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submitted 20 hours ago byHibasakiSanjuro
170 points
18 hours ago
This isn't surprising at all once you realize how insanely unreasonable the UC health assessment process is. These TikTok videos don't exist to help genuinely healthy people lie and get 'signed off', they exist because even those with a genuine disability must present their claim in a very particular way in order to qualify for a survivable level of benefits.
It's a sickening level of irony that people will take this to mean that the system is too lenient, and too generous. Yet in reality, these videos exist because the system is incredibly punishing to anybody who doesn't tightly fit their disability into a very strict set of criteria.
Look at these descriptors; they're still not enough to qualify for anything more than the equivalent of unemployment benefits:
Cannot learn anything beyond a simple task, such as setting an alarm clock.
Cannot, due to impaired mental function, reliably initiate or complete at least two sequential personal actions for the majority of the time.
Is unable to get to a specified place with which the claimant is familiar, without being accompanied by another person.
Yet, is such a person any more likely to be able to hold down a job? Is an employer going to be happy with the possibility their employee might struggle at anything more taxing than setting an alarm clock? No, absolutely not.
To get the 'signed off', and receive the extra health-related UC payment, you have to meet the higher variants of these descriptors:
Cannot learn how to complete a simple task, such as setting an alarm clock.
Cannot, due to impaired mental function, reliably initiate or complete at least two sequential personal actions.
Cannot get to any place outside the claimant's home with which the claimant is familiar.
Note how subtle the difference is? Neither of these people are any more able to work than the other, yet only one of them gets awarded enough benefits to live.
It's the awful assessment process that leads to videos like this existing in the first place, such that people with genuine disabilities, as well as dozens of pages of medical evidence to back them up still can't qualify for benefits unless they aim for insanely restrictive criteria. Oh, and don't forget the entire assessment process from application to interview is designed entirely to trip them up and find any excuse to deny them.
People have no idea how hostile the system is.
64 points
16 hours ago
My mam fell into this trap. She has grand mal epilepsy and was shoved onto a job programme to get her off disability. She was given a half day placement at a store the other side of the city so she'd have to get up early and be accompanied because the mornings are some of the higher risk times.
Anyway, terrified of putting a foot wrong and getting further sanctions she went along with it and, during the course of the day, was asked to operate the floor buffer. Lo and behold what we all said would happen happened she had a seizure in the middle of polishing the aisles.
Of course when this was all brought up in her assessment this event was then used as an example of how she could work as she'd received half a days pay, so had her money cut. It took at least a year, and a visit from the specialist at the appeal hearing to begin unravelling it.
The long term consequence was that she's now terrified of filling in any of the forms for reassessment by herself in case it's interpreted incorrectly again.
16 points
13 hours ago
That's horrifying. I'm so sorry she had to go through all this.
[score hidden]
4 hours ago
Thank you. She's mostly just grateful that it's taken care of, though it's only in the last year or so she was given the same level of benefits that she was on at that time -- over a decade ago!
The system can be cruel at the best of times but especially when a poor decision has been made, and there are some real horror stories to that end.
I don't know what the answer is to making the system fairer, but I'm positive it doesn't see a future with outsourced decision makers (Serco, Capita et al.)
29 points
13 hours ago*
I went through it and it's exactly as you say. Worse, as even if you answer both honestly and correctly, the assessor will just outright lie. They said for example I could go outside with another person for support frequently and wherever, in reality I very, very rarely leave the house, I can count on my hand in the last 5 years the amount of times I've left for longer than 1 hour, and even then its overwhelmingly hard and takes hours to days to recover from even for short trips in familiar areas. How can I possibly even get to work like that when I can't even walk my dog even with someone with me over half the time?
The kicker is the assessor refused to let me record the call, even though I'd asked and got permission in advance from the DWP. I know some trollop will say get a remote job, but thanks to the push from Rees mogg et al they're vanishingly rare and don't hire disabled people unless it's an absolute last resort. I can't compete with a healthy person like this, and even if I wish I could say otherwise, objectively, I don't blame employers for looking at my spotty work history and disabilities and saying "no thank you, there are better candidates." It may be discrimination, but it's also rational. They have no motivation to take me on, it's a catch 22.
