UK: Disability benefits (UC, ESA and PIP) - news and updates 2024 and 2025

THANKYOU @Suffolkres thankyou, I will need to read this when its easier.

Spoiler: Here is what I know about OH & OT of the UK * variety

Here is what I know about Occupational Health and Occupational Therapy of the UK variety

I gather that Occupational Health Medicine, like Sports and Vetinary Medicines can provide knowledge and insights on atypical symptoms not usually recognised when seen in other clinics eg occupational hazards like sensitisation to traces of a substance due to long exposure at work.

As often happens with hazards, scant attention is available for such hazards in the home and when the workplace is someone else's home.

Some jobs require OH assessments before they can be allocated or reasonably adjusted for a disability, or resumed after absence, or medically retired from with entitled disability income.

Some jobs require regular re-assessment for medical fitness and/or regular testing investigation for toxic hazards at work.

The OH assessor can be biased in favour of the employer, less likely to be biased in favour of the employee unless paid to mount their application, or else truly independent. Either way anyone who disagrees can be called a softie or draconian. In dispute its a higly unpleasant arena

It seems to be one of those jobs its is cheaper to pay a substitute to do when expanding the market. So in the UK some iffy international corporations collared the new market in "Advisory" welfare assessment for work-capacity and work-rehab.

These corps employed a motley assortment of lesser qualified beings and gave them biasing bonuses to strike people out of life-support which cull provided the bulk-funding Govt (UK) with customer satisfaction (in return for good custom)

It would be so much more effective to stop with the bulk-funded subsidy and let the the consumer choose their provider

In the UK it looks like the self-identified Physician Associates are a new, ambitious and misleading profession, self-identified by themselves or by their cheapskate employers.

Once ganged up they all made some exaggerated claims but were headed off at the pass by the Membership of a Royal College of Physicians, after the lethal boo-boos began.

The RCP Executive, being too thick, got headed off too.

I gather the Physician Associates can do well within strict limits, are fine if not over-challenged, need medical supervison for that, and also operate in the USA.

I doubt they can provide a cheapo substitute for the Doctors of Occupational Health Medicine who do the occupational risk assessments, but I am sure the corps don't mind if they do

Truly there is no profit in a Govt welfare contract - nor in a privatised national utility contract - providing the essential commodities of life affordably for everyone in need. Its just an excuse to trade assets and borrow lots of dosh.

benefits to styoicalsymptoms sorts Medicine

On the other hand there are many things an Occupational Health Therapist may be employed to do outside of the "integrated" heath and community-care services".

In real-time it may make so much sense to scale up the occupational therapies, give these highly skilled therapists full scope for all their skills, include music and art therapy, all done by qualified therapists, and with physiotherapy for the wear and tear etc

Cognitive Behaviour Therapists might be a little ashamed if asked to publicly displace provision for the occupational health of the bodies in question and on a national scale swamping their OWN field giving other fields nary a look in.

Their professional body (British Psychological Society) needs to agree a protocol with those of the other trades attending to the Save Britain campaign, we are but a small island.

Other small islands are being flooded already, we will have more than the doorstepping spectre of mass unemployment and destitution to worry about when the sea rises

This is no time for hogging the trough. The Faculty of Occupational Health does not sound like the professional body of the Occupational Therapists (OTs)

Is it another conglomerated health-advisory assessor agency moving out of its own sector to feast on the unemployed rather than help keep them in work ? ?

Like the profiteering contractors doing the work-capacity assessments.


HOW DID THIS

BECOME THIS

I DON'T KNOW, ASK mR rILEY

Spoiler: capital letters

White Paper on biggest reforms to employment support for a generation published today, backed by £240 million investment

THANKYOU

Jobcentres transformed across Great Britain and every young person to have access to an apprenticeship, quality training and education opportunities

ABOUT TIME. BRILLIANT, WILL THAT BE A 6-MONTH , A 2YR , OR A 4YR APRENTICESHIP

HAVE YOU FOUND A FEW THOUSAND BREXITBRITISH BUILDERS YET - OR SUNK ALL THE BOATS

THE TRADE ONLY JUST CAUGHT UP WITH EACH DEFLATED HOME-OWNER'S POSTPONED PERSONAL REPAIR-AND-MAINTAIN PROGRAM IN TIME FOR THE EMERGENCY CALL-OUTS TO EASE OFF IN TIME FOR A XMAS BREAK FOR REAL ON A NATIONAL SCALE SUCH IS THE DEFLATION OF RAMPANT INFLATUON

