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Post by Admin on Oct 11, 2021 9:53:22 GMT
Britain’s Mental Health Crisis Isn’t an Accident – It’s a Political Choice By Alia Butt Ten years of austerity has seen mental health budgets slashed while demand has risen to record levels. Britain's mental health crisis isn't inevitable – it's the result of political choices. tribunemag.co.uk/2021/10/how-the-tories-created-a-mental-health-crisisToday marks World Mental Health Day, a time to reflect upon the importance of good mental health. This year, as in previous years, it comes amid worsening mental health across the country – and at a time when more and more children are struggling with self harm, and with the desire to disappear. Many of those in need suffer abuse or neglect at the hands of the people left to care for them with little resources, and less support. This is not a new problem: ten years of austerity have left mental health services across the country with an estimated 8.25 percent less funding than in 2010, despite a rise in demand of 20 percent. Many people with mental health concerns struggle to ask for support. Of those who do, an estimated eight million are not deemed unwell enough to receive treatment. The pandemic has seen 1.6 million people added to NHS waiting lists, and huge numbers are turned away from mental health services every year. Meanwhile, cuts to Universal Credit, twinned with hikes in national insurance, council tax, and working hours, will only heighten the growing pressure on the public’s mental health. One in four adults will now suffer from a serious mental health condition in their lives, a number only set to increase. The NHS is in no way able to manage these numbers. It’s not even close.
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Post by Admin on Oct 11, 2021 15:14:24 GMT
You are here: Home / Independent Living / Care minister admits ignoring views of disabled people on government’s reforms www.disabilitynewsservice.com/care-minister-admits-ignoring-views-of-disabled-people-on-governments-reforms/The newly-appointed care minister has admitted that she was completely unaware of disabled people’s criticism of the prime minister’s controversial social care reforms. Gillian Keegan, appointed to the role only last month, told Disability News Service (DNS) this week that she had “not looked specifically at the disability response” to the reforms. The Chichester MP has become the latest in a long line of Conservative ministers – and opposition politicians – to ignore the voices of disabled people, their user-led organisations, and service-users, and to focus instead on the views of large non-user-led charities, private sector care providers and local government. Boris Johnson’s reforms were met with almost universal criticism across the disabled people’s movement over the inadequate level of funding, the failure to address the needs of working-age disabled people, the lack of detail, and the disproportionate impact of the plans on lower-income workers. Where Boris Johnson called his plans “responsible, fair, and necessary” last month, disabled people’s organisations and grassroots groups, and disabled campaigners, described them as “disappointing”, “regressive” and even “insulting”. But when asked by DNS about the response of disabled people’s organisations and user-led grassroots groups to the plan, Keegan insisted that “the sector” had so far “responded very positively” because, she said, they saw it as “brave”, “necessary” and realised that “no-one else has done it so far”. She told DNS: “I don’t know the specific things that have come from that lobby but obviously I will work with the disability rights people to understand those better, but on the whole I think we have had very positive support from the sector.” Keegan (pictured, centre) was speaking at a fringe event, organised by the older people’s charity Age UK and the right-wing blog Conservative Home, at the Conservative party conference in Manchester. She had told the meeting earlier that the social care system was “under way too much pressure, we all see that… most of all for the people who are in the care system”. She said there was “a lot of anxiety” over the funding for the plan “and where it comes from in the future”, and she added: “We have to make sure that that [national insurance] levy continues and it continues to underpin this system that we are going to build.” Keegan also accepted that there were concerns about the support needs of working-age adults. The plans focus on the introduction of a new 1.25 per cent national insurance levy and a similar rise in dividend tax rates, ringfenced for health and social care, but with most of the new funding put aside for the NHS, at least for the first three years. The key social care measure is the introduction of a new cap of £86,000 on lifetime personal care costs and a more generous support system for those with significant assets, particularly older people who own their own homes. On the decision to source the funding from the national insurance levy, and concerns that it placed too much of a burden on younger people, Keegan said: “It’s about getting the right balance. “Every single option was looked at and every single one of them has pros and cons.” She said the public trusted an increase in national insurance more than a rise in “general taxation” because it had been ring-fenced for health and social care. In comments that are likely to further alarm disabled campaigners pushing for a legal right to independent living, health and social care secretary Sajid Javid later told the conference that those in need of health and social care support “shouldn’t always go first to the state”. He said: “What kind of society would that be? Health – and social care – begins at home. Family first, then community, then the state.” He focused – in his brief remarks on social care – on the support needs of older people, and said the government’s reforms meant that “we can plan with confidence that we and our families will be protected from catastrophic costs”.