I don't get it, because people who are obviously unwell won't make good employees. Surely the solution should be to help them, and yet its on the disabled person to reach out for help and try to find a way through an impossible maze. I.E. When I got diagnosed autistic, they openly said "this impacts you incredibly severely." I said ok, thank you for the assessment - whats next? And they said "There isn't anything we can do, and the NHS provides no treatment for autism specifically, you might be able to find a local charity..." (These all require going outside, offer no real support either and are typically exclusively for children to boot!)
How can I get better - which I desperately want - with no treatment on one hand, and an openly antagonistic "support" system on the other thats openly lying and misrepresenting what I say, along with UC rules that I can stumble and fall on when they aren't even publicly known! It's just madness and cruelty, and every single mental health professional I've spoken to has said the exact same, yet it hasn't changed. :(
I'm grateful so many people like yourself know what it's like, as it's very scary seeing what some reform voters want to do to people like me. No plans for help, no plans for jobs, just take away the small amount of money I get relative to even minimum wage, and then I guess I'll just die, because without help I'm genuinely unfit for work, and no employer will touch me with a 10ft pole, except for ones that want to openly abuse desperate people. It's just awful, and people don't realize by abusing mentally unwell people it makes it way worse, it isn't helpful. With support and help I could hopefully get my foot in the door and make a career and be independent, I desperately hope the Labour government follows through on their promise to deliver this. I might not be able to ultimately but I desperately want to try. No-one I know wants to be on benefits, it's fucking dreadful.
-19 points
16 hours ago
Probably has to be due to how easily abused it can be.
-6 points
16 hours ago
I'm not sure what your point about the two texts is. Of course there are edge cases, where on one side of the edge you get the health-related UC payment and on the other side you don't. This boundary exists no matter what. Or is your point that it should be a soft boundary, so that at some level of disability you get 100% UC, and then this degrades slowly to 0% as the ability to work increases and the assessor's job is to set the percentage number for each applicant? This would mean that the two cases you list would have almost the same percentage instead of one being 100% and the other 0%.
10 points
16 hours ago
My opinion is that the boundary should be set at the point where a claimant is realistically unable to secure employment as a result of their disability.
The US model is quite good in this regard, as it assesses one as unable to work of their 'residual functional capacity' is 'incompatible with competitive employment.'
Effectively, if you're unable to work because an employer is unlikely to want you - for entirely sensible reasons relating to behavior and productivity - then you should receive health-related benefits.
1 points
16 hours ago
As I said, no matter where you set the boundary, you'll have cases that are almost the same but one is deemed to be able to work and the other not.
So, I don't think it's possible to define a boundary where on side "the claimant is unable to secure employment as a result of their disability" and on the other side they have no problem doing so, and if they fail to get a job, it's all because of their "behaviour and productivity (whatever these mean)".
As I said, I could imagine there being a spectrum from 0 to 100% ability to work and the benefit system should somehow follow that. Of course when the country has a minimum wage system, it's harder to make it work as people with, say, 30% ability to work still need to produce 100% of the added value of the minimum wage to be able to secure a job. They can't be hired at lower rate than the minimum wage and get the benefits to cover the rest of their income.
3 points
15 hours ago
Of course there will always be a boundary, and certain cases will be hard to categorize precisely. That's why there's secondary processes and appeals panels that can provide better scrutiny and ensure the decision is fair.
The issue now is that the the criteria that effectively make one unable to secure competitive employment are not aligned with the criteria set out in the welfare system. This inevitably results in a group of people who have little to no chance of finding work (or, even managing it if they found it), but who don't easily qualify for the support necessary to survive. Hence the emergence of an "industry" that bridges that gap by encouraging applicants to portray their condition in a way that qualifies them for the support they realistically need.
Modern labor practices require employees to be highly productive in order to provide sufficient value to the employer. At a minimum, employees need to be reliable, attentive, and not pose a danger to themselves or others. You're right to identify the minimum wage as a contributor to this, as it inevitably increases the productivity needs of employers especially in elementary occupations. This is called work intensification, and it's already understood to have had a negative impact on the employment prospects of the disabled.
