Employment and Support Allowance Archives

The Dreaded Brown Envelope – ESA News

by The Chronic Chronicles | Dec 14, 2013 | Benefits

This year my health has gone downhill somewhat. I suppose it has been doing that for some time, but when I finished my previous job I just knew I couldn’t do it anymore. I was a total mess, and my list of needs and adjustments from a job was getting longer than the job description itself.

In April I applied for Employment and Support Allowance for the first time. For those of you that don’t know much about it, it’s the benefit that replaced Incapacity Benefit – for disabled people who can no longer work.

There are three rates – the Assessment Rate, the Work Related Activity Group (WRAG) and the Support Group. If placed in the WRAG they admit you’re too ill to work currently, but feel you should be able to work with support in the future. People in this group have to attend regular work-related meetings with companies who receive bonuses if they can get you into work; can be forced into unlimited work-placements and can even sanction you. So in one breath they admit people in this group cannot work, and then force them too – and stop their benefits if they refuse. The Support Group means they feel you cannot work, and do not expect you to anytime soon.

The way the system is supposed to work is that you receive the assessment rate for 13 weeks, then either a decision maker at the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) decides if you should go in a group or be found ‘fit for work.’ If they feel they don’t have enough information they can send you for a medical with ATOS. The assessment rate is lasting much longer than 13 weeks, however, which is probably because a large amount of people are being sent for the medicals despite copious medical evidence with their applications that should give the decision maker enough information to decide.

The medical tests themselves are highly controversial as it’s been shown those carrying them out are under a lot of pressure to find the person fit for work. The tests are extremely limited in scope, and most people are indeed found fit for work and then have to appeal it. In most cases this decision is overturned at tribunal level – showing the system is flawed. The whole process causes a lot of stress to the claimant and this horror vastly increased in October when they decided that if you were found fit for work and appealed, you’d no longer be paid the assessment rate while you waited for the tribunal – which can take up to a year to happen. The benefit starts at £56.80 a week for under 25s, and £71.70 for over 25s. This amount is what people have to live on, and removing it is beyond cruel.

In July I was told I would be having a medical. While expecting this, I was still annoyed as my claim included excellent medical evidence. My GP had written a long letter, as well as my Occupational Therapist. I also had a pile of letters from my consultants including the top specialist in Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome in Britain.

But I heard nothing for six months. When October passed my worry increased dramatically. I wondered what would happen if I was found fit for work and had no income while I appealed. I fretted about how I’d pay the rent for the accessible bungalow I live in, or pay for the treatment the NHS won’t cover.

I’ve also been through all this before with Disability Living Allowance and it wasn’t a very fun time. I pretty much had a mini-break down and had to go through two tribunals. You can read about that starting here and follow the whole saga under the tag ‘benefit claim’.

Having had bad news so often before, and living in constant fear of bad news from the DWP – I have a certain reaction every time I spot their distinctive letter I call the ‘dreaded brown envelope.’

I’m a little superstitious, even though I know it’s silly. I say the rhyme when I see a lone magpie, I throw spilt salt over my shoulder and I make a wish when the numbers on a clock are all the same. I’d been lying awake for some hours trying to sleep (not uncommon) when I spotted it was 2:22am. I made a wish. “Please. Please just let me know either way before Christmas.”

The next morning I was hobbling past the front door when it caught my eye. The dreaded brown envelope. My heart began to thump and my breath caught in my throat. I opened it quickly, and tried to make sense of it. Two words stood out to me – Support Group.

Relief flared through me, but as I read further it stated that I’d been placed in the Support Group from July – 30th November.

When you get put in a group a time of claim goes along with it, and I was aware that people have been placed in a group before and thought they were okay, only to find out that by the time they’d been told which group they were in, their claim had finished. Was that what had happened to me?

I immediately phoned the DWP and spoke to a nice lady who looked my claim up, and agreed that the letters were confusing, but those dates were referring to back pay. They agreed I should have gone into the Support Group from July, and up until November 30th had been on the assessment rate. So I’d get back pay up of the difference between the Assessment Rate and Support Group Rate until that date. Then from the 30th November my claim will run for two years.

I began to cry – and apologised to the poor woman. I explained I was just so relieved. She responded kindly by saying I didn’t have to worry about any medicals, or sending anymore sick notes.