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Post by Admin on Oct 12, 2021 2:59:43 GMT
Conservative conference: Coffey signals new bid to push support group towards work By John Pring on 7th October 2021 Category: Employment www.disabilitynewsservice.com/conservative-conference-coffey-signals-new-bid-to-push-support-group-towards-work/Work and pensions secretary Therese Coffey has strongly signalled that her department will launch a new bid to try to push more disabled people with high support needs into work. Coffey, speaking at a fringe event at the Conservative party conference in Manchester, said she wanted to focus on those people who were currently seen as not being able to do any work. She said she saw this approach as “a positive, an escalator, trying to help people”, which would leave the out-of-work disability benefits system as “a welfare net rather than a welfare trap”. She referred during the event to the need to cut spending on disability benefits, particularly personal independence payment (see separate story). Pushing people with high support needs towards work and the need to cut spending on disability benefits were themes hinted at strongly in July’s disability benefits green paper. The focus on those currently in the support group of employment and support allowance (ESA) – and its universal credit equivalent – appears to be a return towards the controversial reforms suggested five years ago in the Improving Lives green paper, which caused shock and anger among disabled campaigners. That green paper suggested that all ESA claimants with the highest support needs – those in the support group – could be told to stay in regular touch with their local jobcentre, or risk having their benefits sanctioned. A year later, the government backed down and said that it was now trialling a voluntary approach. Coffey said this week that she wanted to focus more on “what people can do rather than the benefit system being driven currently by what you cannot do”. She appears not to realise – or to be hoping that disabled people will not remember – that this was exactly what ministers were saying a decade ago. In 2013, the then employment minister, Esther McVey, was among many ministers who used the phrase when she wrote in a paper on the developing disability employment strategy that the government’s focus was now “on what people can do rather than what they can’t do”. Coffey told the fringe event, hosted by The Centre for Policy Studies, the right-wing thinktank co-founded by Margaret Thatcher: “One of the biggest things that I am wanting to try and make sure we focus on in the next few years is for people who right now think they cannot work.” She said she wanted to “flip our system about welfare benefits in terms of people with health conditions [so] instead of our system basically trying to encourage people to show how they really cannot do any work at all, to actually flipping that and see what is it that you can do and support you to do through some of our programmes, Access to Work and similar.” In response to a question from The Mirror’s Dan Bloom, she said that ministers were “not trying to demonise people who can’t work”. She then appeared to refer to some of the many disabled people whose deaths have been linked to DWP’s failings over the last decade, saying: “I know [The Mirror] and the BBC will have many images of people where wrong decisions have been made, quite clearly, but generally I think it is about trying to help people in that direction without having the demonisation you suggested.” Coffey said that ministers’ original target had been for about 20 to 25 per cent of people on ESA to be in the support group – with the others in the work-related activity group, for those who have limited capability for work but must take part in some work-related activity – but the figures showed that “more like 80 per cent” were now being placed in that group. She claimed that disabled people tried “to accumulate all sorts of different points in the [assessment] process in order to reach a certain level of support”, and she said she wanted “to see what we can do more to help with that”. But she failed to point out that these figures are based on the small number of ESA work capability assessments now carried out, because of the move towards universal credit. In January 2020, there were only about 4,000 ESA work capability assessments completed, compared with 69,000 in January 2015. DWP confirmed yesterday (Wednesday) that it had yet to publish any data on work capability assessment outcomes for those claiming universal credit (UC), even though it began rolling out UC to replace new income-related ESA claims more than five years ago.
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Post by Admin on Oct 15, 2021 2:09:03 GMT
Minister invited 44 ‘leaders’ to care summit, but not one disabled people’s organisation By John Pring on 14th October 2021 Category: Independent Living www.disabilitynewsservice.com/minister-invited-44-leaders-to-care-summit-but-not-one-disabled-peoples-organisation/The government failed to invite a single representative of a disabled people’s organisation (DPO) to last month’s crucial health and social care reform “summit” meeting, an omission that has been branded “disgraceful” and “unacceptable” by campaigners. One disabled campaigner said the failure of health and social care secretary Sajid Javid to invite any DPO to his health and care sector meeting represented “a new low” for the government on engagement with disabled people. The failure emerged after Disability News Service (DNS) secured a list of the 44 “senior leaders and experts” who attended the summit hosted by Javid on 20 September. The list of “attendees” shows just one service-user, Clenton Farquharson, chair of the cross-sector Think Local Act Personal partnership, which itself includes representatives of local and central government, the NHS, care providers and service-users. But Farquharson has told DNS that he was only invited “at extremely short notice” and was actually unable to attend, even though the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) included him on the list sent to DNS as one of the “attendees”. This means that the summit meeting did not hear from a single service-user or DPO. The failure came despite Inclusion London and other DPOs writing to Javid in June asking to be involved in the government’s social care reform programme. They were told he was too busy to meet them. Two months later he snubbed them again by failing to invite any of them to the summit meeting. The government’s latest failure appears to be another clear breach of its duty, under the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD), to “closely consult with and actively involve” DPOs when developing laws and policies relating to disabled people. And it comes only a week after DNS reported how the new care minister, Gillian Keegan, admitted she was completely unaware of disabled people’s criticism of the prime minister’s controversial social care reforms, and that she had “not looked specifically at the disability response” to the reforms. Tracey Lazard, chief executive of Inclusion London, told DNS this week: “The failure to ensure any representation by disabled people and our organisations at this vital summit on social care marks a new low in this government’s already dismal record of engagement with DDPOs*. “How can the government even begin to meet the challenge of transforming our broken social care system if it systematically excludes and disregards nearly half of all users of social care?” She added: “This lack of engagement with disabled people and DDPOs is appalling. “Not only does it fail to meet the UK’s obligations under the UNCRPD, but it makes no ethical or business sense. “The government understands the importance of talking to businesses and listening to consumers, yet it fails to apply the same principles to disabled people. “We appear not to be seen as equals by this government and as a result we will continue to experience ‘care’ as something that is done to us, rather than with us.” Linda Burnip, co-founder of Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC), said it was “disgraceful” that no DPO was involved in the summit “although sadly not at all surprising”, while she said it was clear that Farquharson had only been invited as an “afterthought”. She said: “The concept of involving disabled people and their organisations in something as vital as this to our futures seems to fail to penetrate the Westminster mindset.” Mark Harrison, a member of the steering group of the Reclaiming Our Futures Alliance (ROFA), said the failure to include even one DPO in the summit showed it was “business as usual for this government. “Rather than ‘nothing about us without us’, it is everything about us without us. “Their contempt for disabled people has been clear over the last decade. “Their refusal to establish meaningful engagement and consultation with DPOs also demonstrated their complete disregard for the UNCRPD.” But Harrison said the other professional bodies and interest groups in the meeting were also at fault, as they apparently saw nothing wrong with “being in a room with government and discussing policies that affect disabled people without any representatives of DPOs in the room”. He added: “ROFA calls on government to engage with us in a serious way to sort out the crisis in social care which is destroying so many lives.” Farquharson said: “People with lived experience are ready and willing to engage positively with government at this key and crucial time for disability policy and social care reform. “It’s not acceptable to hold meetings with sector leaders whilst excluding people with lived experience who can contribute their expert knowledge and skills.” He added: “I call on ministers and the Department of Health and Social Care to commit to involving people with lived experience as part of their planning, not as an afterthought.” Professor Peter Beresford, co-chair of the disabled people’s and service-user network Shaping Our Lives, said the failure to involve disabled people and DPOs in the summit was “another kick in the teeth for disabled people”, but not a surprise. But he added: “Given the government’s appalling track record on disability it is difficult to see what would have been gained by any of us being a part of this window dressing. “The new proposals for social care so far show no awareness of the importance of independent living and their only contribution seems to be to impose national insurance on older workers. “Mounting conventional parliamentary action in relation to this government shows no serious signs of being listened too – just check out the worsening direction of travel of welfare reform.”
