Imagine this scenario.
You’re need a job, but there’s a new system in place – in the form of one single interview.
You don’t fill in an application, or apply for a job that looks right, instead you sit in front of someone. They’ve never met you. They don’t have your CV, your history, your qualifications. All they know about you will be gained in the next few minutes and by looking at you. They ask you a list of questions. They seem quite irrelevant – none allow you to explain what skills you have, what your strengths are, or enable you to sell yourself. The interview ends, and there’s so much more you want to say, to explain. At the end they hand you a piece of paper with your job and salary on.
You splutter at the unjust nature – how they can decide what you can do without knowing your background, just by looking at you? They have no training in employment, or in your specialist area. Yet they’re deciding your future.
That’s exactly what happens when assessing whether a person with a disability can work or not.
The assessor is not usually medically trained. If you have a rare or complex condition, they won’t receive any information about it beforehand or speak to a specialist. They do not receive your medical record, any consultants letters, etc. They have set questions to ask they may have no baring on the condition. It does not take into account someone who may be reasonably well one day, and bedbound the next. Or the complexities of your situation, or the reality of your day-to-day life.
They judge you just by looking at you, which is difficult for all the thousands of invisible conditions out there.
And it’s just getting worse.
Thousands die each year after being found fit for work or other benefit cuts.
Would you want your life to be decided by someone who knows nothing about you? Who has no training? Just ticks boxes that do not relate to you in any way?
No? Then why should the disabled people of Britain face this?
Atos (Photo credit: Wikipedia)