Assessment,
they had simply offered a voluntary service for disabled people to help them back into work they would have saved a lot of money. Not to mention the grief and suicides they caused.
 
I've recently joined this set up which aims to match disabled people with chronic conditions with flexible contract work:

https://astriid.force.com/s/

Just shows that it's not too hard if the government were truly interested in helping the disabled get back to work as opposed to throwing them on the scrap heap of blame.

No bites so far for me but it's early days...oh and let me have the marketing jobs...I know anyone can do these really but I really do need all the breaks I can get at the moment.
 
Hi @MEMarge . It is the 12 minute one. The 0.2 is a decimal, i.e. a decimal fraction, two-tenths of an hour, and one-tenth of an hour is 6 minutes.

If that's the maximum amount that the person is expected to work, could they argue that that is the maximum time that they could spend applying for jobs? I'll bet not.
 
Graham said:
Hi @MEMarge . It is the 12 minute one. The 0.2 is a decimal, i.e. a decimal fraction, two-tenths of an hour, and one-tenth of an hour is 6 minutes.

If that's the maximum amount that the person is expected to work, could they argue that that is the maximum time that they could spend applying for jobs? I'll bet not.
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Like your logic there Graham.

Unfortunately logic does not seem to feature in PIP decision process, so probably not work-related stuff either.

The PIP Award decision letter to my friend seemed to consist mainly of repetition, deviation, irrelevance and nonsense, with a few accurate statements thrown in.
 
How about if you accept that it is very logical, but the assumptions that precede are against the other values of humanism? (and rarely mentioned in public)

If you remove things like ethics, history, doubt etc, you can reason all kinds of horrors logically.
 
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