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Post by Admin on Oct 22, 2021 16:22:37 GMT
Austerity cuts to social care and health caused 57,000 deaths, research suggests 21st October 2021 The government has refused to apologise for the “appallingly unnecessary” impact of austerity spending cuts, after researchers linked post-2010 reductions in spending on social care and health to more than 57,000 deaths in just four years. The findings of the government-funded research […] www.disabilitynewsservice.com/
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Post by Admin on Oct 22, 2021 21:20:43 GMT
ANALYSIS UK The UN is preparing to investigate the UK government again www.thecanary.co/uk/analysis/2021/10/22/the-un-is-preparing-to-investigate-the-uk-government-again/A UN committee is gathering information ahead of another investigation into the UK government. It’s over its adherence to the human rights of chronically ill and disabled people. The UN’s last report found “grave” and “systematic” violations of people’s rights, calling it a “human catastrophe”. Now, deaf and disabled people’s organisations (DPOs) are asking for evidence to submit to the UN. The UNCRPD The UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) is a human rights branch of the UN. It oversees the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). Many countries like the UK have signed up to it. Some, like the US, have not:
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Post by Admin on Oct 23, 2021 12:31:59 GMT
Claimants return to court for third battle with DWP in fight for universal credit justice By John Pring on 21st October 2021 Category: Benefits and Poverty www.disabilitynewsservice.com/claimants-return-to-court-for-third-battle-with-dwp-in-fight-for-universal-credit-justice/The high court has this week heard the latest stage in a long-running battle to secure justice for thousands of disabled benefit claimants who lost out financially after being forced onto universal credit. The hearing, due to end today (Thursday), concerns policies that left many claimants worse off when their circumstances changed and they had to move from legacy benefits like employment and support allowance onto universal credit (UC). Two of the three claimants taking the case – known as TP and AR for legal reasons – have already twice defeated the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) in the court of appeal in connected cases. Their first legal case challenged rules that meant they lost out on about £180 a month in the move to UC, because they were no longer receiving severe disability premium (SDP) and enhanced disability premium (EDP). DWP responded by temporarily stopping other claimants in similar positions from migrating onto UC and introducing payments of about £80 month for those already affected. TP and AR then had to take another legal case – which they also won – because this payment failed to bridge the gap between what they were now receiving and what they would have been receiving if they were still claiming ESA. Despite the two victories, they were forced to take a third legal action after DWP announced that the level of compensation for disabled people who had been receiving EDP and SDP and had moved onto UC before 16 January 2019 – when another set of regulations came into force to protect other claimants in similar situations – would be set at a lower rate than the £180 a month they had secured through the second case. They have been joined in the third case by another disabled claimant, AB, who has a partner and a child, and has lost out by even more. TP and AR are currently losing out by £60 a month and AB and her partner by nearly £400 a month. TP said last month: “It has been entirely frustrating and exhausting having to exist on an overall unreasonable cut in financial assistance brought about by a move forced upon me into universal credit, whilst at the same time battling debilitating illness during a most challenging period of increased expenditure during this pandemic. “The principle of a fair transition into universal credit has already been upheld by the courts on numerous occasions now, yet the government has been dragging its feet for a prolonged period of time to my detriment in abiding by these rulings both in letter and spirit.” AR added: “Yet again I am having to go to court and fight for what is fair. “Over the last years I should have had much needed support in place to help me get through the challenges I face on a daily basis as a result of my disabilities, but instead I have had to put time and energy into fighting for that support. “I hope this is the last time we have to fight the secretary of state for support that is so obviously needed.” Their solicitor, Tessa Gregory, a partner at Leigh Day, said last month that it was “difficult to believe that our clients have been forced to bring a third set of legal proceedings against the government in order to ensure they and thousands of other severely disabled persons are not unlawfully discriminated against following their move on to universal credit”. AB and her child are represented by Southwark Law Centre, with all three claimants represented by barristers from Matrix Chambers. The hearing is due to end today, with judgment likely to be reserved to a future date. A DWP spokesperson said: “We do not comment on ongoing legal proceedings.”
