Disabled people are currently being migrated from Incapacity Benefit to Employment and Support Allowance (ESA). This is causing immense anxiety and distress and this should not be the case. ESA needs reform to take this fear away and we will all know when ESA becomes fit for purpose because disabled people will be happy to be allocated to the Work Related Activity Group (WRAG) and the appeals will melt away.
 
The source of most of the anxiety is currently located in the fear of being allocated to the (WRAG). Unfortunately the supportive environment which was envisaged for the WRAG that would have provided a safe place for disabled people to consider how they might return to work has not materialised. Instead the WRAG is a coercive environment where disabled people live under the threat of sanctions while they are in the WRAG and means testing and perhaps losing ESA after a year. This is a daunting prospect for them given that currently almost no disabled people are moving from the work program in to work.
 
If the WRAG could be returned to a safe, supportive group where disabled people were not in fear of sanctions and means testing – then they could relax and regain control of their own lives and find better solutions to getting work or meaningful activity.
 
Making the WRAG safe would also have the added effect of taking the fear out of the WRAG and encouraging people in the Support Group to think about taking up activity. At the moment fear of being moved to the WRAG inhibits this for many people.
 
This back to work program should not be running on fear. It is completely counter productive.

Pat’s Petition went to Westminster to see Liam Byrne.

Liam agreed that the Employment and Support Allowance (ESA)  isn’t working. He agreed that the Work Related Activity Group (WRAG) of ESA is not the helpful, safe, supportive place it was meant to be.

Liam told us that he is about to run a six month ‘conversation’ with disabled people about making ESA fit for purpose. He said that at the end of the six months he hopes to put together a set of proposals about how to change ESA so that it works for everyone.

So this is the time to look carefully at ESA and tell Liam  how we want it changed.

The first knee jerk response will be to continue to complain about the assessment process because that is where people first hit ESA.

But this assessment is only the gateway to the real problem of the WRAG. If you are allocated to the WRAG and spend a year there then when you look back at the assessment it may look like a walk/ride in the park.

The campaign that will actually do the most to improve people’s lives is a campaign to make the WRAG a supportive place instead of a living hell.

If you are allocated to the WRAG you will have to take part in the work programme. Disabled people are terrified of having to do this and being required to do things that they feel they may not be able to do. Your advisor will be working for a private company and will be paid by results so you have a bounty on your head as far as he is concerned. If you refuse or fail to attend they will sanction you and stop your benefits. Only 1.5% of people going through the WRAG are currently ending up with jobs so it is a lot of misery for absolutely nothing.

So please join the campaign to remove the threats and sanctions and make the WRAG a constructive, supportive place to be.

The second reason that disabled people fear the WRAG is that after a year the government means test you. If your partner earns more than £7500 a year of if you have more than £16,000 in savings – then your ESA benefit stops.  40% of disabled people will fail this means test and then their ESA will be stopped. This is the real saving that the government are chasing. Why don’t they come clean and announce that the universal benefit that was IB has now been turned in to a means tested benefit instead of hiding this fact behind a year of misery in the WRAG.

Liam Byrne told Pat’s Petition that he wants to make ESA fit for purpose. So please join with us in telling Liam that the threats and sanctions and means testing should be taken off  the WRAG.

This would reassure people going through the ATOS assessment that the WRAG is a safe place to be and the fear of the WRAG would stop. The absurd level of appeals would stop. Disabled people could think about their work options and difficulties constructively in a supportive environment without the fear of the sword of Damocles hanging over their heads. It would also make people in the Support Group feel safe and they could relax and try some activity without fearing reallocation to the WRAG

Liam Byrne said last week – “Help for disabled people needed careful change yet Iain Duncan Smith has behaved like a bull in a china shop and now we see the price for the taxpayers and thousands of vulnerable people.”

Please join with us in telling Liam how to put this right.

ESA – What are you testing for – Mr Duncan-Smith?

The government haven’t defined what ‘fit for work’ means. They can’t because there is no simple definition.
So how do they expect to test for it with a tick box test.

What the government is really testing for is the potential in some conditions to possibly do some work some times.

This is not the same as fit to work and disabled people in the WRAG should not be coerced with sanctions and time limits as if they are fit to work.  

It was wonderful to see all the support from MPs this week at the WCA debate arranged by Michael Meacher MP – but very sad to think that it has taken all this misery to awaken this interest when it was so predictable and could have been avoided.
 
But CarerWatch think that the major flaw in ESA was overlooked – again. People keep talking about ‘improving the tests’ and ‘getting the tests right’. They talk as if being ‘fit for work’ is a known concept which can be tested for. But it isn’t a defined concept in the modern world and so it can’t be tested for. And that makes WCA a nonsense.
 
