DWP failures and the real life costs

richp007

Not sure what you mean? They resonate with everyone. Anyone with a heart that is.

Ken Loach makes films about people and real life.

Trollslayer

What I mean that it is difficult for someone who hasn't been through the experience to really understand what it is like.

richp007

No, but that's why he's such a good filmmaker as he portrays it brilliantly to the rest of us. I, Daniel Blake exposed the injustices of the welfare system. It was a fantastic piece of work.

Toko Black

The rather darkly humorous nature of the process has to make you either laugh or cry:
Step
1. take a person with amongst other issues, long term clinical depression, anxiety and communication problems.
2. Make them fill out long forms detailing their illness and how it effects their lives.
3. Make them run around desperately trying to gather up all the medical records, reports etc that support their case.
4. Make them wait up to 3 months from receiving the forms to actually getting an assessment.
5. Make them wait up to 3 months after the assessment to find out if they have been awarded help.
5.1 Randomly select one of the following:
i. Award them what they should be entitled to.
ii. Award them below what they are entitled to, but leave them in the position of either accepting the award or risking loosing it all.
iii. Deny the award and let them worry about having to apply for a first reconsideration, then award it and month or so later
a. award them what they are entitled to.
b. Award them below what they are entitled to, but leave them in the position of either accepting the award or risking loosing it all.​iv. Deny the award and let them worry about having to apply for a first reconsideration, then Deny the award and let them worry about applying for a mandatory second reconsideration.
a. award them what they are entitled to.
b. Award them below what they are entitled to, but leave them in the position of either accepting the award or risking loosing it all.​v. push it all the way to tribunal.
​6. Let them have up to* 6 months in which the second half starts with the stewing over worrying about their next reassessment coming around.
7. Go to step 2, year after year after year.

* can be as little as a few months after finally receiving a years award to coming round to next years reassessment.

I've had a mix of all the 5.1 options twice a year, 1 each for ESA and for PIP, over the last 6 or 7 years.
1 x v
3 or 4 ii's
3 or 4 iii's
2 or 3 iv's
the rest i's with the i's,ii's,iii's and iv's being in a somewhat random and inexplicable order.
i.e one year it all goes smooth for ESA and then PIP has problems, the next year both go fine, and then it's ESA with problems and PIP going through okay.

^ and ultimate sick joke, the reassessment is to see if I have 'got better'.

Trollslayer

Oddly enough there has been a UN report recently about extreme poverty in the UK.
It wasn't complimentary.

richp007

Christ, I'll have to read that a few more times to get my head around it all.

But the sheer fact that I have to speaks volumes anyway. A disgrace of a system beyond disgrace.

I'll be keeping my fingers crossed for ya.

chopples

@Toko Black find myself nodding to every point you have made there mate

This is on every DWP renewal letter we receive, almost like they are trying to scare us.

I am not affected directly (its my kids) but i dread to think of the stress this sort of thing can cause for those filling out the paperwork for themselves. The irony is that those who have the strength to get to appeal usually win but in the meantime the whole process often compounded the health issues  the claimant is suffering, if that makes sense?

cheers

Greg Hook

If you tried to devise a system to cause the maximum anguish to applicants along with pointless delays and a harsh take it or leave it option even if you disagree with the award, then you couldn't come up with one worse than what has been created by the useless Government.

Making people with mental issues fill out pointlessly long forms is surely torture.

richp007

The cruelty of this current shower knows no bounds. Whether they try and claim they inherited a broken system, they've been in for 9 years now and it's only worsened. They've done nothing to improve things.

tapzilla2k

Even if you get help from a charity like Mind the entire process is torture from start to finish. After I'd won my appeal I had to chase the DWP to know when I'd get the back dated payments and when the normal payments would begin. That was after they said they were not going to appeal (they can only do so if there has been an error in law).