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Post by Admin on Oct 25, 2021 9:23:24 GMT
Austerity cuts to social care and health caused 57,000 deaths, research suggests By John Pring on 21st October 2021 Category: Independent Living www.disabilitynewsservice.com/austerity-cuts-to-social-care-and-health-caused-57000-deaths-research-suggests/The government has refused to apologise for the “appallingly unnecessary” impact of austerity spending cuts, after researchers linked post-2010 reductions in spending on social care and health to more than 57,000 deaths in just four years. The findings of the government-funded research suggest that cuts to social care, health and public health caused 57,550 more deaths in England than would have been expected if spending had continued on pre-2010 trends. The research shows the number of deaths due to austerity was even higher than suggested by previous research, which had linked about 45,000 deaths to health and social care funding cuts between 2010 and 2014. The researchers also found that extra funding on social care is more than twice as productive in terms of preventing deaths as the same amount of funding spent on healthcare. The researchers at the University of York conclude: “Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that the slowdown in the rate of improvement in life expectancy in England and Wales since 2010 is attributable to spending constraints in the healthcare and social care sectors.” The average amount spent by local authorities on adult social care in 2013-14 was £307 per person, although this “varied considerably”, with Barnsley spending £209 per person compared with £660 per person in the City of London. Real social care spending increased by 2.20 per cent per head between 2001-02 and 2009-10, but it fell by 1.57 per cent from 2010-11 to 2014-15. The analysis suggests that a one per cent fall in social care spending would lead to 1,569 extra deaths, so the total cut in social care spending between 2010-11 and 2014-15 – comparing the actual level with how it would have been if it had continued to increase at 2.20 per cent a year – will have caused 23,662 additional deaths. The same analysis applied to the loss of healthcare spending caused 33,888 extra deaths, they believe. Professor Peter Beresford, co-chair of the disabled people’s and service-user network Shaping Our Lives, said: “We see the deaths caused by the austerity cuts as appallingly unnecessary and our major concern is that they should not be lost and forgotten as simply another set of statistics but need urgently to be acted upon in the interests of both disabled and non-disabled people.” A spokesperson for Manchester Disabled People Against Cuts (MDPAC) said: “That social care spending is twice as effective at saving lives than healthcare adds further evidence and urgency to our call for a National Independent Living Support Service, free at the point of need, co-designed with disabled people. “And crucially, an end to government choosing austerity and the outdated and wrong dogma that supports this deadly policy.” Earlier this month, MDPAC helped organise a mobile video screen that showed messages from disabled people about the years of attacks on their support and rights to delegates visiting the annual Conservative party conference in Manchester. A spokesperson for Cheshire DPAC, which also helped organise the mobile video screen, said: “The York researchers’ findings deepen our understanding of the impact of political decisions on disabled voters’ lives – and the risk to life that results from health and social care policy that opts for short-term electoral advantage over the interest of society as a whole. “The main political parties’ internal cultures tend to foster ableist attitudes, and that inevitably results in production of poorly-designed social care policy that fails to uphold disabled people’s rights. “We have to start withholding our support and votes from politicians who fail to engage with the transformative potential of disabled people’s own social care policy proposals. “The way forward for us as a progressive and inclusive society is to reframe social care as the right to an independent life, supported by universal, publicly-owned services, free at the point of need.” In the paper, published by BMJ Open and funded by the National Institute for Health Research, a government agency, the researchers say that the powerful impact of extra social care spending on reducing deaths is “slightly surprising”. But they say this is likely to be because cuts to social care spending have both direct and indirect effects. Direct effects could include cuts to social care increasing the risk of life-threatening falls. And indirect effects could include a lack of social care leading to a hospital being unable to discharge patients from hospital, so bed cannot be used by others who might benefit from them. The researchers say: “Although social care is primarily concerned with improving the quality of life, it is perfectly plausible that social care extends life and that those with care needs enjoy both a lower mortality rate and a better quality of life in those [local authorities] with more generous social care provision.” DHSC refused this week to apologise for the tens of thousands of deaths the research suggests were caused by the post-2010 period of austerity, or to say if it accepted that this sharp decrease in spending on health and social care was a mistake. It also refused to say if it accepted the findings of the government-funded research. But asked if DHSC agreed that the research made a strong argument for sharply-increased spending on social care in next week’s spending review, a government spokesperson said: “We are committed to levelling up health and the new Office for Health Improvement and Disparities will support people of all ages, in all areas of the country, to live healthier lives. “The government is helping local authorities improve public health by increasing their grant to over £3.3 billion this year, as well as making over £10 billion available to address the wider costs and impacts of COVID-19. “We are also investing £36 billion in health and care over the next three years* – including £5.4 billion for social care – to put in place comprehensive reforms that are sustainable and fit for the future.” *When the prime minister’s plans for social care reform were announced last month, there was almost universal criticism across the disabled people’s movement of the inadequate level of funding, the failure to address the needs of working-age disabled people, the lack of detail, and the disproportionate impact of the plans on lower-income workers
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Post by Admin on Oct 25, 2021 9:51:17 GMT
