United Kingdom: Department of Work and Pensions (DWP)

[Andy]

Ministers should consider abolishing the Department for Work and Pensions after its failure to help ill and disabled people out of poverty, a leading thinktank has said.

Most of the work of Amber Rudd’s department could be carried out more effectively by other Whitehall ministries, according to a report by Demos.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/jan/19/abolish-work-and-pensions-department-demos-thinktank

Will the Department for Work and Pensions ever be capable of delivering a pathway from poverty for ill and disabled people? That’s the dangerous question asked by Demos Associate Tom Pollard, after 18 months embedded in the department as a mental health specialist.

Link to Demos report hosting page, https://demos.co.uk/project/pathways-from-poverty/

The fundamental challenge in this policy space, as I consistently presented it to officials internally, is to achieve meaningful ‘engagement’ with 'harder-to-help' groups. The personal and external barriers standing between people in these groups and sustained employment are simply of a different nature to those experienced by people in frictional unemployment. As anyone working with people in these situations will attest, these barriers can only be overcome
if the individual is ‘bought in’ to doing so; meaningfully engaged with the support on offer; and in a trusting relationship with those providing it.

That relationship is almost impossible for the DWP to establish with these groups, for three clear reasons:
1. The ‘benefits lens’, through which all interaction with ‘claimants’ is viewed
2. The department’s institutional resistance to radical reform and innovation
3. The reputational baggage the department and its Jobcentres have with these groups

Of course, there are other challenges to overcome to help these groups, but I firmly believe that the debate needs to start from why, rather than simply how, the DWP is failing to effectively support them.

and directly to the report, https://demos.co.uk/wp-content/uplo...m-Poverty-a-case-for-institutional-reform.pdf

 

[Wonko]

I'm old enough to remember when jobcentres got people jobs. You found something you liked, took them the details, they'd ring up, get you an interview, even pay for transport, trainfares etc.

I'm not sure what they are these days but they are not jobcentres in any meaningful sense of the words.

The DWP is unfit for purpose and always has been.

 

[Peter T]

My feeling is that the problems in the UK are not with the structures in Whithall but the politically generated culture that has developed in a number of departments over a number of years.

It has been centrally decided that anyone claiming any form of benefit should be treated with hostility and contempt. Just as the Home Office has become a malignant Kafkaesque bureauracy in relation to anyone perceived as an immigrant, the DWP and its subcontractors have a culture designed to discourage and disbelieve applicants, I suspect even their inefficiency and incompetence is a deliberately accepted consequence of this disrespect towards the people they are meant to help.

 

[Adrian]

Ministers should consider abolishing the Department for Work and Pensions after its failure to help ill and disabled people out of poverty, a leading thinktank has said.

Most of the work of Amber Rudd’s department could be carried out more effectively by other Whitehall ministries, according to a report by Demos.

Some what off topic but it made me think Back in the DHSS which is a half man half biscuit album from the days when health and social security were all run together.

 

[Hoopoe]

It has been centrally decided that anyone claiming any form of benefit should be treated with hostility and contempt. Just as the Home Office has become a malignant Kafkaesque bureauracy in relation to anyone perceived as an immigrant, the DWP and its subcontractors have a culture designed to discourage and disbelieve applicants, I suspect even their inefficiency and incompetence is a deliberately accepted consequence of this disrespect towards the people they are meant to help.

I wonder if the system was designed by people that are out of touch. They might have lived a life with no problems that couldn't be overcome with some optimism and determination, and therefore expect others to solve their problems in this manner. Life is complex, one strategy does not work for all problems, and some problems are not solvable.

 

[Wonko]

I wonder if the system was designed by people that are out of touch. They might have lived a life with no problems that couldn't be overcome with some optimism and determination, and therefore expect others to solve their problems in this manner. Life is complex, one strategy does not work for all problems, and some problems are not solvable.

This appears to be the case with most British institutions, it probably always has been.
The ethos is work hard, you will be rewarded. Therefore anyone who is not reaping the rewards must , practically by definition, be undeserving. The people who end up at the top are the ones where that ethos worked, therefore the system remains.
Simplistic but not generally far off the mark.

 

[Peter T]

I wonder if the system was designed by people that are out of touch.

The political masters have been informed over and over again of the real life the consequences of their policies. In relation to the DWP the government seems to believe that people can be bullied into work or can be ignored into health. They may believe lack of work and ill health are lifestyle choices, but they also have actively chosen to ignore the evidence to the contrary.

