UK: Benefits assesor deems woman with stage 4 cancer & no hair 'fit for work'
32 replies, posted
Benefits assessor visited woman, 22, with stage 4 cancer and no ..
Paige Garratt says she never expected in a million years to be told she had cancer at 22. Neither did her doctors – it took 10 months for them to realise her persistent cough and itchiness were not just a chest infection and eczema. Then came the shocking news. She had stage 4 Hodgkin’s lymphoma, meaning it was advanced and had spread to her lymph nodes and lungs.
But Paige, from Flintshire, North Wales, says she not only had to deal with the stress of her illness – she also faced a battle to get financial help. She explained she was left in tears after she discovered she’d been deemed “not sick enough” for disability benefit after a home assessment during the time she was having treatment.
“The assessor turned up about four days after my second to last chemo round,” she told inews. “I was sat on the couch in my PJs with no hair. I was lethargic and my head felt so heavy I had to keep it rested on the sofa arm or physically hold it up with my hands.
“The letter said I was physically well enough to take care of myself and my mental health was fine – which she didn’t even ask me about. “I cried, I felt like I’d been personally judged. It made me feel like a fraud, like it was my fault that I was ill.”
That's fucking sick. What utter cunts. I'm on disability benefit in the UK and it has often been a battle, but my condition is nowhere near this serious. I seriously hope this is a fucking mistake or a rogue assessor.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/I,_Daniel_Blake
reminds me of this film.
the system regularly fucks good people over, such a sadness it still happens.
hey so since Theresa May announced the end of austerity can we stop this shit?
Austerity is such a retarded principle in the first place.
Yeah sure, putting the brunt of the consumer base in financial jeopardy is such a good way of revitalizing the economy...
I agree, but this doesn't seem as much to do with Austerity as it does a piss poor assessment system.
Thanks, Tories! And also thanks for your deeming of "Skilled Labourer" as someone who earns above 50k
The problem is the stupid points system they use for their assessments. You're essentially graded as to how ill you are in specific categories, the higher the score the more ill you are, by someone who doesn't know you and isn't medically qualified to speak about you. I had to go for one of them, after my GP had been giving me not-fit for work notes because I have an anxiety disorder/depression.
I got 0 points in all categories. And my next appointment with my GP is after the appeal date.
Woah, I just watched that film after seeing your comment (I'd never heard of it.) It's brilliant and disturbingly realistic. Quite funny in parts too. Thanks for the recommend!
My mother is going through the same shit, she's suffering a degenerative spine condition brought on by an accident and botched operation 30 years back. They assessed her THREE fucking times, each a different assessor, until they got the result they wanted. Twice she passed the assessment and her DLA was unchanged, but the third one she didn't score enough points which cut her benefits and took away her mobility car. Funnily enough, she wasn't reassessed after the third, I wonder why...
Tory voters need a good swift kick in the dick.
52% of households need to use foodbanks? Or 52% of the 24% of poverties in household needs to? Either way I need to see a state cuz if it's the former that's unbelievable.
The cunts pushing for this policy deserve cancer tbh.
If it makes you feel better, my friend with one leg who needs surgeries at least once a year to keep from bleeding out was deemed no longer disabled a few years back.
Conservative ideology is such a retarded principle in the first place. Its always the poor and the weak that are made to bear the weight of society so the rich can be made richer.
That's a modern miracle my man, I thought I'd have read about that one on the news.
Good luck with your appeal.
One time, while I was claiming it, I originally got a 0, I appealed it and the tribunal found I was to get 33 points in total, based on my conditions. 15 is the minimum amount of points needed to get on it, at the time.
Infuriatingly, when they were actually scored, mental illnesses counted for MUCH more than physical ones, even though, the physical ones can be just as debilitating as mental ones.
Couple of years later, sadly, I had another review, and I unfortunately got 0 points in both the examination AND the tribunal.
It pisses me off, because they made the bar higher, to stop people falsely claiming, and yet people can still falsely claim (and get away with it) meanwhile the ones whose claims truly aren't false, get shafted by the higher requirements.
I was tired, and more down than I am now, when I wrote that, it's not 52% of households. It's a 52% average increase in demand for food banks within 12 months of full Universal Credit rollout.
https://www.trusselltrust.org/2018/10/05/moving-onto-universal-credit/
Apologies for the confusion. It's still a horrendous statistic, whether or not it's as drastic as I accidentally made it seem.
And the best part is, that this shit doesn't even save the country any money.
With all of the follow up examinations, investigations, and fighting appeals in court- the Tories are blowing way more of our tax money than they would ever save just to victimise the poor and the vulnerable.
Why should I be put off voting labour because they will ~DESTROY THE ECONOMY!!!! wasting money trying to improve the lives of the poor!~ when the current government has wasted millions trying to reduce our quality of life, chasing a fucking benefit scrounger caricature that they invented in the first place.
OH - this is a good time to mention the State Pension inequality too.