Austerity policies in England linked to 57,550 extra deaths in five years Simon Whelan 12 hours ago www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/10/24/auuk-o24.htmlThe BMJ Open journal published by the BMJ (British Medical Journal) has released findings from the largest study yet of its kind into the cost in human lives of the savage austerity spending cuts initiated in the UK from 2008 onwards. Analysing the combined impact of cuts to healthcare, public health and social care in the four years between 2010 and 2014, researchers from the Centre for Health Economics at the University of York found 57,550 more deaths than would have been expected. Professor Karl Claxton of York’s Department of Economics and Related Studies told the Guardian: “Restrictions on the growth in health and social care expenditure during ‘austerity’ have been associated with tens of thousands more deaths than would have been observed had pre-austerity expenditure growth been sustained.” The team of researchers found that social care spending rose by 2.2 percent per capita between 2001-02 and between 2009-10 but fell by 1.57 percent between 2010-11 and again between 2014-15. This loss alone in social care funding caused an astonishing 23,662 additional deaths, according to the research findings. The University of York research found that a slowing in life expectancy improvement coincided with the Cameron government’s severe reductions to health and social care spending. Professor Claxton said, “Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that the slowdown in the rate of improvement in life expectancy in England and Wales since 2010 is attributable to spending constraints in the healthcare and social care sectors.” Speaking to the Guardian on the University of York’s’ findings, David Finch, assistant director of healthy lives at the Health Foundation think tank, said even before the COVID-19 pandemic there was “an extremely concerning pattern of stalling life expectancy, particularly in the poorest areas of the country” and subsequently the pandemic had “laid bare the tragic consequences of underlying poor health”. Separate research by Imperial College London (ICL), published in the LancetPublic Health journal just days before the York findings, reached similar conclusions. Analysing all deaths in England between 2002-2019, the ICL researchers found that life expectancy in many working-class communities was declining years prior to the arrival of the pandemic in the UK in early 2020. The research conducted by the ICL is the first of its kind to analyse longevity trends in microscopic detail capable of identifying where life expectancy declined with greater precision than any previously conducted research. A sample of 8.6 million records were analysed by the ICL research team with each record assigned to the community where the person resided at the time of their death. A total of 6,791 local communities were examined and the researchers assessed life expectancy trends over time for each of these almost 7,000 people. The research tracked life expectancy in communities of around 8,000 people, with other research typically based on much larger areas containing some 140,000 subjects. The research reveals how class inequality in UK life expectancy is growing. In 2019, men living in Kensington and Chelsea in London, the wealthiest district in the country, had an average expectancy 27 years longer than that of males living in Blackpool. In the ailing north-west coastal town of Blackpool life expectancy has now fallen beneath 70 years for men and 75 for women. The ICL’s research found that the communities with the lowest life expectancy, just beneath 70 years for men and 75 years for women, are situated in the north of England’s inner cities and social housing estates. In the richest districts of the British capital and across the affluent home counties, the trajectory of growing longevity continues. Simultaneously, life expectancy has fallen fastest in working-class districts in northern cities like Leeds, Newcastle, Manchester and Liverpool. For example, women living in the inner London borough of Camden can expect to live to approximately 95 years of age, almost 21 years longer than women in the working-class communities with the lowest life expectancy in the west Yorkshire city of Leeds. The ICL research discovered that as life expectancy rose across much of the country during the first decade of the 21st century, then beginning an ongoing steep decline in the poorest working-class districts in 2010. The research findings assert that from 2014 until 2019 life expectancy fell in almost one in five communities for females, and one in nine communities for males. The ICL research points out that declines in life expectancy were once rare in wealthier countries like the UK. The existence of the post-war welfare state in Britain, now massively eroded, led to sustained increases in life expectancy. Professor Majid Ezzati from ICL’s School of Public Health told the Independent that this period was at an end: “These data show that longevity has been getting worse for years in large parts of England.” Declines in life expectancy in wealthy countries, explained Ezzati, have previously occurred only during wars and pandemics. “For such declines to be seen in ‘normal times’ before the pandemic is alarming and signals ongoing policy failures to tackle poverty and provide adequate social support and health care.” Further damning research released earlier this month was based on an analysis of official government data by the King’s Fund think tank. The research suggests that disparities in expected lifespan between some of the wealthiest and poorest districts of the country has at least doubled since the early 2000s. “There is a growing chasm in health inequalities revealed by the data,” says Veena Raleigh, a fellow at the think tank. Raleigh continued “Our analysis shows that life expectancy has continued to increase in wealthier areas but has virtually stagnated in deprived areas in the north with the result that the gap in life expectancy between the richest and poorest parts of the country has grown by almost two-and-a-half years over the last two decades.” There is a “deprivation divide” in life expectancy between the more affluent areas in the south of England and poorer areas in the north. As the Kings Fund research findings were released, a report by the Longevity Science Panel (LSP)—a group of doctors, statisticians and NHS leaders—found that male and female life expectancy fell by 1.3 years and 0.9 years respectively in 2020 as a direct result of coronavirus. The LSP warned that possible new variants of COVID, the impact of Long COVID and the delayed diagnosis and treatment caused by an enormous NHS care backlog could still negatively impact the public’s expected lifespans. Speaking on behalf of the LSP, Professor Debora Price, Professor of Social Gerontology at the University of Manchester, said: “The pandemic has plainly exposed the many structural and systemic inequalities in our societies that people live with from day to day and that have become a matter of life and death. Health inequalities have worsened.” This plethora of scientific research, synthesizing data from both the natural and the social sciences, reveals that, in the second decade of the 21st century, life expectancy growth has stalled, stagnated and is now falling precipitously among the working class, in the fifth-richest country on the planet. This health crisis, exacerbated by the pandemic, is first and foremost a class issue. The explosive growth of social inequality over recent decades is the key factor in understanding the disproportionate and devastating impact of reduced life expectancy in working-class communities. The widening of the already huge gap in life expectancy between the classes is one increasingly characterised by stunted lives, early deaths and misery for the working class.