Mental health support to be expanded and extra capacity deployed to reduce waiting lists in areas with highest levels of inactivity

AH YES WELL ... NEAT ... HOW KIND THE SOUND .... I DON'T SUPPOSE THE POST-PANDEMIC RESeARCH FUNDING IS ALSO DEDICATED TO SOME BACK-TO-WORK PROGRAM IN DISGUISE ... PLEASE RE-DEDICATE TO SCIENCE, TA

the pot just gets bigger and bigger, avid, oi-oi-oi the NHS waiting list does not map onto the DWP unemployment register nor vanish with it, how dare you shout out that i am slightly mentally disturbed and need a small behavioural modification to get back to work slipped invisibly in under long-term-conditions, surely a masterpiece, and you gutted the NHS further for this ?

spend is on CBT not on ME / CFS, ps is this jobs for BACme or jobs for PwME

Measures announced in White Paper will fuel growth as Government rebuilds Britain in a decade of national renewal

THIS IS SO TRUE NO 2 WAYS ABOUT IT PREPARE FOR THE TEETHING PROBLEMS OF RADICAL INADVERTENCE STORMING IN STOLE THE SHOW ..... DO OR DIE....RENEW THE FIRST NATION

Unfotunate graphic

How we do things around here MyWayMyReality the WorkWays for delivery of purpose in ME/CFS Delivery Plan UK LetsDoIt

Long Term Conditions are included with the minor perturbances of life. Major mental illness won't get a look in since its budget was diverted to scale up the Talking Therapy. The Royal COllege of Psychiatrists got quite upset about that. The police took up the slack but were not consulted. And the Municipal Bourough Councils also rebelled - but by then the take-down was under way

(And the Municipal Bourough Councils also rebelled - but by then the take-down was under way)

Support in Long Term Conditions used to be advertised as a district nursing service except no-one paid the service for it so it never happened except on paper. I was so excited. It was so exciting. At last I thought. So looOoong promised. Here it comes....

I am bamboozled by the muddle ...

 

I have just gone through the Universal Credit managed migration process.

I am educated to postgraduate level and have a carer and had the comprehensive Benefits and Work guide. I still found the process unnecessarily confusing with regards to what needed to happen when and how long I had.

I received my Universal Credit decision 7th January.

It was initially wrong and missed off the transitional payment. This was spotted and corrected while I was still looking up the relevant info and regs for a journal note.


Today, 8th January, I received a call from the council to tell me that: because I am now on Universal Credit and not ESA, the transitional payment to make up the difference, so i am no worse off on UC than on ESA, counts as an income and means I no longer qualify for 100% council tax exemption. I now only get 60% discount on my council tax - with no extra income to pay the rest and no warning that I am now liable for 40% of my council tax and will be receiving an updated bill in the next 24 hours.

As I am registered for e-billing I should have enough time to set up a direct debit so that I can spread this year's payment over the next three months.

Fortunately I already have a meeting with my MP on Friday to discuss the DWP.

 

That's interesting. (And infuriating!) I've never qualified for 100% council tax exemption due to being on income related ESA. I get the single person discount, but have paid a proportion of my council tax for the whole time I've been on i-ESA.

I will, apparently, qualify for full exemption later this year if I apply for pension credit—which I will, apparently, qualify for even though I have a small occupational pension.

I'll believe that when I see it.

 

This is utter madness. Why on earth are they giving with one hand and taking away with another.

I'm sorry that you have had to deal with that @Kitty

I need to check if I still qualify for exemption of prescription costs as I have an unnerving feeling I don't any more, which could be expensive as an asthmatic. Taxing those on the absolute lowest income and those with a disability that makes it hard to breathe. Genius.

I get zero help with housing costs, but was told I could take out a loan to cover the interest on my mortgage which is recouped from your estate when you die.

So if you are already on benefits and only able to pay the interest in your mortgage, you can take out another loan and pay interest on that as well, thus making money on the poorest people twice. I really do despair at humanity some days.

 

Don't worry, it's not something I really thought about! With the combined impact of the change from Council Tax Benefit to Council Tax Support and year-on-year cuts to local authority budgets, it just hadn't occurred to me it would still be possible for people of working age to get full exemption.

