I suppose we should welcome this secret panel, but in reality the panel should have been there since the Benefit scandals started to occur and it should not be secret, for this is truly in the ‘Public Interest’.
Lets do hope the panel will reach conclusions, conclusions that we already know and exact change immediately.
Whenever the reports are formed they need to be made public without delay.
A cancer patient says she has been forced to rely on food banks after being refused Universal Credit.
Source: Cancer patient forced to rely on food banks says DWP needs to ‘wake up’ to the ‘cruelty’ of Universal Credit : Welfare Weekly
Denise Bates thought she’d pulled through her battle with ovarian cancerfour years ago.
But at Christmas time last year the 50-year-old became ill and was given the devastating news the disease was back.
The mother-of-five and grandmother-of-seven fell into a depression and took an attempted overdose on Boxing Day in anticipation of her scan results. Weeks later doctors told her there was nothing they could do.
Since then, Denise and her family have been trying to hold it together and make the best of the time she has left. She has told her consultant she doesn’t want to know how long that will likely be.
But 10 weeks ago she was dealt another blow. After a face-to-face assessment the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) ruled that her disability benefit be stripped – leaving her struggling to pay her bills and next to nothing for food.
Source: Grandmother, 50, with terminal cancer left with £6 a week after benefits cut : i News
Yes, complaints are rising regarding Atos and Capita, but they are just an arm of the DWP, albeit a private arm, so are they not just doing the bidding of the DWP.
Why do I say that?
Well if they are not doing the bidding and complaints are coninuing to rise, why are they still doing the assessment as this implies they are not only not capable to do assessments, but are not able to follow the explicate direction of the DWP.
But are they able to follow the explicate direction of the DWP and are in fact doing so. Should this be so then, the complaints need not be addressed to Atos and Capita, but to DWP themselves.
We will never know if the DWP is explicately responsible, which technically they are, or whether Atos and Capita are not abiding by DWP directives, in which case the contracts to undertake assessments should be withdrawn.
However, again will we ever know, are there any penalty clauses in the contracts from the DWP to Atos and Capita to provide penalties for early cancelations of the contracts.
Could be as many of the contracts re privitisation are not in the interests of the population of the UK or the UK fullstop, but solely in the interests of the private companies, which is what I believe.
You only have to look at the PFI contracts to see these were not in the public interest, for yeas it was, so called, cheap money at the outset, but the real profits for the PFI companies is in the long-term.
In reality the DWP should be doing the whole process with all Welfare Benefits, not saying it would be any better and perhaps worse, if that can be believed, but at least it would be easy to see where the blame lies.
Really these whole processes should be held liable in the criminl system and effective criminal actions be taken against all concerned.
The Government is not litening to the UN, but would have to listen and then act accordingly to the law of the land.
I have queried with a DWP manager that, could not home visits be part of the agenda and have been informed that home visits can be requested and that they do take place.
However, what I failed to ask was, what is the criteria, which I should have done.
Yesterday on Twitter, I posted one of my previous posts – Jobcentre tells GP to stop issuing sick notes to patient assessed as ‘fit for work’ and he died –in which I discuss a letter addressed to a GP regarding a seriously ill patient. It said:
“We have decided your patient is capable of work from and including January 10, 2016.
“This means you do not have to give your patient more medical certificates for employment and support allowance purposes unless they appeal against this decision.”
The patient, James Harrison, had been declared “fit for work” and the letter stated that he should not get further medical certificates.
However, 10 months after the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) contacted his doctor without telling him, he died, aged 55. James clearly wasn’t fit for work.
Source: DWP tells GPs not to support benefit claimants with sick notes : Welfare Weekly
DWP at its lying best.
Yet another DWP atrocity, but what is happening to all these assessors who appear to be unable to conduct assessments correctly.
How can a person who is unable to do basic simple maths be assessed by the assessor, who said she could work out a complex budget.
Are theses assessor still assessing, been or being retrained or have they been dismissed.
A DWP spokesperson said: “Universal Credit staff give tailored support to people with learning disabilities and all our assessors have significant clinical experience.” How with all the evidence can a DWP spokesperson say this?
The DWP, certainly have some explaining to do.
All assessments should be suspended, until every DWP assessor is questioned about any assessments they have incorrectly completed.
If this is not done we can only assume that these assessors are incorrectly assessing with the complete full support of the DWP.
A truly worrying situation and one that could be happening within the UK. The DWP situation with Benefit claims and while the appeal process is reversing many of the wrongful dismissed cases, will this always be so. Not if we implement the American system as we appear to be doing.
It is very worrying and this should be noticed by the DWP, but will it be, I fear not.
Staff working for a discredited benefit assessments contractor threatened to call the police after a claimant asked about the mental health qualifications of the nurse who was assessing his eligibility for personal independence payment (PIP).
Atos has now launched an investigation into what happened at the assessment centre in Leeds, which saw the nurse abandon Kris Weston’s assessment after just a couple of minutes.
She did not realise that Weston, a composer and trained sound engineer, had been recording the assessment.
Weston began the assessment last month by telling the nurse that he had stayed up all night because of the extreme anxiety he experiences when he has to deal with institutions.
He had spent three days putting together a 10-page description of his complex mental health problems – and what he says is the “continual failure to even listen to his problems by multiple institutions” – in the hope that the assessor would help him secure the financial and health support he needed.
He explained that he had been unfairly described in the past as “violent” by the NHS after a telephone argument, although she told him that Atos had no record of this.
She appears to have wrongly blamed the decision to refuse him a home assessment on the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), when such decisions are taken by the assessment companies, Atos and Capita.
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