New Sanction Trap For UC Claimants With £250 Incentive For DWP Staff

The more that Tory governments do with regards to welfare benefits make it clear that welfare is not part of the process and punishment is becoming more and more its objective.

Rather than pay DWP staff incentives to do more, why not increase benefits for claimants, especially those who do get into work for a period of time, while they adjust to manage with work and assess any difficulties they could well experience.

Benefits should be there to help and not punish, the government needs to be educated, perhaps for the first time.

Same Difference

With many thanks to Benefits And Work.

Universal credit (UC) claimants are to be faced with a new sanction trap disguised as help to move into work. The scheme has been condemned by the DWP staff union who say the government is “hellbent on making it more difficult for people to claim benefits”, even though jobcentre workers stand to gain from a £250 ‘incentive’ if their office tops a league table.

UC sanctions are already at a record high. Over 98% of all sanctions are for failure to attend an interview, with over half a million claimants being sanctioned for this reason last year.

Yet, under the new Additional Jobcentre Support scheme claimants are being forced to attend  a jobcentre 10 times over a two week period.  In these obligatory sessions they will have “work search conversations” and “support sessions”. Missing a single session is likely to lead…

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Coronavirus: Over 100 disability charities sign open letter to DWP demanding urgent benefit changes – Welfare Weekly

More than 100 disability organisations sign open letter demanding better protections for disabled people affected by coronavirus pandemic.

Source: Coronavirus: Over 100 disability charities sign open letter to DWP demanding urgent benefit changes – Welfare Weekly

A fresh DWP confession about Universal Credit is horrific | The Canary

This new revelation shows a decade of DWP failure

Source: A fresh DWP confession about Universal Credit is horrific | The Canary

Former carer who waited months for disability benefit was turned down because he was in hospital for too long

Why do these problems keep occuring with Disability Benefit applications, irrespective which benefit is being applied for?

Could it be that the systems lack ‘common sense’, it would appear so.

The system is adhered to rigidly, when, if common sense was applied the rigidity could be overcome.

However, the benefits system is under the direction of the DWP, a Government department and that is the problem for there is no common sense in Government, in fact, in politics completely.

Million universal credit households ‘do not get full entitlement’

UC claimants suffering deductions to pay back loans, some including the advance payments due to the length of UC starting from the closure of the old benefits.

Please advise me, that in this age of new technology, can not an existing benefit payment be continued to be paid until UC is ready to commence.

If this were so then there would be no lack of payment as the transfer from a persons old benefits to UC would be seamless.

However, this would need common sense and a desire to be a responsible organisation, unfortunately, something, it appears, sadly lacking within the DWP.

Ministers are pushing ahead with controversial plans to merge two disability benefit assessments into one

Is this another Government Benefit disaster waiting to happen, for while the theory sounds sound the practical aspects never appear to go right for the benefit claimants.

Is this just accidental or is it Government policy?

Advertising watchdog launches investigation into Universal Credit adverts

The DWP are continually stating that these new benefits are better than the old ones, but where is the proof.

There are many stories where the new benefits appear not to be good, be they ESA (Employment & Support Allowance), PIP (Personal Independence Payment) and now UC (Universal Credit), ranging from the assessment processes and then the beginning of payments.

We are told that the majority of claimants are OK with the new benefits, but how is this known for are they going to come forward and state this, but maybe when things go wrong the claimants may object.

However, do all the claimants advise when they are not happy, but just put up with it.
In my experience in dealing with Local Authorities many who are not happy do not complain for numerous reasons, they cannot be bothered, do not know how to, think it will be a waste of time, perhaps do not have the time, some will feel they will be treated worse if they complain and many other reasons.

So just looking at the percentage who come forward to state they are not happy is not an accurate record. But unfortunately, it is the only record or the only record that is recognised.

Now do we have to assume Governments and Government departments are always telling the truth, when it has been proved that there are instances when they are not.

Quite a few of the population are fearful of Authorities and will therefore never complain.
What we need to do is work from the premise that things will go wrong and not that they will not.
People are treated like ‘cattle’, where what is done for one will be done for everyone, but people are different and maybe different from one day to another and in many instances different through the day and night.

Systems need to be based on ‘person-centred’ principles and not on ‘institutional’ principles, but it is easier for systems to be based on the latter, rather than the former and maybe more cost effective.

But to make systems equal for all the person-centred principle needs to be costed into the process, that is, if these authorities even understand, or are willing to understand the principle of person-centred.

Systems should not be there for the sole basis of the respective organisations but for all, now that will be true ‘equality’ and not just some play on words.
People have ‘rights, ‘human rights’ and should be respected.

Thousands Of Terminally ill Are Denied Benefits

Yet another large area of problems with the welfare benefits system and the processes concerned, based on Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Benefits.

As stated in the article the 6 months rule incorporated in the Welfare Reform Act 1990 was not based on any medical input and even if it had been clinical knowledge has advance by ‘leaps and bounds’.

Clinicians should be solely responsible, in these situation not some DWP offical with no clinical knowledge and therefore has no creditability to make any form of clinical decisions.

I have said before and will do again the the DWP processes should be ‘person-centred’ and not ‘system-centred’.

This, of course, assumes that the DWP and its officals are willing to ensure fair representation for all benefit claiments, which, currently is hard to believe., for it appear that they assume no one is eligible and even when there is much documentation to prove they are this is discounted. One would assume that DWP officials prime consideration is to refuse all benefit applications, based on the results of their practice to follow inhuman conditions.

Are DWP officals really devoid of any feelings and just react as automatons, surely not!!

DWP probe into tragic six-stone Stephen Smith insists they followed policy’

Personalisation and Person-centred care, NHS England currently have a project to promote the aforementioned in Hospitals and admit there is a long way to go.

If this is being progressed in Hospital care, why not promote it within the benefits system.

Is it that no one notices how benefit claimants are, because they are not dealt with on a human basis, but are just a number within the system and treated as inanimate objects.

Bring personalisation and person-centred processing into the benefit system and benefit claimants may be treated better.

But if there is a long way to go in health, then in the benefits system the way is so long it could go to infinity.

Anger as DWP scraps automatic Universal Credit claim backdating system – Chronicle Live

A new change to the Universal Credit system has caused outrage.

Ministers are demanding an urgent review after automatic start-date protections have been scrapped by the DWP.

Thousands of vulnerable people are said to be suffering financially because the system no longer automatically backdates claims from when someone started their application, BirminghamLive reports.

Under previous rules, benefits would be calculated from the date an application began but with UC the start date is apparently only protected if a claimant turns up in person to a jobcentre when they apply.

Bob Doris, convener of the Scottish Parliament’s Social Security Committee, has now written to Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd about “the retrograde step for claimants” and demanded an urgent review of the change, which is believed to affect claimants across the UK.

sdbast

via Anger as DWP scraps automatic Universal Credit claim backdating system – Chronicle Live

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