Blind woman denied benefits because she attended DWP interview with help of mother

31 comments

1. Cruelty of the DWP knows no limits, their assessors get rewarded for finding ways to turn down claimants.

2. DWP sole job is to try to get claimants benefits denied.

3. My god.. Dwp really needs reform

   ” In 2020, there was outcry after it emerged that Errol Graham, a severely mental ill man, died of starvation in 2018, eight months after his disability benefits were cut off. “

4. You have to be a cruel bastard that enjoys being vindictive and malicious to work at the DWP.

   *~How can I fuck with the most vulnerable in society today?~*

5. Claims are always denied after interview, this decision is usually overturned after a request for a mandatory reconsideration and definitely overturned if pushed for a tribunal hearing.

   #

6. My dad is blind. He called ahead to make sure there were no steps in to the place the assessment was they said no. He fell flat on his face and went in with blood all over his face tripping on the steps he was told wasn’t there. When it was his turn to go in he couldn’t get through the door until another person waiting helped him (it turned out you had to press a button for the door to unlock butcher people working there didn’t even mention it to him). The assessor then asked him to do something but he couldn’t see what it was. It turned out it was to raise his arms. The previous time he went with my sister and they ignored him and asked her all the questions and she had to say he’s blind that doesn’t mean he can’t answer you

7. She wasn’t eligible because she attended the assessment. And if she hadn’t attended the assessment, she would no doubt have been assumed to be ineligible for lack of evidence.

   Almost like it’s designed to make people fail.

   Edit: Is she meant to take the person who helped her to the assessment to work so they can just sit there with her all day?

8. When I applied for pip I got zero points on everything. In the assessment write up the assessor said I heard them call my name in the waiting room. I have a bone anchored hearing aids.

   It literally says in section 7 you get 2 points for needing aids or appliances to speak or hear

9. This seems pointless, surely she would have had to provide medical proof of her condition and that should in of itself be enough justification shouldn’t it?

   And even if she is capable of performing a role as blind with poor hearing, what role is that and if it exists what are the probabilities that the level of support required for her to do that role exists?

10. I knew a chap who had had half his brain disconnected to help treat epilepsy. He couldn’t speak, communicate clearly, move faster than a walk, and had the intelligence of a toddler (no shade, he was lovely). Every 6 months, his mother had to take him to Leeds to a DWP meeting, where he would sit and shake his head and mumble away whilst the assessor was baffled as to why he had to keep coming back. They ended up using it as a scheduled day out every time!

11. Blind you say? We have many truck driver positions available!

    Broken Britain.

12. I read an article ages ago about a ex soldier who had his legs blown off. Applied for disability benefits and was turned down 🤷‍♀️

13. We need a fundamental shift away from numbers and statistics in all parts of government.

    Ban third party contractors

    Standardise support processes across departments so we can move support staff to cover other departments when there is a rise in demand without having to hire and fire

    Base department budgets on outcome rather than throughput

    Reduce red tape in the different variants of type of disability and how much payments etc in the particular case and then also make the line for pass or fail
    Much more clearer and throw the book at those who are found to be fraudulent

    There you go, problem solved

14. And yet the money still diminishes from the UKs coffers

15. DWP staff are 90% cunts with the odd 10% of genuinely nice people. I’ve heard and read some absolute horror stories.

16. You can’t win with this stuff.

    If you travel alone you’re seen as competent and not needing help. If you travel with someone who helps you, they say that you made it there okay. If you don’t go they hold that against you as well.

17. Was assessed in my bed (where I have been stuck for 12 years) she wrote a litany of lies (calling me sir for most of the report) and I received 0 points. Have been trying to fight it for years but they keep referring to her report. Eventually after a zoom tribunal and the most intimate questions by a panel of 3 men I was awarded low mobility as they think I couldn’t plan a trip. The system is broken thanks IDS still blame him. Got my forms a while back again so I filled them in telling them how wrong the decision was and waited for an answer eventually got a message it may take another year for a decision!

