Warning over rise in children on disability benefits in England and Wales

9 comments

1. Bloody dossers wasting our taxes on vapes, Prime and Fortnite skins. C’mon Labour get them down t’pit before they start a Roblox riot, or threaten to burn down the Temple of Time.

2. Understanding and diagnoses of such conditions like ADHD and autism have increased rapidly in recent decades. This is why, it’s not just people claiming for the sake of it.

3. This is a very good article explaining the issue the UK has with disability claims:

   https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/press-releases/curbing-the-20-billion-rise-in-working-age-incapacity-and-disability-benefit-spending-is-a-task-for-the-nhs-and-employers-not-just-the-treasury-and-dwp/

   Nobody likes discussing it because to the Tories it’s an utter symptom of their governments’ failures to run a country, to the far right it explains high immigration and to the left it seems like “saints and scroungers” but it’s a genuinely massive problem.

   In the last few years nearly 1m people joined the UK workforce through immigration but the workforce did not increase in size because nearly 1m people left it due to disability (many of them very young). This has been after decades of disability claims remaining almost boringly stable.

   The major reasons are mental health, neurodivergence claims and the change to PIP which got rid of lower level allowances and other benefits changes meaning there’s not really so much of a “well you just need a little help to get to work” bracket, just a “you don’t work you’re disabled now”.

   The Tories tried to scrimp by pretending there was only severe disability and it’s backfired by having seemingly everyone with a disability signed off work and immigrants having to be brought in by employers en masse to keep the economy going.

4. I’ve got ADHD, you definitely do not need to be randomly paying 15 year old kids extra money for that sort of condition. Not to mention loads of parents will be just making up claims about their children to get as much extra money as possible.

   Believe it or not, people have the capacity to lie and it’s a massive issue in the welfare system. I remember having an illuminating conversation with a British guy in a hostel who worked in a job centre, he explained that the majority of his clients openly had side gigs, most just cash in hand jobs (so they were actually earning money), or reselling Facebook marketplace junk on eBay, dealing weed, shoplifting – or a combination of those. So yes, if these parents realise you can extra money if you manage to get your child diagnosed with an incredibly nebulous condition like ADHD, they will do it lol.

5. “oh no, people that we said are entitled to extra help keep taking it”

6. This money is probably gonna go to a good place

   Your average person would spend it better then the goverment could probably especially if they can be arsed to go through all those forms and believe they have a ligitmate reason for said benifits

7. And I wonder why. The dirty dollar. Kids never used to get away with things until nowadays where if they’re bad “oh it’s adhd”.

8. These things have always been there. And undiagnosed people were living lives full of judgement by others who thought they were lazy and stupid and all other horrible things due to ignorance of these conditions.

   A rise in reporting, training and diagnosis can only be good and only people with very narrow points of view will see this as a negative.

9. My youngest has global development delay. She’s been in a special needs school since her 2nd year of school. During her first year, she was in a normal school which we thought would be best for her. Normal schools aren’t equipped to deal with special needs. They do their best but it’s nothing compared to a school with teachers trained in special needs. Also, the judgement you get from other people is amazing. Even last weekend we took our daughter to an amusement park. A well-known one. We were given fast-track passes due to her mobility needs and had people complaining and saying if she can’t queue up then she shouldn’t be there. Old people are the worst though.