How anxiety of benefit sanctions damages mental health

From the article
Since 2007, Employment Support Allowance (ESA) has replaced a range of benefits for disabled people. Some ESA claimants need to undertake work-related activity each week such as training or job applications, making this a condition of their payment. Failure to do so can result in some or all of a person’s benefit being withdrawn as part of a sanction, which can be up to 100% of their ESA. This conditionality that was built into the system of ESA is now being extended through the implementation of Universal Credit.

Research that we conducted with the disabled people’s organisation Inclusion London and their policy director Ellen Clifford, highlights the very negative impacts that such conditionality and sanctions can have on mental health for disabled people. We found that conditionality and sanctioning had significant detrimental effects on the mental health of the 15 people who participated in our study. They had all been deemed capable of some work, and been put in what’s called the Work-Related Activity Group .
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It is largely to avoid these stresses that my wife and I made the decision for me not to try for benefits, but I completely appreciate that the vast majority of people will not be in a situation where that is an option for them. We believe that my health, as this report has found, would be negatively affected and would put me further away from any improvement, and therefore further away from any possible work.
 
JohnTheJack said:
I was one of the 15 interviewed.
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Thank you for doing that @JohnTheJack. That was a very worthwhile thing for you to do. I think it's utterly disgraceful and inhumane for sick people to be treated as described in the report.

The best thing about getting old is getting off the ESA treadmill and getting a pension. We're fortunate that my daughter is in the Support group for ESA at the moment, so doesn't have to go through this cruel process. I'm not sure when she's due to be reassessed, but if they put her in the work related activity group she'll have to come off benefit and I'll have to support her on my pension. WRAG would break her completely.

I really feel for you and everyone in that horrible situation.
 
I spoke to Jaimini on the phone. She emailed me recently to say there is going to be a presentation in HoC in the next few weeks.

Grim serendipity: I received an Assessment form in the post last week: to be completed and returned by 14th November. Great.

Edit: Oops. Seems HoC reception was last week.
 
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Skycloud said:
From the reports key findings:


I bet that isn't in Wessely's Mental Health Review conclusions.
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I bet he'll argue that this is an argument to increase and accelerate those services, that it's not that it's not working, it's that it's not big enough.

And yet what's the expectation from IAPT? 5%? And that's probably very generous. How long can this farce be sustained?
 
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