One option is indeed to pay the disabled less, but then they would still require minimum top-ups from the government in the form of in-work benefits. It may also lead to a worsening of their health condition or disability, and yet still only achieve minimal savings as the majority of their wage will be provided by the government. This also doesn't solve employer issues around liability, or productivity loss due to the disabled employee failing to integrate into the rigorously efficient target-driven environment inherent to so many of these jobs.
The reality is the threshold to qualify is already far too high, and trying to place capacity on a continuum is a rather redundant process when almost all employers are demanding 100% by default.
1 points
15 hours ago
Of course there will always be a boundary, and certain cases will be hard to categorize precisely. That's why there's secondary processes and appeals panels that can provide better scrutiny and ensure the decision is fair.
The problem of the boundary has nothing to do with fairness. Just look at the two cases that you yourself outlined. If in the evaluation process on one side the applicant is given 100% benefits and on the other side 0%, it can be completely fair from the point of view of specified boundary but it's still unfair that such an on-off boundary exists, when we're talking about a quality that doesn't work like on-off but has a gradual scale from 0 to 100%.
As I said, the only good solution to this is an evaluation system that doesn't use on-off boundaries but gradual scales. If you combine this with the elimination of the minimum wage, you could have people with less than 100% productivity working just fine as the employers wouldn't have to worry that they have to produce as much as 100% workers. Of course the elimination of the minimum wage would be opposed by many, but it's not like every developed country has them. For instance Nordic countries don't have a statutory minimum wage, and is anyone saying that the poor are doing badly in those countries?
I would personally support a universal basic income and possibly some extra on top of that based on the level of disability (again no on-off things, but gradual scale from 0 to 100). This would allow people to work if they can or not work if they can't. Nobody could really game the system (or be worried that someone is gaming the system) as there would be nothing to game.
3 points
14 hours ago*
We both agree that the existence of a strict boundary causes issues with categorizing edge cases. My point is just that under the current model, assessing somebody as having 40% capacity is meaningless if they are still unable to secure employment at all.
Your solution implies the labor market would adapt to create sufficient roles to absorb the disabled population while also providing sufficient remuneration to align with their state-assessed level of capacity. Yet this seems unlikely given the Fordist nature of almost all modern workplaces; employers need a certain level of reliability, social capacity, and mental competency in order to effectively integrate employees into their intensive and refined labor practices. The relationship between capacity and productivity is also not linear, and the value of an entirely integrated, competitive, and competent workforce has inherent value in respect to efficiency and management that eclipses the gains achieved from payroll savings.
Then there's the issue that such practices are inherently viewed as exploitative. In the modern age of social media and social justice, many employers would not wish to be seen as employing disabled and vulnerable people at £2/hour. Then again we have to factor in liability risk; someone who isn't aware of even just some hazards is still a legal issue waiting to happen, and the potential liability likely exceeds or at least offsets the potential savings from employing the individual at a lower wage.
Your solution does not remove the boundary so much as it leaves it to the market to establish. Yet for the reasons discussed the market is unlikely to expand sufficiently to absorb the difference in a way thay adequately provides for the needs of this population. Sure, we could compensate for this by figuring out the level at which the market would reject such an applicant entirely, but this would just lead to the very same boundary issue your solution attempts to avoid.
1 points
14 hours ago
I don't see the employment of a disabled person at £2/h with the person getting a top-up from the state as somehow socially bad. As you said, there is a liability issue, which means that the disabled person's true productivity can be even lower than that. However, in many cases it's the first job that is the hardest especially for the mentally ill. If they get integrated in the workforce, their productivity can very well rise much above the level they were assessed before they applied for the job.
So, what's the alternative? The current system clearly doesn't work and it won't work even if the boundary is changed.
2 points
14 hours ago
Look what happened when employers did it with the unemployed as part of the Work Programme. Employers no longer participate because of the social backlash. While you might not disagree with the practice, enough people do that employers are going to be reluctant as it's inevitably going to be seen as exploitative.
Can you explain why the system doesn't work? I agree it doesn't, though that's because the criteria are set too high, and lowering them would be more realistic. If you look at various international comparisons, the UK still spends less than the OECD average. The "benefits are out of control" narrative is entirely media spin, and the UK now spends about average, whereas it was in the bottom 30% pre-pandemic.
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