 

[pteropus]

i agree re absurd assumptions about unemployment and inability to work

even if this change was agreed upon (moving employment & welfare into a different govt dept)
the Tories would find a new way to siphon the funds to their rich mates, while depriving everyone else

 

[Eagles]

The Canary: A DWP-backed ‘medical scandal’ could be blown wide open

https://www.thecanary.co/uk/analysi...ked-medical-scandal-could-be-blown-wide-open/

Steve Topple

11th May 2019

A contentious Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) funded medical research project – described by an MP as possibly “one of the biggest medical scandals of the 21st century” – is close to being blown wide open. Because a call for a public inquiry into it is now getting the support of numerous MPs.

The DWP and the PACE trial

The PACE trial was a controversial research project. It looked into treatment for people living with myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME). You can read Canary articles on the disease here. The PACE trial claimed that patients could improve their illnesses, and sometimes recover, by having cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and by using graded exercise therapy (GET)…

 

[Jonathan Edwards]

A doctor is now involved...

Rather a lot of doctors have been involved for quite a long time. I am afraid that pinning hopes on Sarah Myhill with a flying cape makes the piece fall flat on its face.

 

[Esther12]

Thanks to @Mr Topple (assuming this is Steve) for all the work he has done trying to draw attention to the problems around PACE. It's really great to have someone raising this topic with an audience that wouldn't have otherwise even heard of it.

I share Edwards' concern that a focus on Myhill is unlikely to be the best idea. To challenge the UK medical Establishment on the quality of science we need to be really rigorous ourselves, and Myhill just doesn't have the best record here. IMO her involvement with PACE campaigning is more likely to be useful for the PACE researchers than patients.

 

[MeSci]

DWP 'shocked' by its own disability tribunal record (UK)

The Department for Work and Pensions has lost more employment tribunals for disability discrimination than any other employer in Britain since 2016.

BBC Panorama found the DWP lost 17 of 134 claims of discrimination against its own disabled workers from 2016-19.

And it paid out at least £950,000 in both tribunal payments and out-of-court settlements in that time.

The DWP said it was "shocked" by the data but was reviewing its processes to ensure all staff were treated fairly.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-51756783

 

[Andy]

If an organisation has a culture that discriminates against the disabled people that it is meant to help, it's no surprise to me that it will be more likely to discriminate against those disabled people that it employs.

 

[Kitty]

They'll faint when they read the stats on lost disability benefits tribunals, then!

 

[Wits_End]

And there I was thinking the header referred to the number of benefits tribunals they'd lost ...

 

[MeSci]

Programme on the subject tonight:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000g6rz

 

[Peter T]

And there I was thinking the header referred to the number of benefits tribunals they'd lost ...

The DWP lose a much higher percentage of benefits tribunals than they lose employment tribunals. There are probably now more recent articles than this link, but the DWP is losing around 70% of PIP appeals (see https://www.theguardian.com/politic...eals-department-for-work-and-pensions-figures ).

What this recent finding reveals is that the DWP here in the UK treats its own disabled staff badly as well as, as found by the UN, breaching the human rights of disabled benefits claimants. This finding is not surprising, but does confirm that there is an institutional culture of prejudice against a sizeable portion of the very people they are meant to be helping.

 

[Binkie4]

From the MEA fb page


News from the DWP
Following on from the story below about the failure of governance at the Royal College of Physicians things are no better at the DWP
(see https://www.s4me.info/threads/indep...-royal-college-of-physicians-of-london.40208/)

What a mess…..
https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/dwp-admits.../...



"The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has admitted that it failed to appoint a chief medical adviser for more than five years, at a time when its policy decisions were causing countless deaths of disabled benefit claimants."

 

[SNT Gatchaman]

Direct link, avoiding FB: https://www.disabilitynewsservice.c...ar-failure-to-appoint-a-chief-medical-adviser

Professor Aylward, who died on 29 May this year after a long illness, promised in the interview that he would investigate why the assessment – which was based on the “all work test” he developed in the early 1990s – had been linked to hundreds of suicides between 2010 and 2013.

He told Pring last year: “I have to do some background reading, obviously, but I don’t want something that I was associated with in developing being a cause of so much stress that people commit suicide.”

He promised to contact DWP’s current chief medical adviser to ask them about the training given to those who now carry out WCAs, how their work is monitored, and “why there are so many deaths”.

 

[Binkie4]

From the direct link

https://www.disabilitynewsservice.c...r-failure-to-appoint-a-chief-medical-adviser/


"Professional Aylward had long been a controversial figure among disabled activists for his role in developing the all work test, and his links to the biopsychosocial model of health – which has played a hugely influential role in the department’s assessment systems – and the US disability insurance giant Unum."