Our local authority apparently used to subsidise it fully for people on means tested benefits. Some years ago they decided they could no longer afford it, and reduced the subsidy. As I understand it, councils set their own rules about this; they have to find money from their own budgets to fund whatever concessions they offer to low-income working age households. Since the introduction of Council Tax Support, some councils may never have offered much to people outside protected groups.

I only have to pay 20% of my liability, so we're still better off than some. However, the council ran a consultation last summer on further changes, and most eligible people are expecting to pay more. The council will probably end up spending as much on pursuing debt from folk who've got bugger all for the bailiffs to confiscate anyway as they did on subsidising those same people.

 

Spoiler: I am not sure that the spirit of the law can be eviscerated

I am not sure that the spirit of the law can be eviscerated

But who has read all the law of the original welfare state (UK) and also followed all its convoluted evisceration to say it was all illegal. To this day I cannot understand why the countryside was not up in arms when the supported minimum income for unemployment was reduced by a third for anyone under 25yrs of age in the 1990s (with or without a disability)

I think it was a third. Anyway it was pegged at least £10 less than it had been. And that was the first time since WW2 that anyone entitled to the benefit of a welfare-state-income was expected to live on £10 less than the minimum necessary. Being younger doesnt mean you dont need to eat as much, let alone skip a weeks food every week. We all know that.

But did we all know the youngest adults were being deprived ? And now do we all know that the next impoverished generation won't get the top-up of our own transitional "legacy", so they will all be all the more deprived. Not provision for progeny in perpetuity from cradle to grave then. Not for them. Not by this maverick design

I note that the removal of various provision for extra need began the same year that the last of the adult ww2 generation had retired (the warriors and their womenfolk), then the government dared to pick on the young (their grandchildren) ... for starters. Thats what happened to their welfare state, the welfare they voted for after a world war after a world depression but we can't outwait another depressed war to get the welfare state back in shape

The first provisons to be yanked off the needy were the grant for a missing blanket and the little bit of weekly top-up for extra costs that mount up after a year of unemployment unable to replace things - it was still available but only to those with a medical exemption

 

DWP gives update on PIP reforms for those with back, joint and muscle conditions

DWP gives update on PIP reforms for those with back, joint and muscle conditions

 

"17 Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) across England will share part of a £3.5million package to improve care services for musculoskeletal conditions."
So thats £206,000 per care board, that won't go very far.

"Each area in England and Wales is set to receive up to £300,000 to improve services"
So some areas will get less than £206,000 then.

"This multi-million-pound funding boost"
It's £3.5m so just about multi-million.

 

So about 41p a patient tops?



They won't all have musculoskeletal problems, but even so...at best you're looking at someone teaching patients to draw a circle round themselves and shout I REFUSE TO HAVE BACKACHE.

 

Its shaved down even further:

The divvy-up is a part of £3,5000,000.

Is the other part to retrain the office stafff as in the other NHS enhancement rollout?
So who gets the other part? Which part is which? Lets see the evidenced evidential (2024) Pathway for musculoskeletal diagnosis and subcontracting for how many physios, OTs and wheelchairs x17

"17 Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) across England will share part of a £3.5million package to improve care services for musculoskeletal conditions."

This PR exercise must do the window-dressing for the Daily Record, so it decided to bulk up what looked mean to our government too.

Inserting "part of" £3,500,000, and "up to" £300,000, taking the people for fools again. The governing wisdom will not take people for fools.

 

Funny how a population was bred up out of mass destitution then lifted out of yesteryears' mass destitution where landlords do rent-collection and eviction with knuckle-dusters on, and a debtor rotted in prison while their family rotted at the gate of the poor-house, so for ever after even in a kinder world, at the end of a long life one would not switch on the gas-fire, 6 inches from the national grid, but died of hypothermia for fear of debt, and Mrs Thatcher said let them wear nightcaps in bed then, some even clapped, some even rioted, or was it let them eat cake, hard to tell, but yes I was raised in a whole population born and bred refusing to have backache

Entrained by pain and pleasure to refuse to have backache and refuse to let anyone else have it and lets keep going or else its back to destitution, also its the virtue not the vice

I think raising the retirement age and making it harder to get early medical retirement let alone exemption for a damaged back made sure we all got that message. Terror.