18. I really hope people read this and understand that this is what “cracking down on benefits cheats” means – it means a system that starts from a presumption of malingering, and it means legitimate cases not getting the support they need and deserve.

    People seem to assume that “genuine” people won’t be expected to work, no matter how many cases we see that show otherwise. People say “oh but you can appeal” and fail to understand just how inaccessible that process is if you can’t even get communication in accessible format.

19. What idiot denied her the benefits? I don’t get it, it’s so unjustified.

    What happens – do they do mental gymnastics to make decisions, are they actually outright cruel, or are they just straight up thick?

20. Disgusting. 

    Benefits is a safety net. 

    Not all blind people are alright at getting around especially to one off appointments.

21. Making eye contact with the assessor, knowing what disability or issues you have and being able to explain it, the use of hypothetical questions in order to get an answer they need. All of these I’ve encountered when trying to claim the lowest level of pip and being denied

22. How did I not know about Liz Kendall releasing reports from the Conservative DWP administrations showing they suppressed knowledge that people they denied benefits couldn’t afford to eat? Why was that not headline news?

23. We have these people called doctors who should be able to assess whether people are fit to work

24. It’s baffling how little understanding of sight loss there is in this country.

    One of the most infuriating examples is with disability travel cards. So say you’re blind and you have a travel pass that gives you free bus travel. It expires but to get it renewed, you need proof of your sight loss that’s dated within the last 12 months. Every person who is on the local register as being blind or partially sighted has a bit of paper saying they were seen by a doctor on this date and determined to be blind/partially sighted. To get a new one you don’t need to be assessed again, you just get in touch with the council, ask for a copy of it, and an admin assistant will print you off a new one with the exact same “seen on this date and determined to be blind” statement on it, but at the very top it has the date it was printed off. Give that to the travel card people and they go “yeah, you’re still blind” and renew the pass for you.
    No medical oversight whatsoever. It’s a completely pointless waste of time.

25. How the fuck are this absolute set of cunts allowed to do this? If you don’t turn up for your assessment, you’re fucked and you get nothing. If you do turn up, clearly you’re not disabled enough so you get nothing, even if you obviously didn’t attend independently. What are you actually supposed to do? Where are all the lawyers in this country and why have they not absolutely kicked Crapita and the government’s arses over this over the last 10 years?

26. This goes back to 2008 but DWP being shitty is system design.

    I was once sanctioned for applying for jobs that were “Too far away”.
    The job being next door to my girlfriends house was seemingly irrelevant.

    A few weeks later I told them I’d accepted a job offer and was awaiting my DBS check to come back so I could start. Immediately after congratulating me they told me they now wanted me to apply for three worse jobs and to come and sign on every day. Clearly the just wanted to make it as inconvenient as possible to get me off the numbers but still.
    And big thanks to Dale who on the third consecutive day of me signing on looked at his computer and said “Well this is a huge waste of both our time, just post your book through the letter box when you start and I’ll sort the rest.”

27. Holy shit! 

    Don’t come to your assessment: No benefits.

    Come to your assessment: No benefits! 

     At this point why are they even assessing people? Might as well  just send out form letters saying they’ve been turned down (with maybe a random 10% being accepted to make it look good)

28. Those that deny cases like this are absolute scum.
    How do they even sleep at night?
    It probably makes their day denying payments.

29. My uncle who can’t even walk unassisted, who literally has an elevator installed at home because he can’t lift his legs, was denied PIP and deemed fit for work. When he attended his appeal meeting he literally pissed himself in his wheelchair and they finally took him seriously.

    It shouldn’t take a man embarrassing himself to be taken seriously. The systems fucked.

30. These stories always make me wonder how there are, according to some redditors, swathes of benefits chests living on PIP or other disability benefits with fake illness.

    Are there some fraudsters? Yeah. Are there hundreds or thousands of them getting past these outright bias interviews? Doubtful

31. The DWP are a bunch of cunts. I’ve heard nothing but bad things about them.

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