You can’t devise a test for something that you don’t have a clear definition for. And being ‘fit for work’ is not a clearly defined concept. In fact it isn’t a concept at all in 2012.
 
In the old days we had a very clear idea that fit people could work and ill and disabled people couldn’t. But the world has changed and the social model of disability has come in and we now have par Olympians and Stephen Hawkins and this is all wonderful. But it destroys the concept of ‘fit for work’. 
 
How do you define fit for work? You can do it in many ways.
 
Does being fit for work mean that working will help a person – improve their health and not cause them harm? Or does being fit for work mean that the disabled person can work as actively and competitively as a fit person. Or do they mean both? What are they testing for?
 
If we lived in a society that provided the right help, support, skills, job, location, enlightened employer prepared to bear extra costs – some disabled people could work. There are a multitude of factors that are barriers to work for disabled people and they all need to be overcome. The work place will need adaptation, support may be necessary both to get to work and at the workplace. This all takes effort and money. Are they defining people as fit for work with or without all these adaptations being made?
 
For some disabled people it would not be a wise choice to work. Keeping as well as you can is the priority for most disabled people and stress does not help with this. Medical advice is very often to avoid stress and work brings its own stresses. Whether the extra stress will prove beneficial or deleterious to the health of the disabled person is an enormously complex equation – hard enough to balance and evaluate for the people concerned and completely beyond a tick box test. Are they defining people as fit for work if their health will benefit from work and not if it will probably deteriorate?
 
But it isn’t just the effect on the disabled person that needs to be tested. The labour market also needs to be tested. We have spent decades insisting on improving the competitive nature of the labour market. Making it lean and mean. Why should the employer choose an employee who will come with such obvious complications. The answer is he won’t. We live in this economic environment and in this environment almost no disabled people will be able to get work in straight competition with fit people.

 The brutal truth is that most disabled people are not going to be able to get a job especially in the current economic climate. This is being demonstrated by the work program that is placing 1.5% of disabled people in to work. So very few of them are fit for work.
 
Disabled people worked at Remploy – but they weren’t competitive and it cost money and the government decided that the benefits of disabled people being employed were not worth paying for. They want disabled people to go out in to the general labour market and compete with fit people without any sort of subsidy. So are they defining disabled people as fit for work if they will be able to get and keep a job in competition with fit people without any subsidy?
 
The government hasn’t told us what it means by fit to work. The government have decided to ignore the difficulties of defining fit for work and gone in to complete denial. They continue to ask ATOS to find most disabled people fit for work any way.
 
They have decided that it isn’t their problem that no one has even attempted to define what it means to be fit for work. They have pushed the problem of having to work but not being fit for work on to the disabled people to deal with and that is what is causing the pain. The government have opted for the simple solution of pressurising disabled people in the WRAG until the pips squeak and then timing them out and this is the most brutal method of ignoring the problems of not being fit for work and driving them off benefits. The results of the work program demonstrate that these people are not fit for work in any real sense but what a cruel way to prove the obvious.
 
If ‘fit for work’ cannot be defined then devising any test for ‘fit to work’ is almost impossible. And it should not be the focus of ESA. ESA should concentrate on running a supportive back to work service which is under the control of disabled people. No one else has walked in their shoes and no one else can mandate what they can and can’t face/do/manage.
 
No sanctions.
No time limits.
No means test.
 
Why have we allowed IB to change in to a means tested benefit? Why have we decided stress and coercion are beneficial and therapeutic methods?
 
We need to stop testing and threatening disabled people and concentrate on supporting them back to work in a kind, non threatening way and allowing them to decide if they want to be par Olympians or go back to work or perhaps have a small mini job plus benefits or perhaps do community activity or perhaps concentrate on keeping well and living as a full a life as they can without working.
 
Just use the WCA to determine that someone has a genuine disability of a certain severity. And then offer them a supportive back to work program without threats.
 
And leave disabled people to make their own decisions and keep control of their own lives.

ESA WRAG is a ticket to nowhere.

CarerWatch hope that Employment Support Allowance (ESA) will be put fully under the microscope for the first time in Pat’s Debate.

In particular that speakers will look at the Work Related Activity Group (WRAG) and tell the real truth about it.
 
The government should admit that the WRAG is not about finding work. The WRAG is simply about moving sick and disabled people from an unconditional benefit to a means tested benefit to save money.

Four fifths of sick and disabled people will be allocated to the WRAG on migration from IB. It’s becoming clear that the WRAG  is an out of work benefit like JSA. It wasn’t protected from the inflation cap in the Autumn Statement. You are expected to find work. 
 