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Post by Admin on Nov 2, 2021 4:00:08 GMT
Did DWP torture this disabled benefit claimant until he died? voxpoliticalonline.com/2021/11/02/did-dwp-torture-this-disabled-benefit-claimant-until-he-died/There are many kinds of torture – not just physical but also psychological. This Writer has to ask whether the Department for Work and Pensions used psychological torture on a disabled benefit claimant by its own failures to carry out its duties properly. DWP officers had left the claimant to be supported by an elderly, disabled parent – his appointee – who also needed daily carers and meals delivered. Departmental guidance states that they should have found another appointee – but they did not do so. Why not? Instead, the claimant’s ESA and PIP were repeatedly stopped due to failure to attend assessments, because letters were sometimes sent to the claimant’s address and sometimes to his parent’s. The benefits were restarted after interventions – but the DWP has apparently lost the evidence showing why the claims had been restarted. There are supposed to be safeguarding procedures to protect vulnerable benefit claimants but – as we discovered after the death of Jodey Whiting – nothing has been done to encourage officers to follow them. In this case, the DWP repeatedly failed to follow its own safeguarding procedures, despite the fact that officers knew the claimant was vulnerable. In addition to physical health problems, this claimant had severe depression. At one point, a sibling contacted the DWP to say that the claimant’s GP had sent them for psychiatric assessment due to a deterioration in their mental health. The sibling explained that they had been to the claimant’s house and found unopened post and said they weren’t fit for a PIP assessment, but another such interview was arranged – by letter. The result was predictable: the claimant didn’t answer the door and their PIP was stopped. The same also happened in relation to their ESA claim. The claimant died – underweight, “unkempt and dirty” – after having been denied ESA for three months and PIP for three weeks. His parent had been providing cash for food, even though that person had their own care package, meals prepared and carers attending daily. The claimant’s sibling complained to the DWP and the government department made a payment of ESA arrears and £3,000 of backdated PIP. Unsatisfied, the sibling took the matter to the Independent Case Examiner, who ruled that a further payment of £10,700 in PIP be paid to the claimant’s estate and a consolatory payment of £2,500 to the family. And a fat lot of good it dead the deceased man! But think how much the DWP saved; one-off payments totalling £16,200 – which included arrears, remember – is much less than might have been handed out if the claimant had remained alive. So I have to ask: did DWP officers deliberately push this claimant to death? They knew he suffered from severe depression but chose to mess him around. Brown envelope phobia is a known phenomenon in which depressed people avoid opening letters from the DWP – so they sent him letters that they knew he would never read. They deliberately failed to find a new appointee, and sent important notifications to the claimant’s former appointee – knowing that he would not be able to read them. Another known behaviour of depressed benefit claimants is aversion to confrontations with DWP-appointed benefits assessors; they believe (justifiably, as many documented cases show) that they’ll be cheated out of payments. But these DWP officers still sent an assessor to this claimant’s address anyway. Is it really credible for them to say they did not expect what happened? Or were they deliberately inflicting psychological torture on a man with severe – mark that: severe – mental health problems? To This Writer, the evidence is clear: the problem at the DWP is systemic – people there are encouraged to ignore their duty of care to claimants. But with the Court of Appeal refusing to allow another inquest in the case of Jodey Whiting, it seems impossible to bring the evidence needed to prove it into the light of day. Is the whole of the UK’s benefit and legal system rigged to push vulnerable people to their deaths and then hide the facts, simply because they happen to be sick and/or have a disability? Source: Disabled claimant died underweight, ‘unkempt and dirty’ after ESA and PIP wrongly stopped | Disability Rights UK
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Post by Admin on Nov 3, 2021 14:04:44 GMT
Philippa Day: Payout after mum died following benefit errorswww.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-59147464The family of a mother who died after a series of errors with her benefits has agreed a "substantial settlement". Philippa Day, 27, was found collapsed at her Nottingham home with a letter rejecting an assessment in August 2019. An inquest heard the way her claim was dealt with was the "predominant factor" in her overdose. The family said the settlement would provide for Miss Day's son, but that nothing can "put right the wrong that contributed to Philippa's death". The exact amount of the settlement has not been disclosed. The inquest heard the authorities who dealt with Miss Day's benefits claim made 28 errors in managing her case. At one point Miss Day, who had been diagnosed with unstable personality disorder, saw her income go down from £228 a week to £60. 'Wall of bureaucracy' The court heard in June, she called the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to say she was "starving" and "couldn't survive like this for much longer". There were failings at both the DWP and contractors Capita, the coroner found. Miss Day's sister, Imogen, said: "Capita's wall of bureaucracy, with no consideration for Philippa's mental state, exacerbated her despair at her debt and poverty. "She was met with cold, uncaring call operators who would not listen to her cries for help. "This settlement will in some measure provide for Philippa's family and a materially stable upbringing for Philippa's son, but he has lost his mother, and there is nothing Capita can do to put right the wrong that contributed to Philippa's death." However, the family said they welcomed an offer to meet with Capita to discuss improvements to their service. Merry Varney, from Leigh Day solicitors - who represented the family - said: "Capita has shown acceptance of their failures and a willingness to ensure their mistakes are not repeated, however there remain too many examples of the DWP, which controls the financial circumstances of the majority of people too sick to work, acting inhumanely to those receiving benefits and a continued resistance by the DWP to transparent investigations into benefit-related deaths. "Until the DWP changes its attitude, people like Philippa and her family remain at risk of gross human rights violations and 'benefit-related deaths' are just another example of preventable deaths of people with disabilities occurring without any proper investigation or scrutiny." 'Concerns over culture' A Capita spokesperson said: "We are very sorry for the mistakes we made in processing Philippa's Personal Independence Payment claim and the additional stress this caused her. "In partnership with the DWP, we have considered and reviewed the coroner's report and we are implementing all the recommendations that are relevant to us. "Following this incident, we have strengthened our processes and we are working to continuously improve and deliver a professional, efficient and kind service for every PIP applicant we assess." In response to the regulation 28 Prevention of Future Death (PFD) report stemming from the inquest, the DWP wrote to coroner Gordon Clow and pledged to ensure all of its staff handling PIP and employment and support allowance (ESA) would undertake training in mental health, behaviour and relationships as well as "supporting vulnerable customers". Following a Freedom of Information request by the BBC Shared Data Unit, the DWP said all of its 7,000 staff had received the training by the end of June "other than a small number absent for reasons such as maternity leave and therefore not currently working in the business". Imogen Day described the training as a "positive step", but said she continued to "have concerns over the culture at DWP, which the coroner referred to as showing a lack of compassion". A DWP spokesperson said: "Our condolences remain with the Day family." Benefits assessor pays off family of dead claimant – is this the new trend?voxpoliticalonline.com/2021/11/03/benefits-assessor-pays-off-family-of-dead-claimant-is-this-the-new-trend/Is this the new fashion for the Department for Work and Pensions and its privately-hired assessors: pay off the families of people who have died and sweep their cases under the carpet? Philippa Day is the second deceased benefit