Fighting the benefits system

If you haven’t already to signed the ATOS petition please do so and spread the word. It needs 100,000 signatures by August and there is a long way to go.

ATOS currently do the medical assessments for Employment and Support allowance, ESA, (previously incapacity benefit) and Disability living allowance, DLA. I cannot begin to describe the amount of frustration my family and I had when trying to get me some monetary support. Currently 40% of the people who turned down get it on appeal, which implies there is something seriously wrong with the system. Why aren’t the 40% getting it first time round? It is a waste of public money that these cases have to go through the appeals process. Not to mention the stress caused to people who are extremely unwell. The figures quoted by the press as for the number of people fraudulently getting support are complete rubbish, the department of work and pension’s, DWPs, figures are considerably lower. The figures for fraud across all benefits including incapacity benefit, but not DLA were estimated at 0.8% of total expenditure. The figures quoted in the press include the errors in expenditure, much of which is the fault of the DWP. There have also been some vastly inflated errors not backed up by statistics. More figures can be seen here and here. To be honest, after the experience I’ve been through it would be pretty hard to get ESA and/or DLA fraudulently, it’s hard enough to get it when you qualify for it. Not to mention you would need to fool your GP or have them complicit in your scheme to get the medical certificates. Anyway, my story about it is below. If you would rather not read it then the link for the petition it at the bottom.

I applied for DLA with the help of the citizens’ advice bureau (CAB) in the summer of 2010. We didn’t apply for ESA because I didn’t have enough National Insurance, NI, contributions to qualify as I have been a perpetual student. When I didn’t get it I assumed it was because I didn’t qualify. It was only when I started going to the local ME/CFS service that I realised I did qualify and they pretty much just automatically turn you down. I also discovered that I might be able to get NI credits even if I couldn’t get ESA, so I applied for ESA with this in mind. I did the application myself, which in hindsight was foolish, and I was called for a medical assessment. It was only a very long time later that I discovered you can actually say you aren’t well enough to attend a medical assessment and ask that they visit you at home with a chaperone present – which is what I should have asked for. Anyway I went to the medical assessment, tired and anxious as I had to get up early and my husband took me as I was unable to drive. Looking back now I am horrified they didn’t grant me the NI credits from this assessment as I wobbled around very slowly, and I must have looked terrible. But I had washed my hair the previous day and I was clean and wearing clean clothes and apparently that counted against me. I wonder how things would have turned out if I turned up unwashed and smelly. The assessment was done by a nurse, who seemed lovely, but I don’t believe she knew anything about CFS/ME. And hindsight was to prove that thought to be correct. I was asked to do various bending and standing exercises, which I did, because I was asked to. In hindsight I should have refused as they exhausted me. I was also given a mental exercise, counting down in 7’s from 100.  I was horrified to discover I couldn’t do it. For me, a pharmacy graduate to not be able to count down in 7s was frightening. I know a lot of people would find this exercise difficult, but compared to the pharmacy calculations I had been performing only a year before.... it should have been a piece of cake. It was at this point I realised how much my mind had deteriorated and I burst into tears. My husband took me home and it took me several days to recover from the ordeal.

The result of this assessment was that I didn’t qualify for ESA. In fact if I remember correctly, they said the assessment concluded there was nothing wrong with me. I was very upset and my family I suspect were very angry. We should have asked for the report of the assessment at this point, but we didn’t know that it was possible.

My mother got on the case, and it was through her support and persistence that the rest of the process was accomplished. She wrote and contested the decision and as a result I got my NI credits. Not that they wrote and told us, oh no, they wrote a letter saying I wouldn’t be required to attend ‘back to work’ interviews, and when my mother phoned them it turned out that as I was considered too unwell to be working I would get NI credits and not be required to do anything else other than provide medical certificates.

We then started the process to apply for DLA. This time my mother did the form for me and had help from the CAB and consulted a lot of books. I would have had no chance without her help, the form is very long and it requires a lot of thought, I could not have done it on my own. For anyone out there who needs to do it, get help from the CAB, they will help you for free. I qualified for the lowest level of DLA under their criteria. The application was turned down, we contested it, and it was turned down again.

At this point we applied for all the documents relating to my case. These documents proved most interesting. Not only were all my documents included, but the documents for another case for another person. Confidential information about another individual was mixed in with my papers. Something no one other than this person and the people involved in his case should have seen. An unbelievably shocking error, we contacted the person who was looking after the case on behalf of the individual in question so that they could make a complaint. I cannot rightly remember if this was the fault of the DWP of Jobcentre plus, but it along with other things, such as the lack of a letter about qualifying for NI credits, indicate serious problems and disorganisation within the system.

It was from my documents that we discovered what had really gone on in my ATOS medical assessment for ESA. The conclusion had been that I had mild depression, and would be back at work in no more than three months. I am still not working more than 18 months later. I have had depression many years ago and it lasted four years, I know what it feels like and I know that I did not have it and have not had it since I developed CFS/ME. It is an entirely different illness that appears similar as it has similar symptoms but inside my head and my body the two illnesses are poles apart. Please understand that I am not dismissing the seriousness of depression, I know it is a hugely debilitating illness, but it is not CFS/ME, and the physical disability caused by mild depression does not come close to the disability caused by mild ME, and certainly not moderate to severe ME, which is what I had at the time. Plus most depression is treatable, CFS/ME is not. To our horror and disgust this medical assessment was the grounds for refusing me DLA, despite the fact we had overturned the decision. Further letters got us nowhere, the assessment said no, so the answer was no. We appealed.

By the time we got our appeal date nine months had passed since my original application and I was on the verge of no longer qualifying for DLA. We discussed for a long time whether I would go or not. We knew I was unlikely to get DLA going forward but I might get it backdated to the original application date. Which would have given me the princely sum of approximately £500. A sum that wouldn’t even cover one month of the mortgage. We decided that the stress of going to the appeal wasn’t worth £500 and dropped the case. Part of me wanted to go for the principal of the whole thing, but I don’t really have the energy to spare on principles these days.

So as you can see I don’t believe ATOS should be doing the medical assessments. I would really appreciate it if you could add your name to this petition, and spread the word. 100,000 signatures are needed to get this off the ground, and they are needed by August. I cannot stress enough how detrimental ATOS was to my applications for benefits. And the huge number of other people who have been through the same and worse. People, who are unwell and struggling, not just people with ME, but all kinds of medical conditions. I can survive without any monetary support; it just would have helped a lot. But some people don’t have the financial support I have and really need these benefits to survive. People who have worked hard all their lives, paid their NI for years, and the government won’t help them out. Frankly it’s disgusting and it makes me sick just thinking about it.

Please sign the petition here.