It treats people as effectively fit and time limits them to a year before means testing. The feature that terrifies most disabled people is the coercion in the work program with forced work placements and sanctions for non compliance. It is unfair to force these decisions on disabled people if you haven’t walked in their shoes.
 
The cover story is that these people are on their way to work when in fact only 1.5% of sick and disabled people are finding work through the work program in the WRAG.
 
The WRAG is a confidence trick for moving to means testing disability support. Can speakers in this debate be the first to be honest about this.
 
The heart ache over the WCA tests is really located in what the future holds when you are allocated to the WRAG.

ESA WRAG is a ticket to nowhere.

 Already people are saying that after testing, failing, appealing, succeeding, retesting, failing, sanctions, work program when the means test is looming and they know they will not get any more support – they give up and drop out. Don’t let the people who give up and walk away count as people who disappeared and probably got jobs. They didn’t. They just gave up.

 What others say

BenefitScrounger

Benefits and Work

CAB

Demos

Ekklesia

DWP explain ESA

Commenting on Professor  Harrington’s latest report the Minister for Employment, Mark Hoban, said:

“The WCA is the right process for determining who is able to work and who needs support. It is in everyone’s interest to make sure the system is as fair and as accurate as possible. ”

Once again the Minister is completely missing the point. The government has decided that four fifths of people who used to receive Incapacity Benefit are now fit for work. This has been decided not by tests but as a matter of policy. The tests are a fig leaf to legitimise this decision and present them with the news. The terms ‘fair’ and ‘accurate’ do not apply.

People who are able to work go on to JSA. People who are sick or have a disability are meant to go on to the Employment and Support Allowance but they don’t except for a minority who go in to the small residual ESA Support Group. Where do the others go? In to the ESA Work Related Activity Group (WRAG).

This is a trick. The WRAG is described as an ESA group but is in all but name a JSA group. There they will be harried by forced activity and sanctions and then timed out just like a JSA group. Effectively they are being required to work.

It would be more honest if the government stopped hiding behind a testing system and just announced that in future four fifths of sick and disabled people are now going to be treated as fit people.

-  http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/nov/30/sick-disabled-work-benefits-programme?INTCMP=SRCH

The Spartacus Report – People’s Review of WCA - is published today. Spartacus have highlighted many individual cases and it’s appalling to see all these people suffering through the tests for the new Employment and Support Allowance (ESA).

But even if people get through this system and are awarded ESA – it is not the end of their problems because ESA is not a benefit which supports disabled people.

Most people who are awarded ESA are put in the Work Related Activity Group (WRAG) where they have 12 months of proscribed activities, including trial work placements, under threat of sanctions. This is in all but name Job Seekers Allowance (JSA). Although it is presented as a group for disabled people the message is that these people are fit enough to be on their way back to work.

After 12 months, they will have no further ESA benefits and if they live with family members their families will need to support them. Are we really giving up the idea of state support for disability and returning to the idea that families support disabled people?

ESA is flawed. There are two groups and they are not fit for purpose. Neither of the groups actually fits disabled people. Most disabled people fall squarely between the two groups. Professor Harrington is doomed like Sisyphus to forever attempt an impossible task. Nothing he can do to the descriptors can change the flaw in the design of the groups.

Here’s a thumbnail of a person with disability. They have hope. They would like to work. Realistically they know this probably isn’t going to be easy or perhaps even possible.

The government have set a trap for people like this and so far it is working like a dream. Sheffield Hallam statisticians say that under the new Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) 600,000 genuinely disabled people will fall in to a black hole and lose their benefits. Disabled people – amongst the poorest and most vulnerable in the country – will have their money taken to pay for the deficit created by others.

 The trap is laid with thumbnails. Disability comes in so many forms and degrees that people are forced to resort to quick thumbnail sketches in debates. So the trick is to start with one thumbnail and then deftly slip to another without any one noticing the switch. That is called a confidence trick.

 The main ESA group is the work related activity group (WRAG) and it is a trick. The thumbnail for the WRAG is a person not able to work but able to manage some back to work activity. But once you are in the WRAG just watch that thumbnail slip. You are now subjected to compulsory interviews and work activity under threat of sanctions and loss of benefit. And then the thumbnail slips again and a time limit comes in. The thumb nail is now a worker who is definitely on their way to work and the clock has started ticking until your benefit will stop. How did the thumbnail slip from a person who is unable to work to a person who will work. No medical miracle has occurred. You still have a permanent or deteriorating condition. It’s a trick.