claimant this week whose case is being ended with a payment by one of the organisations involved in pushing her to her death. This time, benefit assessor Capita is paying up in an out-of-court settlement after Ms Day’s family started a lawsuit. In the other case, the DWP itself paid more than £16,000 to family members of another claimant after being ordered to do so by an Independent Case Examiner (ICE). Coroner Gordon Clows delivered a damning indictment of Capita and the DWP at the inquest into Ms Day’s death in January this year. He said her mental illness had been “exacerbated” by the way her benefits were processed: “Were it not for this problem, it is not likely that she would have [taken the act which ended her life].” And he said a lot more. See This Site’s previous article – here – for all the damning details. Now Capita is paying an undisclosed amount – out of court – meaning there will be no UK court verdict against the organisation or the Department for Work and Pensions to show that they drove a vulnerable woman to her death. Do you think that is fair? I don’t. Nor, it seems does solicitor Merry Varney, who acted for the Day family on behalf of law firm Leigh Day. She said: “Capita has shown acceptance of their failures and a willingness to ensure their mistakes are not repeated, however there remain too many examples of the DWP, which controls the financial circumstances of the majority of people too sick to work, acting inhumanely to those receiving benefits and a continued resistance by the DWP to transparent investigations into benefit related deaths. “Until the DWP changes its attitude, people like Philippa and her family remain at risk of gross human rights violations and ‘benefit related deaths’ are just another example of preventable deaths of people with disabilities occurring without any proper investigation or scrutiny.” Somebody needs to take a court case through to the end. Otherwise the DWP and its assessment firms will keep dodging responsibility for the thousands of deaths they are causing. Source: Capita pays compensation to family of woman who died after benefits cut | Welfare | The Guardian
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Post by Admin on Nov 12, 2021 15:28:58 GMT
How Has A Decade Of Austerity Impacted People’s Human Rights? By Abigail Asabea-Appiah, Arts Emergency Intern 10 Nov 2021 eachother.org.uk/how-has-a-decade-of-austerity-impacted-peoples-human-rights/Since 2010, the government has cut billions of pounds from the social security system, council budgets, housing subsidies and public services as part of its austerity programme. With the chancellor Rishi Sunak declaring a new “age of optimism” in his recent budget – signalling the government’s intention to end the era of austerity – Abigail Asabea-Appiah explores the impact austerity has had on people’s rights over the past decade.
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Post by Admin on Nov 17, 2021 20:25:04 GMT
Poorest will miss out as plans to cap care costs are quietly watered down Changes ‘sneaked out under a cloud of Tory sleaze’ says Labour Rob Merrick Deputy Political Editor www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/social-care-cap-johnson-means-test-b1959542.htmlMinisters have quietly watered down plans for a cap on social care costs — a move that experts warn will hit the poorest hardest and could leave some paying twice as much. Under proposals to be voted on by MPs next week, the £86,000 threshold on costs will only count direct contributions and not any means-tested money received from the state. That makes it likely that only wealthier people will benefit from the cap. The decision risks alienating new Tory voters in former “red wall” areas, who will miss out while the assets of rich southern households are protected.
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Post by Admin on Nov 19, 2021 17:05:54 GMT
DWP assessment contracts will see another £2 billion handed to outsourcing giants By John Pring on 18th November 2021 Category: Benefits and Poverty www.disabilitynewsservice.com/dwp-assessment-contracts-will-see-another-2-billion-handed-to-outsourcing-giants/The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is set to hand profit-making organisations another £2 billion to assess disabled people for their benefits over just five years, government documents have revealed. The new details are contained in a contract notice published by DWP last Friday, which provides fresh information about DWP’s plans for its assessment system over the five years from 2023. Outsourcing companies will soon be submitting bids to win five regional contracts covering Great Britain and Northern Ireland, although one of those contracts will be managed by Northern Ireland’s Department for Communities. The other contracts will be split into northern England and Scotland; the Midlands and Wales; south-west England; and London, south-east England and East Anglia. The successful supplier in each region will be expected to carry out both personal independence payment (PIP) assessments and work capability assessments (WCAs), although in Scotland PIP will be replaced by the new adult disability payment, which will be run by the Scottish government. As reported by Disability News Service (DNS) two months ago, DWP’s decision to commission a single supplier to provide all assessments in each part of the country means the discredited government contractor Atos could soon be carrying out “fitness for work” tests again. Six years ago, Atos withdrew from its WCA contract following years of negative publicity and multiple links between the actions of the company and its staff and the deaths of disabled claimants. Information released to DNS last year showed that, between April 2010 and April 2019, DWP paid its three PIP and WCA contractors – Atos, Capita and Maximus – nearly £2.3 billion over nine years, although significant sums were not spent on PIP assessments until 2014-15. Atos, Maximus and Capita have all faced significant and repeated criticism over their performance through the last decade. In 2018-19, the government paid the three contractors about £400 million. The new contract notice shows that the new northern England and Scotland contract will be worth £648 million over five years; the Midlands and Wales contract will be worth about £475 million; the south-west England contract £340 million; the London, south-east England and East Anglia contract will be worth about £400 million; and the successful bidder for the Northern Ireland contract will be paid about £105 million. These figures suggest that spending on assessments will not rise significantly and may even fall slightly in real terms. This could be because of a greater use of virtual rather than face-to-face assessments, and an increasing proportion of assessments carried out only on the paperwork. The government’s Shaping Future Support green paper suggested in July that DWP wanted to make greater use of “triaging”, making early decisions on more “straightforward” claims so claimants only have to go through face-to-face assessments “if absolutely necessary”. It also said that it would test a simplified application process for those disabled people who are not terminally ill, but who have “severe and lifelong conditions that will not improve”, are “unlikely ever to work again”, and will “always need extra financial support to live independently”. Both these moves could potentially cut the amount DWP will need to spend on the assessment process. But the green paper also strongly hinted at the need to cut spending on disability benefits so that the system was “more affordable in the future”. And work and pensions secretary Therese Coffey admitted to DNS at her party’s annual conference last month that merging PIP with universal credit as a further cost-cutting measure was also “on the table”. Meanwhile, the new minister for disabled people, Chloe Smith, has provided further details about a pilot programme that is testing how to bring the services that deliver the WCA and PIP assessments into a new, single digital service, presumably in time for the start of the new contracts in 2023. The assessments in the pilot area are being carried out by healthcare professionals employed by the Australian multinational outsourcing giant Advanced Personnel Management, whose founder Megan Wynne was described only last week as Australia’s newest billionaire after her company was floated on the Australian stock exchange. Smith told her shadow, Labour’s Vicky Foxcroft, that the pilot was being carried out in a small area of north London, and currently involved 71 employment and support allowance claimants, 810 universal credit claimants and 1,422 PIP claimants. DWP told DNS yesterday (Wednesday) that the claimants live in the E5, N2, N3, N4 and N6 postcode areas, which cover two areas of north and north-east London.