The state pension age for women was increased, without anyone being properly informed (INCLUDING EMPLOYEES OF THE DWP), and will continue increasing until both men and women retire at 68. The government has continually said this is to make the state pension "more affordable to taxpayers", even though there isn't going to be a saving. The amount of money being spent because of women at 60 having to sign on to Universal Credit, and all the unnecessary investigation costs you've mentioned, far outweigh the amount of money these women would actually be receiving if they were receiving their pensions. They're expecting anyone born in the mid 1950s to get jobs or, and I'm not joking, APPRENTICESHIPS to live and pay bills. Not to mention these women weren't able to put money into work pension schemes because they weren't allowed to when they were working, and a lot of them were out of work for decades because they were raising children and couldn't have a job while doing so. There's also the question of what the point of National Insurance contributions are if the money isn't being kept separate because of situations like this. Where did all that money go?
They've said this is for "equality" when the equality that should actually be in place is reducing the pension age of men to 63 and raising the women's to 63.
I wanted to PM this, but there doesn't appear to be an option (or I'm just dumb), but I have just watched another film from that director called Ae Fond Kiss and that was also great - perhaps not to the same level, but really effective at deconstructing British society. I believe I've just found my new favourite director and screenwriter.
They're expecting anyone born in the mid 1950s to get jobs or, and I'm not joking, APPRENTICESHIPS to live and pay bills.
Tory minister says women hit by pension age rise can claim jobse..
Can people please stop voting Tory? For the sake of everyone, please. Just stop.
Theresa May’s snub to grieving mum shows Tories are engineering ..
They don't even cater to the old people that vote for them any more.
The Majority of arguments I see in favour of them are either entirely based in ~But the papers told me Labour supports terrorists!~ or ~but Labour want open borders and muslim laws~
On occasion you will get some git who just admits they make enough money to avoid any of the issues caused by a Tory government and don't care about other people (at least they are honest I suppose) but that's pretty rare.
So I used to work for the DWP Working Age Directorate that dealt with this sort of stuff when I lived in the UK, and while I can't say a lot of the stuff that went on for legal reasons this is not even surprising, and this sort of stuff happens MUCH more often than you would tink.
At times I was personally dealing with about 3 cases a day where people who had been told by their doctor they had less than a year to live where being found fit for work and had all their benefits taken off of them. Also senior managers would make mistakes and not bother to fix them, meaning that thousands of people would find their benefits cut due to mistakes made by the DWP and they were given no information as to why until they phoned up to inquire.
One that sticks out was a terminally ill older guy who's payment was late due to an error made by a manager who then went on holiday and he needed to pay his rent that day when it should have been due a week ago. I then had to ask him all sort of very personal, patronizing and insulting questions as per department guidance and then when it came to it my manager decided not to give him his payment yet and say he should ask his children for rent money until someone at the department bothered to fix it. None of this was the guy's fault but he lost his house because this was not the first time this had happened to him and his landlord decided to evict him (I have a whole other rant about UK landlords but I won't put it here, this post is getting long enough.)
I don't work for the DWP now and I am so fucking glad I am out of the country, the Department was making me an evil fucking human being.
This is something I wanted to say, but it's only things I've heard in rumours and stories.
News stories like this don't happen because of a few bad managers or someone making a whoopsie-daisy, it's a sinister, concerted effort to give as few people as possible access to social benefits.
The tories are making actual policies to suppress the weak and vulnerable, to remove the safeguards preventing ordinary working people from falling into poverty and denying us rights and benefits that the rest of the western world, particularly europe, currently enjoy. And it makes me genuinely furious that the tories consistently poll well despite all this. People's lives are falling into ruin and instead of doing the logical thing of voting out the government inflicting it upon them, they instead choose to drive the knife in further and it really, really puzzles me.
A lot of the people I work with have the same stories as I do, but you will probably never hear them sharing them for fear of reprisals within the DWP. We're also constantly threatened with legal proceedings if we say anything against the DWP and if you join a Union you are looked down on heavily and can wave good-bye to any change of career progression the moment you join one.
It's a totally fucked system. Scotland is in the process of setting up it's own DWP-lite and due to the political landscape there it might be little bit les insane than UKDWP, but it is still several years away from even being a thing.
ye ken loach is gr8 spread the word to ur family and friends
A case in point that the Conservatives are fucking parasites who deserve to be burned out like the fancer they are. We would literally be better off if they were dead.
Our political options are pretty much two and a half men, split between Labour, Liberal Democrats and Conservatives. Labour is split between a centrist and left leaning base and unfortunately is struggling with the working class vote thanks to a substantial media campaign and general sentiment about muh immigrants. Liberal Democrats are the half man in this arrangement and despite being a reasonable centre left option have lost much of the support they had about ten years ago due to agreeing to a neutered role in a coalition with the Tories.
Either of the first two would be better off than the Conservatives / Tories - a name, I note, which dates back to the 17th century where it came from cavaliers who supported the crown in the civil war and gives you an idea of how blatantly elitist they are. Whilst not at the US level of shithead conservatism they are dangerous, manipulative cunts who have done a massive degree of damage in the last eight years to an extent that is worse than what Labour managed in their time after the reign of Thatcher/Major.
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