While the trick is working this well it can be extended to DLA/PIP/UC – all future disability benefits.

Of course the favourite thumbnail is the fit, feckless scrounger pretending to have a bad back while refereeing football matches – boo hiss – the audience wakes up and remembers why they don’t care about disability. The Minister then slips this thumbnail to Incapacity Benefit claimants who he says have been claiming for years. Long term illnesses are like that – they go on for years – that’s why they are called long term. Let’s have a real thumbnail of a person with a long term degenerative condition.

 Time to show compassion. The next thumbnail is the poor person so ill – ‘they will never work again’. This was originally set under ESA at 10% but they have had to increase it because of the absurdity of the level of successful appeals. This is the Support Group where people are not expected to work. This sounds fine but for many people it is actually not a good place to be. Safe but no hope. No young person should be there. But given the alternative of the WRAG people will continue to try and get in to the Support Groups because safety will win out over hope.

ESA is flawed. The two groups are not fit for purpose. Neither of the groups actually fits disabled people. Professor Harrington is doomed like Sisyphus to forever attempt an impossible task. Nothing he can do to the descriptors can change the flaw in the design of the groups.

Here’s a real thumbnail of a person with disability. They have hope. They would like to work. Realistically they know this probably isn’t going to be easy or perhaps even possible.

Please stick to the real thumbnail and design a group for real disabled people.

So the second Harrington Report is published – and the government accept it in full. What can we say?

Below  is the executive summary.

It is all over in the first sentence

1. The Work Capability Assessment (WCA) was designed to assess an individual’s eligibility for Employment and Support Allowance (ESA). It aims to distinguish between those people who could work; those people who could work at some point with the right support; and those people who cannot work and, therefore, need State support.
 
Those three groups are JSA – ESA WRAG – ESA Support Group
 
The problem lies in the last two ESA groups. People with long term disability do not fall in to these two groups. No allocation can fix this.
 
Young people with learning disability are sadly being allocated to the Support Group which is safe but a life sentence of doing nothing.

 
On the other hand while allocation to the WRAG is supposed to mean those people who could work at some point with the right support - people tell us that, as soon as they get allocated to the WRAG, they feel threatened with sanctions and time limits – and it is assumed they WILL work.

 
CAN’T  WORK  or WILL WORK – these two options aren’t fair. People with long term disability don’t fall neatly in to these two groups. However much Harrington polishes up the test – the groups aren’t fit for purpose.
 

Executive Summary
1. The Work Capability Assessment (WCA) was designed to assess an individual’s eligibility for Employment and Support Allowance (ESA). It aims to distinguish between those people who could work; those people who could work at some point with the right support; and those people who cannot work and, therefore, need State support.
2. The first Independent Review, published in November 2010, found that the WCA was the right concept for achieving this aim but that it could be impersonal and mechanistic and that there was a lack of transparency in the process with poor communication between the various parties. This led to poor decision making and a high rate of appeals, many of which were successful.
3. A series of recommendations designed to improve the fairness and effectiveness of the WCA were proposed and were immediately accepted by the Government.
Implementation of year one recommendations
4. I am pleased to say that all the year one recommendations have been, or are being, implemented. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) moved swiftly to make the recommendations Departmental policy and DWP Operations  (From October 2011 the formal agency status of Jobcentre Plus ceased to exist. For clarity and consistency throughout this document the work of Jobcentre Plus before October 2011 and anything after then are both referred to as DWP Operations. )  and Atos Healthcare have enacted these policy changes.
5. The WCA has, in my view, noticeably changed for the better. However there is still further to go. Some of the improvements from my first Review have not reached all parts of DWP Operations.
6. To those who feel nothing has happened, I say: be patient. It is happening. The process is not yet perfect, but it is improving and will continue to do so over the course of the five Independent Reviews.
Key findings and themes from this Review
7. Whilst the year one Review, and associated recommendations, considered the WCA process and how that could be improved, the year two Review has focussed on a number of more specific issues which the first Review did not have time to consider in detail and which will support the recommendations from year one.
8. In this Review I propose a number of more detailed recommendations to improve further the process of the WCA and the criteria used to determine eligibility for ESA.
9. This Review sets out a series of recommendations which complement – and build on – the recommendations from the year one Review. They aim to improve the fairness and effectiveness of the assessment by:
 Better communications and sharing of information between all parts of the system This will mean that everyone involved knows their roles and responsibilities and that the purpose of the WCA and the reasons for decisions are better understood. This is particularly the case between Decision Makers and Personal Advisers within DWP Operations so that reasons for reaching a decision and what that decision actually means are clear. Although there is no clear evidence that ‘employability’ should feature in the WCA, Decision Makers and the Work Programme providers should liaise more closely so that the latter are better able to help people back into work. Whilst the First-tier Tribunal President considers it to be outside the remit of the Review, better communication between the First-tier Tribunal and Decision Makers so that reasons for upheld appeals are clear would also considerably add to the fairness and effectiveness of WCA process.
Increasing and improving the transparency of the assessment DWP and Atos need to engage with representative groups and their clinical advisers to ensure that Decision Maker and healthcare professional guidance used during the WCA process is up-to-date and clinically sound; and the regular publication of Atos data will ensure consistency and that standards are not allowed to slip.
Ensuring quality decisions are made Regular audit of Decision Maker’s performance is needed to ensure they are making consistent, robust and evidence-based decisions and that – as newly empowered Decision Makers – they are accountable for their decisions.
Monitoring the impact of recommendations from the Independent Reviews This will help ensure, and provide evidence, that the changes are having the desired impact. This could be achieved by collecting indices for change on the rate and amount of progress made; and carrying out research into what happens to people who are placed in each group over time.
Further decisions need to be made on the proposals for new mental, intellectual and cognitive descriptors once further research has compared the proposed descriptors with the current ones. I hope that it will be possible to consider similar research for the recently submitted proposals for refining the fluctuating conditions descriptors, or for them to join this process.
 
