Assessment consultation is likely to land Disabled people right back on benefits
Good news this week, as it was gleefully reported that 2.5 million Disabled people who “languish on handouts” will be “told to look for employment”. (For the benefit of some neurospicy people – this is scathing sarcasm.)
The Government, in its infinite money-saving wisdom, has gone all RuPaul (“you better work!”) and is targeting Disabled people who CANNOT work, with a stick which essentially says: work or we will sanction you and cut your benefits. It’s running a consultation on Work Capability Assessments, essentially so it can put in place new policies which will find more people capable of work.
According to reports, “Mr [Work and Pensions Minister, Mel] Stride assured MPs that the changes would not affect the terminally ill or those with severe learning difficulties or disabilities.” Which leaves “those deemed unable to walk or wheel themselves 50 metres without experiencing 'significant discomfort' in the firing line. I’m one of those people with mobility issues. Although I’m employed by a disability charity, because jobs for us Disableds out in the wider world are very hard to come by. Sometimes our conditions fluctuate, and nobody loves a fluxy. Those of us with anxiety or mobility problems can work from home, apparently. I wonder if there is a homeworking job where we can box up unicorn and rocking horse sh**.
And I’m confused, because at the same time as this flog them into working at home mentality, there have been months of the Government cracking the whip over the nation’s workforce to get back out there (although with the new strain of Covid coming into play, it’s all feeling a bit hokey cokey on the in out, in out workplace situation for those of us with underlying health conditions).
I don’t know if the Minister has ever had anxiety. Capital A anxiety. Not just ‘a bit of worry’. It’s absolutely incapacitating. The kind that has you wailing and retching over the loo. Or catatonic in bed, where even going to the kitchen for water is like going over the top of the trenches (indeed, for those with armed services-related PTSD flashbacks, it often is that).
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Tory grandee Sir John Redwood is unhelpfully banging on about “speeding it all up” because introducing it in 2025 is far too far away.
There are less than half a dozen MPs who identify as Disabled in Parliament. There are more, but they don’t speak up about it. And is it any wonder why not, when you consider attitudes like this, that paint us like one of Jack’s French girls, lounging and languishing on our beds, mock coughing into our kerchiefs, or just needing a bit of a push in our wheelchairs down to B&M for a go on the
tills. Is it any wonder there aren’t many people coming forward with the lived experience to tell Sir John to pipe down?
The truth of the matter is, most Disabled people do want to work. But the contempt the Government feels for us – the palpable FU you we feel screamed towards us when its policy says ‘you WILL do this or we’ll do that punitive thing to you’ – is COMPLETELY unnecessary and literally detrimental to us being able to get into work.
There are over five million Disabled people in the UK workforce. The Government has recently been applauding itself on getting a million more Disabled people into work – proof that those of us who can work, do work. When we don’t work, it’s because we are unable to work due to our impairments or health conditions, or because far, far too often employers put barriers in our way.
If the Government wants us to work, support into work is the way to do it. Carrots – fields of them – rather than sticks. Training for companies in how to support us; awareness around the Access to Work scheme, as well as actual access to the Access to Work scheme, which currently has a 14 week waiting list for people to get what they need to work; implementing the Disability Employment Charter, a list of measures that would support Disabled people to secure jobs and progression in work; training on ableism, and the social model of disability; training on adaptations; more empowering of firms to give us flexibility; better environments; supportive, knowledgeable colleagues, and choice – because for some of us, bed or home working is the future, and for others of us, we want to be less like Dolly Parton’s nine to five, instead being flexibly out and about, and more free to do what we want to do, like Primal Scream.
Or a combination of the above, with the flexibility to fall over ill, and get up when we’re well again and carry on, unconfined by the hangovers of Victorian workplaces which insist we sit at a desk all day or stand at a work station, fifteen minutes for tea in the morning, a strict thirty minutes for lunch at noon on the dot, requisite number of keystrokes typed or deliveries made, eight to twelve hours a day and every other Saturday, or else. Like Dolly, we’ve got dreams they’ll never take away. We want to succeed. We want to thrive.
But at the minute we’re sleeping too badly to have any dreams at all. The stress of this kind of consultation, seeking to punish us, devalue us, and in likelihood kill some of us, is deeply destructive. You think the killing thing’s a bit overkill? At the moment, there is a part of the assessment which factors in whether work will have a substantial risk to health. That’s going to be kyboshed in the new plans. In essence, if work might make you fall over, or die, um… well… at least the benefits bill got slashed.
The DWP hasn’t done very well on its record with sanctioning people who will die without the right support and benefits. It has sat on reports for years about its failings – catastrophic failings – and neither the Government didn’t bother to rock up to the UN on Bank Holiday Monday last month to explain how it is levelling up for Disabled people after the UN found in 2016 that it’s failing us on all the major basic levels.
So how is this going to pan out, when it’s tickbox clearing people who really aren’t well enough to work, to work? Sending them to jobs which are going to land them right back on benefits, worse off, both financially, and healthwise, than they were before?
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A wee point about portaloos
A wee (pun intended) note for festival organisers for next season: accessible portaloos need to be accessible. That means leaving a turning circle for a wheelchair in the loo. Otherwise we have to throw ourselves off our chairs onto (or into) your loos, and can’t get out again. Nobody needs to listen to their jam with scatological aromatherapy because this isn’t a basic consideration when it comes to toileting. Thanks for reading!
Sign of the times
Speaking of festivals, the BBC radio show Front Row ran a lovely feature recently on the rise of signing for Deaf groovers at gigs and festivals. It’s not just a question of spelling out words. It’s about interpreting the intensity of delivery, the inferences, the beats, flow and vibe. It’s a form of high density poetry, and I am so here for it. Have you ever considered how to sign rap, with its speed, and linguistic idiosyncrasies? No? Then give it a listen. Fascinating.
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