Spoiler: the final solution to all NHS musculo-skelatal retail problems and more

The same demand was made of and by the French Government so the French objected, as usual more than the English, but where did that get them? I want eveyone everywhere entitled to the sheer benefit of an adequate income to choose their own musculo-skeletal services. Market forces.

Take all bulk budgets off the bulk ICS contractors et al then divvy it up between the people the iCS did deprive, the service users, by now in dire need of a disinterested musculoskeletal service, every bulk care-in-the-community budget, adds up to more than 41p person, take the GP bulk budgets away too and add that to the income support, let our chosen GPs bill us, stop them pleasing the bulk funders instead, let our ICBs evidentially accredit, monitor, regulate and and discipline our NHS-accredited NHS-professions, stop buying them instead, let us do the buying we are eminenty capable of buying our own services

 

I don't think that even framing this as pissing in the wind gives it justice. Way too substantial by comparison.

Though it is kind of funny that they name this garbage getting it right the first time when it's far from the first time they try something like this, and that it's basically the same crap they try every time.

Honestly this is so detached from reality it should meet the criteria for psychotic delusions.

 

I don't even care to do the math here, but I'm assuming that such a pitance wouldn't even cover the cost of sending everyone to LP. And they'll be getting just as much out of it whatever they do anyway.

Frankly they'd probably get more out of that money by just buying everyone Playstation 5s (or is it Playstations 5?). And boy do I wish I were kidding here.

 

Forget sending people anywhere, the amount of money is under a third of that needed to send them an invitation - not the paper, envelope, any staff, absolutely nothing, apart from roughly a third of the postage cost.

 

It is very sad that the Getting It Right First Time was the model for the previous Transformation Program now replaced by the current one, and as models go it was a very good model, like the Altogether Better models from 15yrs ago

This centrally ordained GIRFT model was professed by local Health Trusts in charge and eg in the Mental Health Sector the due procedure for rapid intervention in a crisis was spelt out and also the Trusts were all charged to prevent else duly investigate the ongoing undeniable incidents and deaths which had over 10 years amounted to an enormous bill for compensation, an unbelievably big chunk out of the Budget remaining for a health service

thats what didnt happen, but it was spelt out

 

@Maat knows more about the NHS Patient Strategy that is supported by this GIRFT Litigation Team - which team aims to reduce the current and future grievous and also lethal harms and damages done - to keep the bill down

This Litigation Team issued the advisory to treat complaints seriously and and do the Serious Investigations (medical and clinical)

They will need to assess the safety of getting people with ME / CFS and Long Covid onto NHS "back to health and work" rehab programs without risk assesment and in revolt against NG 206, and applying sanctions stupidly, under the NHS not even according us the right name so obviously very very bolshy and arrogating

The DWP and NHS and SS programs are obviously integrated

The current NHS compensation bill is aout £8 billion I think. The figures are given.

The orthopaedic incidents did get reduced by this Litigation team working with Orthopaedic Departments

GIRFT’s litigation work supports NHS Patient Safety Strategy

July 29, 2019

One of the key objectives from the new NHS Patient Safety Strategy – enhanced learning from litigation – is being supported by the GIRFT programme

The GIRFT litigation workstream shares data on litigation claims and their costs with NHS trusts with the aim of working with clinicians and managers to determine how clinical practice could improve and reducing the potential for future litigation

GIRFT encourages trusts to review claims as serious incidents and triangulate the learning from claims, incidents, complaints and inquests.

Clinical staff should be involved in the review of these claims and the lessons learned should be shared in morbidity and mortality meetings as well as other departmental meetings so that no opportunity for learning is missed

Since implementing the review of claims through the GIRFT orthopaedic visits and the litigation data packs, there has been a year-on-year fall in orthopaedic claims volume

New guide helps NHS trusts improve patient safety by learning from clinical negligence claims

May 7, 2021

GIRFT litigation data packs for medical and surgical specialties are shared with trusts to encourage the

triangulation of learning from claims, incidents, complaints and inquests

In particular, since implementing the review of claims through the GIRFT orthopaedic visits and the litigation data packs, there has been a fall in orthopaedic claims volume.

John Machin
Clinical Co-Lead for Litigation

 

er,...so it seems possible that all of them (DWP, NHS, etc.) may pursue us, in an attempt to force us back into the workforce regardless of any ill effects on our health, and my only option is to sue them, obviously after I'm dead, as nothing else constitutes 'harm' in the opinion of the people appointed to judge such things, the very same people causing 'harm' in the first place.