Costs and benefits
10. I recognise that, if adopted, these recommendations will have a cost implication attached to them.
11. However, as with the year one recommendations, seen in the wider context the proposed changes are likely to be cost saving or cost neutral in the medium- to long-term by ensuring that decisions are right first time and by ensuring that all parties understand why a particular decision has been reached and its implications.

hot news today

Welfare reforms could force 600,000 off incapacity benefit

Government measures ‘will impoverish vast numbers and cause untold distress’, according to university study

This is the CarerWatch evidence to the second Professor Harrington review.

The point we are trying to make is that while CarerWatch welcome the challenges to the detail of WCA being made by the disability charities and others – we think these challenges miss the point.

The Work Related Activity group of ESA is coercive. The work program is run on sanctions and time limits. This should be challenged.

Otherwise while the WRAG remains coercive – you are saying – it’s OK to bully some disabled people as long as you get the tests right and bully the right ones.

CarerWatch say NO.

Why won’t the government - why won’t the disability charities – discuss the time limits and the sanctions in the WRAG. Because they would have to look us in the eye and say – we think sticks and bullying are good for people with long term severe illness or disability. This is what ESA says but so far they can’t bring themselves to actually say it to us. So it is a wall of silence about the sanctions and time limits.

Join the CarerWatch discussion group here

Dear Professor Harrington

CarerWatch is a group of unpaid family carers. We also have very many
members with severe long term illness or disability.

We are an e-mail based group which allows people who are often isolated in
their homes to communicate freely. All our policy is decided by the
members. We e-mail an alert when ever we are coming to a position or view
and all members are invited to come and join the discussion. We decide
policy by consensus during the discussion.

Our members are very concerned about ESA. We have never experienced this
degree of anxiety and concern before. So we are very grateful for the
opportunity to submit this evidence.

We realise that your review is limited to WCA and in our opinion the
problems with ESA are deeper than that. We don’t think the ESA groups meet
the needs of people with severe long term conditions. Because the regime
in the WRAG contains sanctions and time limits copied from the JSA regime
for fit people we think it is too coercive for people with severe
disability. This means far more people need to be allocated to the Support
Group.

We don’t think the groups are defined clearly. Are you fit for the WRAG
because you can manage some activity or is it because you are mentally fit
to stand this level of pressure.

Rethink say in a current campaign -

Rethink Mental Illness is concerned that current benefit assessments fail
to understand the reality of what it is really like to live with a mental
illness. Further, 80% of people with a mental illness surveyed said the
test has made their mental health worse.
After being assessed for Employment and Support Allowance, Ryan* told us
“As a direct result of the way I have been treated… I considered taking
my own life on and off for a period of months. My GP even wrote a letter
to them to spell out the severity of my illness and how the situation was
putting me in danger.”
We have an opportunity to change the welfare system so that people like
Ryan are treated fairly.
Rethink Campaigns Team

We agree with Rethink. The WRAG frightens people and is not a safe place
for them to try and find work.

Our reservations are spelled out in more detail in a recent letter which
we sent to six charities which copied below.

We think that sanctions and time limits should be removed from the WRAG so
that it is made a safe place to help people find work. Unless this happens
the WCA descriptors must take account of the vulnerability of sick and
disabled people to undue pressure and place most of them in the Support
Group.