I honestly can’t believe I got put into the Support Group first time and didn’t have to go through a medical. It seems incredibly rare with ESA not to have a medical, and even more so to be put straight into the Support Group.

I can’t even begin to put into words what this means to me. It should mean some financial stability during this time – until the Personal Independence Payments rollout.

Credit to: Cieleke

Demonising the Disabled

by The Chronic Chronicles | Feb 10, 2012 | Daily Life, Education, Opinion

Ron Liddle from The Sun wrote a column condemning the ‘fake disabled’. He says, “My New Year’s resolution for 2012 was to become disabled. Nothing too serious, maybe just a bit of a bad back or one of those newly invented illnesses which make you a bit peaky for decades – fibromyalgia, or M.E.”

Peaky? This describes people that often become totally bed-bound, are in crippling pain, too exhausted to lift your head off the pillow or have to use a wheelchair. ME regularly kills people after ravaging their immune system, although the press keeps quiet on that. People don’t speak of the young people having to live in their beds due to the pain Fibromyalgia causes.

Another charming person, this time James Delingpole from The Telegraph, writes in support of Ron, claiming that there are eleven million people now saying they are disabled, and this it what’s crippled the economy. Eleven million disabled people there may be, but only 2.6 million claim Employment and Support allowance, the ‘not able to work’ benefit. The other 8.4 million actually work. Crazy, I know! (No reflection on those that can’t work meant, just that there is an assumption that disabled people don’t partake in employment.) It may be many people now fit the definition of disabled, which is ‘A physical or mental impairment which has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on a person’s ability to carry out day-to-day activities’ but the vast majority of disabled people try their best to work.

Another couple of points on these multitudes of disabled people crippling the economy is that Employment and Support Allowance is around £97 a week, and if your partner earns over £5343 a year you get nothing. The governments own figures put the fraud rate for ESA at 0.3%. The fraud rate for Pension Credit is 2.3%, but nobody seems to mention that. They are also bringing in a change that people can only claim contributory rate ESA for a one year. After that year they’re means tested, with a limit of £6000 in savings.

There is another disability related benefit – Disability Living Allowance, that is frequently used to support working. The extra costs of being disabled is significant. Equipment costs a fortune, needing transport on every journey soon adds up, treatment that enables you to work is often not covered on the NHS, heating for those with joint issues, extra cleaning costs, heat pads and so on. So this benefit is often used to pay for all those bits and pieces, or actually extremely important functions that allow people to work, and as a result pay taxes.

This is having a real impact on people’s lives. The suicide rate is constantly increasing and if the changes to DLA go ahead – where one suggested option is to remove the mobility allowance from wheelchair users with the idea a wheelchair makes someone independent, this suicide rate is going to vastly increase – no doubt about it. That ‘free car’ often complained about is something where you can cash in part of your allowance in return for a leased car. This allows people to have low-cost adaptations and transportation that meets their needs. The adaptations I needed came to a few thousand pounds, and really the adaptations didn’t amount to that much.

DLA is incredibly hard to get. The stress and torment people have to go through to get it is indescribable. People with terminal illnesses get turned down. This is why the fraud rate is so low. Yes, of course people will always slip through the cracks – it’s easy to lie about something that isn’t personal to you, and even suck doctors in with it. And these are the other that papers scream about, this 0.5% that makes the news daily – Scroungers! Work shy! Liars! They don’t point out the 99.5% that are genuine.

I’ve just spent three weeks with many chronically ill people, most with multiple painful illnesses, and the vast majority of them worked full time, way past what they should have done. Many volunteered on top of that work, others were carers for other people. Hardly any of them were on the benefits they should have been and were struggling financially. Many had been awarded DLA at a very low rate, when they should have been entitled to a much higher rate, but were too frightened to fight as they will frequently turn around the remove the whole award.

The demonisation of disabled people, fed directly to the media by the government in order to make these changes, needs to stop. Hate crime against disabled people is up by 75%. Seventy five goddamn percent! Probably because every time someone opens a newspaper they find a story they’ve been fed about that tiny 0.5% of people incorrectly claiming Disability Living Allowance, or a story about people claiming they have a “fake” condition like Fibromyalgia to get the so-called free car handed to them.

Credit to bsr dk