..and even then it's a bit dubious whether dying from the consequences of all this 'healthy work' would actually be 'harm', medically speaking. Obviously it might be a bit of a problem for career progression, in some jobs, being deceased could impact a persons earning ability.

 

these are medico-legal lawyers, same for DWP and SS legal teams, they will have no trouble understanding the evidence of the research that does not substantiate the rehab claims made

so which are the shoddy papers most typical of each type of shoddy research error, each type of shoddy error to to be defined in a nutshell, with a paragraph to show the specifics

so many papers got taken apart here, most of that analysis work is done, can they be selected and shortlisted for a presentation of - most evidentially - nonsense which no legal team would want to rely on

and any Judge specialising in medical contentions would agree on the eviidence to stop all that relies upon shoddy research for a contentious evidence base, but it maybe need not come to that

maybe the ethics committees can comment, I guess there are plenty of other professionals with a view too

it is a medical dispute over the medical exemption from work and exercise, over umpteen medical certificates, over NICE provisos and a 3-pronged UK delivery plan which belongs to the wider ME / CFS community

 

legal disputes are not good for the health (though it can be done for one, as can casework and advocacy). I want to find another way.

Wonko said: ↑
er,...so it seems possible that all of them (DWP, NHS, etc.) may pursue us, in an attempt to force us back into the workforce regardless of any ill effects on our health, and my only option is to sue them, obviously after I'm dead, as nothing else constitutes 'harm' in the opinion of the people appointed to judge such things, the very same people causing 'harm' in the first place.

..and even then it's a bit dubious whether dying from the consequences of all this 'healthy work' would actually be 'harm', medically speaking. Obviously it might be a bit of a problem for career progression, in some jobs, being deceased could impact a persons earning ability.
Click to expand...

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obviously we cannot be forced back to the workforce and mass destitution must not ensue, these institutional litigation teams need to start thinking about how to defend eveyone, to preclude litigation - not pile in - and this NHS Team have exactly that remit, it might or might not be a sign of the times, they worked with orthopaedics on re-standardising safe practices, they can work with our motley assortment of NHS clinics too: because its our NHS clinics that evidence the need for the vital disability income, and the vital medical exemptions, which can stop us being pushed around by threats

if NHS Legal Teams with remit to preclude harm and its compensations, if they have the research review that slamdunk states the case - against being blinded by science to endorse the contentions - who knows. I want no argument. I want my right to live in peace and prosper at my own rate, endorsed

We are NHS clients and the NHS Litigation Team's professed aim is to prevent incidents so these legal NHS champions can do the diplomacy given the research evidence and a demo of the NICE findings, then render the legal advice to all concerned, to reduce and minimise and prevent both the harms otherwise done by institutions

- our very motley clinics need to protect us. Its the legal advice on the medical science will help clear their minds

If we go down we go down in good company, its still unthinkable

People with higer levels of disability probably need the NHS-Continuing-Care budget paid directly as entitled, and as otherwise its paid to sub-contracted nursing homes which the GPs would prefer but there you go, can't have everything

At lesser levels too, people need the subsidised disability income to to stay at home and nurse themselves and/or be nursed in their own homes with the program already pioneered just needs adapting for ME / CFS: for the home-hospitals, virtual clinics, wearable monitors and outreach clinics - provided as already pioneered just needs adapting as we can well explain how, systematically.

get the plans clear because we do not fit into the long term condition bracket, nor the musculoskeletal, nor the physio and rehab bracket, there is a budget being wasted on contracts with people supposed to have us on their books but they have not a clue and wont be told

I am sure the institutions can sort it all out without disturbing our peace again

There are people in our community who can still salvage a more active life, choice would solve most problems

The Courts in the past WERE willing to make the findings required when ME / CFS was denied and contended, the legal matter is quite clear if not obscured. A clear matter need not come to court.

see @tuppence post confIrming that (on the Maeve Boothby O'Neil thread)

ill people are better not advised to fight for their rights, its not appropriate. I don't know what capacity the M.E charities now have for advocacy but an advocate can show an institution the way to go - its an advocacy strategy to propose a destination as with a destination its much easier for everyone to work out how to get there

It can take just one effective professional to get an institution to back off. Do you have any recourse to a caseworker to take up any issue as may arise ? Or is it only a doctor who might intervene on your behalf, if and when the need arises ?