Charities are missing the point – disability benefit assessments were designed to fail

Andy

Andy

Retired committee member
Another significant report, this time by Z2K, has just been published by yet another well-meaning charity, demonstrating once again the numbers of chronically ill and disabled people suffering, due to the policies of this dangerous neoliberal, extreme right-wing Conservative government. The difficulty is, we’ve heard it all before…

How many more reports will we see, all telling the same story, whilst totally missing the point?

I have been researching this subject for very nearly ten years, to the point where there are some academics who acknowledge me as the lead independent researcher in the UK regarding the American corporate influence with UK social policies.

But, does anyone in the disabled community or charity sector take any notice of the vast amount of evidence exposed over the years? Seemingly not, as demonstrated by the conclusions to these many reports which are invariably wrong because they are concentrating on the wrong priorities.
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https://welfareweekly.com/charities-are-missing-the-point-benefit-assessments-were-designed-to-fail/
 
I agree that the major UK disability charities often seem to misunderstand some of the ideological aspect to some of the recent disability cuts, but I wonder if Stewart is a bit too strong in the opposite way here, downplaying the desire for cost-cutting and over-emphasising the corrupting influence of the insurance industry. To me, it seems likely that the insurance industry has been able to influence government policy largely because their interests tie so neatly with a desire to cut spending.
 
I think we have known this for years .the british governments have been using these assessments to simply beat the long term sick and disabled into no longer applying for benefits if they have any other possible support system . they are continually trying to abnegate any social responsibilities after all m thatcher said what many tories believe that there is no such thing as society the thatcher Reagan policies of I am alright jack sod everyone else are very much alive and rushing civilisation to the gutter .
 
Feature, not a bug.

The cruel and arbitrary nature of it is a deliberate signal to the rest of society that this could happen to them if they don't submit.

Exactly the same is happening here in Australia. Government by extortion and intimidation and neglect.

All in our best interests, of course.
 
Modern day equivalent of the workhouse. Superficially it gives “normal” Society - aka Middle England comfort that some form of safety net exists. In reality it is to make things as hard as possible to access and stay in and scare the shit out of ordinary people so they only use it when desperate.

My Grandad said the old folks he knew used to call the local workhouse the Bastile
 
7 PwME met MP last week to discuss what he can do to support us.

All had experienced problems with obtaining benefits which none of us had ever expected to need.

All, except one, had been working full time when struck by ME (I include a full time child ‘working’ at school in that). So previously, all tax and NI paying members of society, who never thought they were going to need to rely on state assistance.
 
Most of this article seems to be taken from here (by Mo Stewart):
https://www.researchgate.net/public...table_harm_and_the_Work_Capability_Assessment

see also https://www.s4me.info/threads/government-and-insurance-companies-establishing-the-bps-model.2319/

also:
Blaming the victim, all over again: Waddell and Aylward’s biopsychosocial (BPS) model of disability
Abstract
The biopsychosocial model (BPS) of mental distress, originally conceived by American psychiatrist George Engel in the 1970s and commonly used in psychiatry and psychology, has been adapted by Gordon Waddell and Mansel Aylward to form the theoretical basis for current UK government thinking on disability. Most importantly, the Waddell and Aylward version of the BPS has played a key role as the government has sought to reform spending on out-of-work disability benefits. This article critiques Waddell and Aylward’s model, examining its origins, its claims and the evidence it employs. We argue that its potential for genuine interdisciplinary cooperation and the holistic and humanistic benefits for disabled people as envisaged by Engel are not now, if they ever have been, fully realised. Any potential benefit it may have offered has been eclipsed by its role in Coalition/Conservative government social welfare policies that have blamed the victim and justified restriction of entitlements.
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http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0261018316649120
 
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