A response to DLA reforms

Dear Mrs Miller,

I would like to voice my concerns over the proposed reforms to the Disability Living Allowance

1. Renaming DLA as PIP is a waste of time and money.

2. If the aim is to remove 20% of people from the benefit how is the eligibility criteria to be set?

3. The reforms take no account of those with fluctuating illnesses. Many conditions such as MS vary from day to day. One day could be a good one. One week could be good. The next could be awful.

4. DLA is NOT claimable simply by filling out the form. Medical evidence is ALWAYS required. Introducing mandatory testing is unfair, unnecessary, unjust and a huge waste of money. Paying millions to a firm to complete the assessment - as is done with ESA - is utterly criminal when claimants already have to provide evidence. You cannot claim it for a broken leg. You cannot claim it for flu. The condition must be serious. You should try to claim it yourself and see how far you get.

5. The fact that many claimants have been claiming it for years does not speak of a broken system. It says that many people have long term illnesses that won't go away simply because you want to stop paying. If you want to discern if these people are still genuinely entitled then write to their specialists. Because they WILL have one.

6. DLA does not stop people from working. In many cases it helps people to be able to work. If the benefit is taken away then many people will be forced to leave work and become reliant on benefits. This completely negates any money saved from cutting it.

7. Saying you want to direct support to those who need it most might sound laudable but it does not cut the mustard. If you take away support from those who don't fit the criteria then it is entirely likely their conditions will become worse and end up costing more in the long run than it does to support them now. Whilst also causing pain and humiliation to those who suffer.

8. Telling people they are unsustainable is an insult. Telling them they need to represent value for money is also an insult. No-one asks to be disabled. People don't make it happen so they can claim benefits. Living with a disability every day is a battle, a struggle to be independent and not a burden to others. Being told that you are unsustainable takes away that shred of independence and tells everyone that you ARE a burden.

9. DLA fraud has been estimated at less than 1%. Punishing the many to weed out the few is not a system that would be encouraged anywhere else. Even hardened criminals are judged to be innocent before being found guilty. These reforms are treating the disabled as guilty before being judged innocent.

I sincerely hope these ill informed and ill thought out reforms will be stopped. Those who suffer from disabilities already deal with enough. Don't make their lives even harder.

Yours sincerely

Helen *

*Don't worry, I did put my last name on the letter ;)

A letter to Ed Miliband

This is a letter I wrote to Ed Miliband yesterday. I don't pretend to be the worlds best writer or the most knowledgeable in these matters. I believe the majority will agree with me.

Dear Mr Miliband,

My name is Helen and I have Multiple Sclerosis. Because of this I claim ESA. I am writing to you because I am deeply worried about the cuts that have been announced by the ‘coalition’. They claim that they will support the most vulnerable yet the reforms they have announced will have an appalling effect on people like me.

The vast majority of ESA/IB claimants are not scroungers. We are honest, ordinary people with horrible, debilitating illnesses that force us to have to claim benefits. We know that there are people out there who claim the benefits they are not entitled to but they are a minority. We dislike the frauds as much, if not more, than everyone else since they give us all a bad name.
But labelling us all as scroungers is not only wrong, it’s unjust and it is making us very uneasy. Living life in fear is not the way anyone should have to live but thanks to the coalition and the right wing press this is how it is for us.

None of us asked to be ill, to have conditions that affect our lives and we would happily give up all of our benefits if you would take our illnesses with them.
Illness does not care what class you are, it doesn’t care how much your income is, what job you do, how many hours you work. It’s doesn’t care if you are male or female, young or cold, well educated or illiterate. It can happen to anyone, at any age, at any time. I never imagined for a moment it would happen to me.

Health related benefits should not be linked to out of work benefits. The help that an able bodied person requires to find work is not on the same level as the needs of the disabled. To try and force a disabled person into work that is wrong for them is criminal. Because their health will be affected.

The Tories and their rightwing supporters are selfish. They care only about themselves and money. And they assume that everyone else is like that, which is why they cannot believe that so many of us are genuine claimants. But being a socialist means you care about others, not just yourself. It means you look out for those less fortunate than yourself, even if their issues do not relate to you. You may not be disabled but you need to look after the interests and welfare of those who are.

Iain Duncan-Smith has told the world that unless you earn a wage you are contributing nothing to society. He has effectively told us we are worthless. We cannot depend on someone like that to look out for our welfare.

The previous Labour Government did nothing to help us. The coalition government is determined to punish us. Our hopes rest with you. I beg you to remember that while I may be disabled, I am still a human being. I don’t deserve to be punished for the crimes of a few. Being disabled is hard enough.
Please help to show the world that we are not all the same, that we don’t deserve to be branded scroungers and we shouldn’t be punished as such. I would ask you to meet with some of us. See our faces. Hear our stories. Gain an understanding of who we are and what we need.

Stand up for the sick and disabled and you will have our vote.

Thank you for your time,

Helen Thomas

Cross posted at Where's the Benefit

Letter to an MP

Posted at Mental Health Mission, this is a letter submitted by a reader to her MP

I am writing to protest about the unfair cuts in the welfare benefits system that seem to be aimed at the genuine sick and disabled.

Okay – there are plenty of “scroungers” out there, that abuse the welfare benefits – those that are capable of working, but have never had any intention of doing so – then, yes, they are the ones that should be targeted for draining the benefits systems for years and years. The government should have acted years ago on these scroungers instead of now making the genuine claimants suffer the stress and humiliation, making their illnesses and disabilities far worse.

We have a son aged 34 who has been diagnosed with schizophrenia and a severe mood disorder. He worked from the age of 16 until he was 22 when he became so ill that he had to give up work. Through trying to continue working for so long, his health has suffered drastically. Under your new welfare cuts, my son is going to have to suffer severe stress with medicals etc under the new ESA rules. If he is forced to try and find work, who is going to have to care for him, accompany him to medicals, interviews etc and watch him become psychotically ill again, probably self-harming himself? ME – NOT YOU, or any government parliamentarian. Is this mental discrimination part of the government’s animosity towards people who are mentally ill through no fault of their own? How would you feel if, in the future, your son and daughter were treated with the same lack of thought and discrimination?

If people are FIT to work then, yes, I am in full agreement, but when work would seriously affect someone genuinely ill with severe mental health problems then the government should make allowances in the ESA for them to be placed automatically in the support group instead of forcing them through stressful interviews and medicals.

That’s what a caring government would do – obviously the powers that be have no thought or consideration for the genuinely severely mentally ill. Maybe the government would like to see all the mentally ill commit suicide, then they would have even less money to pay out on welfare benefits.

Yours sincerely

[Name withheld at the request of the writer]

See here for the original post and help with writing your own letter. We need to put as much pressure on all MP's as possible, even if they are ConDems/. They have a duty to listen to you and address your concerns.

An open letter to Jo Swinson

After a frustrating discussion on Twitter with her MP Jo Swinson, single mum Lisa Ansell has written an open letter to her, published on East Dumbarton's blog.
I don't have permission to republish here so I will just link to it, but it is a brilliant letter which raises some very real concerns about the ability of single mums to work.

According to Ms Swinson, single mums don't need benefit help because the fathers should pay child support. I can hear plenty of people saying that's right, they should.
So answer me this - what about those instances where the father isn't capable? Or the ones where the father is violent so they are better off without him knowing their whereabouts?
What about the fact that this would leave women dependent on a man? We are in the 21st century here right? Not the 1950's?

Read Lisa's letter and then tell me that we don't need benefit help.

Read her letter here