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Post by Admin on Nov 22, 2021 12:26:56 GMT
Britain’s Inhumane Benefits System Is Giving People PTSD Smile, you’re on universal credit. by Jay Watts 19 November 2021 novaramedia.com/2021/11/19/britains-inhumane-benefits-system-is-giving-people-ptsd/If you want to screw up someone’s mental health, there is a basic four-part formula. First, you deprive the person of the means to feel safe. Second, you lower their status in relation to other people. Third, you make them feel that the reasons for their predicament are their fault. Fourth, you deprive them of a space outside this situation to see what is going on. This sounds like a dystopian fantasy, but it is the lived reality of many benefits claimants; and it is, demonstrably, making people both sick and sicker. What evidence is there for this claim? And why is now a pivotal moment in deciding whether what happens next makes the situation better or worse? First, the evidence. Welfare has been grossly underfunded for years. It is difficult to emphasise how bad the situation is. It is common to hear of claimants having to choose between feeding the kids, or themselves, or turning the fridge off to quickly switch the heating on. The baseline shame and anxiety of not having the means to live with a sense of dignity had been dampened somewhat by the £20 increase in universal credit that started during the pandemic. However, this is being removed at the very moment when inflation and living costs are on the rise, plunging even more households into poverty. This means that the cancellation of the uplift is in effect a down lift, a double-cut; and one that makes a joke of the government’s stated interest in mental health. Why? Well, psychological precarity and social precarity are inextricably intertwined with one another, meaning that equity of means must be the first step in any coherent mental health policy. Second, it is not only that income on universal credit will decrease relative to current income; it is that income will decrease for some but increase for others. This is because the government is fudging what it has repeatedly been told will be a disaster by implementing an increase for people on universal credit who are in work via changing the taper level. Whilst it is fantastic that working people on benefits will receive more, the move widens the gap between the working poor and – by virtue of the provision change – the workless who are treated as worth less. This has dangerous connotations of the strivers versus skivers discourse which continues to wreak havoc not only on welfare provision but claimants’ minds. This brings us to the third point. Psychological warfare. The way that welfare policy now governs claimants is not just via denying them the means to live comfortably, something that is rather bizarrely conceptualised as ‘incentivising’ claimants to seek work more earnestly. Welfare governmentality also works by injecting precarity into the psyche because it doesn’t allow for a situation to be as it is. It insists on constant upward trajectory, the core neoliberal fantasy, which is not only exhausting and demoralising but maddening when there are no jobs to be had, or someone remains too ill to work. Being on benefits, now, is more than a full-time job, because it’s near impossible to turn off as a demand. The practical demands for constant updates and activities, such as applying for multiple jobs you know you won’t get and aren’t well enough to do, are bad enough. But the psychological violence is even worse. As Lynne Friedli and Robert Stearn showed in a landmark paper, the DWP now demands an upbeat, go-getting mentality where any psychological traits that are deemed market-unsuitable, such as despair, are to be excised; the cost of not doing this is punishment via sanctions. Many claimants have welfare-induced PTSD as a consequence; fluctuating between anxious self-states trying to meet the requirements of government, hypervigilance at being judged as deficient or fraudulent, and depressive collapses as the moral accusation that the system implies starts to be felt personally. Mental illness, at its core, thrives via attacking the self: “You’re a terrible person”, “no one believes you”, “you’re a failure”. If environments that we live in send out these messages, sooner or later we internalise them and enact them on ourselves via thoughts, or inner voices. The net consequence? Both individuals and society become sick or sicker. That is unless we have a space outside what is being done to us to see our situation and depersonalise it in which case we can keep our sense of self safer for that bit longer. Sick of cuts. The state, however, has drastically cut access to these spaces. They have done this, most crucially, by cutting funding for disabled people’s organisations and community infrastructure. They have also done this via the neoliberalisation of mental health provision, the traditional last refuge for those most let down by society. In a fury of producing ever quicker, faster and cheaper talking therapies to mop up the mental damage of neoliberalism, the government has drawn funding away from those most in need. It is very difficult, now, to access a space where one can speak freely. Instead, the tasks of therapy are often pre-written by therapy protocols, the funding of which derives from a fiscal promise – to be cost-efficient by getting people back to work – which shapes goals. A similar ideology is central to the recovery agenda which now dominates mental health ideology. Again, the overwhelming emphasis is on that ultimate neoliberal fantasy, constant upward progression which in this case means discharge from mental health services via recovery colleges, for people who often need what was once available – proper long-term support. Many people have relapsed, been hospitalised or attempted suicide as a consequence. Despite all this, disabled people’s organisations have perhaps never been more active, with social media aiding the distribution of what psychiatric survivors have long argued for, a renewed social model of disability (and indeed madness). With public attitudes having considerably softened to the unemployed, a pattern we saw emerging even before the pandemic, and younger generations passionate about mental health, we have a real opportunity to create a levelling agenda that puts dignity first and fiscal contribution… well nowhere near any discussion of what it means to be valuable as a human being. To do this, we have to join up the dots in public thinking to ensure everyone clearly knows that if you suppress people’s means to survive, you suppress their spirit and make society sicker. Jay Watts is a psychiatric survivor, activist and consultant clinical psychologist.
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