Thursday 20 July 2017 latest Disability News Service headlines

Latest Stories

• 
  July 20, 2017 0 Ten years on, campaigners ask again: ‘If these are not hate crimes, what are?’
• 
  July 20, 2017 0 Jared O’Mara calls for action on bullying and harassment by MPs
• 
  July 20, 2017 0 McDonnell calls for disabled-led solution to care crisis, as DPAC occupies parliament
• 
  July 20, 2017 0 DR UK’s new boss pledges better links with other DPOs and grassroots groups
• 
  July 20, 2017 0 Concerns over council’s post-18 support after ombudsman ruling
• 
  July 20, 2017 0 Disabled MP credits mainstream education for new parliamentary career
• 
  July 20, 2017 0 Senior civil servant admits draft industrial strategy failed on disability
• 
  July 20, 2017 0 Equality watchdog and parts of disability movement ‘fail to highlight achievers’

Reassessment harassment by DWP worsens PTSD

People who have undergone the process of serial reassessment by the DWP of their benefit claims can no doubt resonate with David's assertion that the DWP's harassment has made his symptoms worse.

For more details of David's specific case, go to http://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/dwp-puts-child-abuse-trial-at-risk-by-insisting-on-pip-reassessment/

Shaping Our Lives May 2016 Newsletter

Shaping Our Lives is a national network of disabled people and service users

Links:

1. To view the newsletter in full at Shaping Our Lives website http://us10.campaign-archive2.com 
2. 11th Social Work Action Network Conference to be held in London on 4 June 2016 http://www.shapingourlives.org.uk/archives/11-th-annual-social-work-action-network-conference 
3. Kidz to Adultz South — Visitors Free Entry Ticket http://www.shapingourlives.org.uk/archives/kidz-to-adultz-south-visitors-free-entry-ticket
4. Opportunity for people in London: Developing guidance to commission better physical support http://www.shapingourlives.org.uk/archives/opportunity-for-people-in-london-developing-guidance-to-commission-better-physical-health-support
5. Have you experienced abuse, harassment or violence because of your mental health problem? http://www.shapingourlives.org.uk/archives/have-you-experienced-abuse-harassment-or-violence-because-of-your-mental-health-problem
6. Choice and Control Survey 2016 — Help to make it a success http://www.shapingourlives.org.uk/archives/choice-and-control-survey-2016-help-to-make-it-a-success

More at us10.campaign-archive2.com

Crapita's bullied confessions deny vulnerable people justice

Title above by Dude Swheatie of the KUWG

 

 Report below from Z2K — Justice for vulnerable debtors

Investigating benefit ‘fraud': a case study

Posted on November 18, 2014 by Nick Goldberg

As part of their contract with Westminster Council Capita have been paying companies to conduct investigations into allegedly fraudulent housing benefit claims. Often these investigations have been triggered by people falling out with their neighbours or similar petty reasons. Most investigations rarely, if ever, lead to a prosecution. The stress caused to our clients is phenomenal.

Throughout the investigation our clients are lead to believe they cannot have a housing benefit claim. This often leads to threats of eviction and proceedings. Fraud investigations like to pretend that they have additional powers and rely on intimidation to coerce people to agree to the claims. Often the reasons for these claims are not fully explained to our clients, even when they have a solicitor involved. Caseworkers from our organisation are not allowed to access vital information often until our client has signed a document ‘confessing’ their ‘crime’.

Continue reading this on Z2K's website.....

Swheatie concludes: Isn't it high time that the company Private Eye aptly calls 'Crapita' was barred from 'public service delivery'?

Thanks to KUWG's friend Kate Belgrave for flagging this one up.

Welfare state presides over 'culture of fear', charities say

New figures presented to benefits inquiry expected to show record numbers of claimants have had cash withheld

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• Patrick Wintour, political editor
• The Guardian, Tuesday 18 February 2014 21.01 GMT
• Jump to comments (1206)

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New figures presented to benefits inquiry expected to show record numbers of claimants have had cash withheld....

Evidence suggests single parents are being told they must apply for full time jobs to continue receiving jobseeker’s allowance. Photograph: Matt Cardy/Getty Images

Iain Duncan Smith's Department for Work and Pensions is presiding over "a culture of fear" in which jobseekers are set unrealistic targets to find work – or risk their benefits being taken away, leading charities have told an official inquiry.

Continue reading at
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/feb/18/welfare-state-jobs-inquiry-culture-fear

Policy-based evidence gathering, and evidence-based policy making and critique

Swheatie writes: IDS is interested in policy-based evidence-gathering. The sort that led an investment banker turned 'welfare reform adviser' named David Freud to pronounce in February 2008:

If you want a recipe for getting people on to IB, we've got it: you get more money and you don't get hassled. You can sit there for the rest of your life. And it's ludicrous that the disability tests are done by people's own GPs - they've got a classic conflict of interest and they're frightened of legal action."

    Under his system, the market will decide who should receive benefit and who should go out to work. "The private sector will have to start making assessments about who they can get back into work at what cost....

 In fact at the very time that David Freud was speaking in 2008, it was a private company that conducted the Incapacity Benefit Tests for government — and hundreds of thousands even then were wrongly denied the benefit, and won it on appeal.

Kate Belgrave, on the other hand, is very interested in evidence-based policy making and critique to the point of attending Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group meetings and much more. Kate writes:

The jobcentre reports* are proving popular and I think it's v important to keep letting people know what people are having to deal with. You probably saw this:
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/feb/18/welfare-state-jobs-inquiry-culture-fear
- exactly what you've been talking about.

* See
http://www.katebelgrave.com/2014/02/four-people-talk-about-sanctions-and-the-pointlessness-of-jobcentres/
and
http://www.katebelgrave.com/2014/02/more-jsa-stories-from-jobcentres-its-impossible-youre-trapped/

Swheatie